So I’m traveling a bit outside of my normal realm and am hanging out in South Florida for a bit. What does that mean? Well outside excellent bicycling weather and humidity, it also means local area vMUGs! Two of them in fact. Come on out and let’s talk Virt!

Details:

South Florida Area vMUG

• Date: July 28, 2010
• URL: http://info.vmware.com/forms/VMUG_REG?eventcity=9387-sofl&theme=South%20Florida

Tampa Area vMUG

• Date: Aug 2, 2010 – 11p – 3p EST
• URL: http://info.vmware.com/content/VMwareExpress_Reg?eventcity=9399-clearwater&src=VMUG
• Note: The VMware Cloud In A Truck (VMware Express) will be there Woot!

Note: If you want to meet up some time before then, drop a line in the comments or hit me up @cody_bunch on Twitter.

Instead of writing a 4.1 post, which seems to be all the rage, I’ll instead link you to a few of them that I have been reading (which are in turn links out to more documentation).

• Eric Siebert – http://vsphere-land.com/news/vsphere-41-the-links.html
• vChat (about 4.1) – http://www.techhead.co.uk/vchat-a-regular-virtualization-related-webcast
• VMware 4.1 KB articles – http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2010/07/useful-vsphere-41-knowledgebase-articles.html
• ESXi “touchfree” installs – http://get-admin.com/blog/?p=1131
• New HA maximums – http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/07/14/vsphere-4-1-vmware-ha-new-maximums-and-drs-integration-will-make-our-life-easier/
• ESXi Free Name Change – http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2010/07/introducing-vmware-sphere-hypervisor-41-the-free-edition-of-vmware-vsphere-41.html
• More 4.1 – http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2010/07/vsphere-41-is-here-tell-me-something-about-the-release-i-may-not-know.html

I heard you liked links, so I linked you to some links, so that you could link while you link… or some such.

You know you want it… We’ll be covering the security objective from the VCAP-DCA Blueprint. Likely with some live demos along the way. What’s that you say? “When? How? What"?

Details

• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 20th @ 2PM CST
• Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/909625585
• Note: If you have registered in the past, you ‘should’ not need to again.

Preparation:

• VCAP-DCA Blueprint
• About the VCAP-DCA

About the BrownBags

The ProfessionalVMware/PlanetVM BrownBags are a series of VMware related certification & technical deepdive webinars. The BrownBags are intended to give you that little extra *umph* for your certification or to get you a deeper understanding of different aspects of virtualization. They are held on alternating Tuesdays and are sponsored by Train Signal.

This post actually has it’s roots in a practical and useful change in VMware’s “delete all” snapshot functionality. For the details, I strongly suggest you go off to Duncan’s page and read all about it. It was that post that in turn generated quite a lot of twitter buzz around some additional features, or naming changes that VMware can improve in the area of snapshots. One of these features was an “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. Well, “I’m Feeling Lucky” doesn’t quite fit the verb-noun format of PowerCLI functions, so I give you instead “Roll-Dice.ps1”:

Roll-Dice – The Script

Roll-Dice – The Results

And to stage the snapshots… well, that was also PowerCLI:

$i = 1; while ($i -lt $rand.next(6,16)){ get-vm -name "Home*" | new-snapshot -name $i -Confirm:$false; $i++ }

I am the King of Last Minute Scheduling… as such, this weeks Brown Bag will be a rambling open topic.We’ll talk VCP, VCAP, establishing trust between Management & Virtualization groups, and anything else that happens to come up.

The Details:

Date/Time: Today (7/6/2010) at 2PM CST
Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/909625585

Looking forward to seeing y’all there.

It’s summer reading time again! The first item on my reading list this summer is none other than the “Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) (Data Center): A Complete Reference Guide to the Cisco Data Center Virtualization Server Architecture (Networking Technology)” (A mouth and a half full).

From the first two chapters of the book, the level of detail is quite promising and leaves me expecting good things from the remainder of the book. Seemingly it is also available in a Kindle version (here). Here is what Amazon had to say:

Amazon Summary:

The definitive guide to UCS and the Cisco® Data Center Server: planning, architecture, components, deployment, and benefits
With its new Unified Computing System (UCS) family of products, Cisco has introduced a fundamentally new vision for data center computing: one that reduces ownership cost, improves agility, and radically simplifies management. In this book, three Cisco insiders thoroughly explain UCS, and offer practical insights for IT professionals and decision-makers who are evaluating or implementing it.
The authors establish the context for UCS by discussing the implications of virtualization, unified I/O, large memories and other key technologies, and showing how trends like cloud computing and green IT will drive the next-generation data center. Next, they take a closer look at the evolution of server CPU, memory, and I/O subsystems, covering advances such as the Intel® XEON® 5500, 5600, 7500, DDR3 memory, and unified I/O over 10 Gbps Ethernet.
Building on these fundamentals, the authors then discuss UCS in detail, showing how it systematically overcomes key limitations of current data center environments. They review UCS features, components, and architecture, and demonstrate how it can improve data center performance, reliability, simplicity, flexibility, and energy efficiency. Along the way, they offer realistic planning, installation, and migration guidance: everything decision-makers and technical implementers need to gain maximum value from UCS–now, and for years to come.

Disclaimer:

While this is covered on my about page, it is worth noting that the above links are Amazon affiliate links.

Over the course of my travels, I’ve found that having a quick reference to random Windows commands is helpful. Here are two sets of commands I use often enough to be useful, but not often enough that I’ve committed them to memory:

Managing IP Addresses from the CLI

Netsh! – This one predates PowerShell on Windows boxes, and went a long way to helping the everyday lives of Windows Admins.

Backup IP Address Config

netsh -c interface dump > c:\ip_address.txt

Restore IP Address Config

netsh -f c:\ip_address.txt

Set Interface to DHCP

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp
netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp

Set Static IP Address

netsh interface ip set address name="Local Area Connection" static 192.168.0.100 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1
netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" dhcp

Reset the TCP/IP Stack

netsh int ip reset all

Finding the Uptime of a Windows Box

Because you can not always plan on the presence of uptime.exe on a box, the following will get the info for you:

SystemInfo

systeminfo | more

Statistics

net statistics workstation

Sources:

• http://www.petri.co.il/configure_tcp_ip_from_cmd.htm
• http://burrowowl.net/wordpress/200606/netsh_int_ip_reset_all/
• http://www.windowsreference.com/general/how-to-find-the-system-uptime-in-windows-vistaserver-2008xp2003/

Thanks again to Ed Haletky (@Texiwill) for coming along and presenting this week. Here is the video from the session:

BrownBag #10 – Security Deep Dive from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

Links:

• Virtualization Practice – Ed’s Blog
• http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/?file_id=41 – Resources!
• Virtualization Security Roundtable

With vSphere comes the ability for third parties to add hardware to the HCL without having to wait for an update to ESX for their drivers to be included. An excellent move on VMware’s part as this opened up the door hugely for 3rd parties to supply certified & updated drivers as well as provide the ability to add hardware to the HCL between updates.

So when does one install these drivers? Well you have several opportunities, the first being during installation. The second, can be done post install using esxupdate.

Obtaining Drivers

First you will want to verify your hardware is indeed on the HCL by searching at http://www.vmware.com/go/hcl. Once verified, proceed to the downloads page for your edition of ESX, select “Drivers & Tools”, and then drill down for your specific drivers:

Installing Drivers

Now that you’ve downloaded the drivers, you will need to extract it and place the “offline-bundle” directory somewhere remotely accessible (http, ftp, nfs, or local):

user$ ls -al
total 168
drwxr-xr-x  4 user  staff    136 Jun  6 18:23 .
drwxr-xr-x  9 user  staff    306 Jun  6 18:23 ..
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 user  staff  70842 Aug 17  2009 INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12.1-offline_bundle-185976.zip
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 user  staff    271 Aug 17  2009 TRANS.TBL

There it is… now let’s install it. First, put the host into maintenance mode. Then fire up esxupdate to get it going:

[root@dbcfnhc1-vm ~]# esxupdate –bundle=http://professionalvmware.com/util/1000ET\ drivers/offline-bundle/INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12.1-offline_bundle-185976.zip update

Summary

This should have you covered for installing 3rd party drivers both during installation and after the fact (so long as it’s on the HCL). If you have any questions or comments, drop a line either in the comments or @cody_bunch on Twitter

In the spirit of all things Brownbag, we’re branching out beyond certification to include several “Deep Dive” technical podcasts with industry leading experts. Mind, we’ll still keep to our certification roots, but the Brownbag format lends itself well to doing technical deep dives as well. As such, our first topic will be Virtualization security, and our special guest will be Edward L. Haletky (Texiwill), one of the Virtualization industry’s leading security experts. Ed is also the author of “VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment” (Our review here). Ed is also the host of the Virtualization Security podcast and is an author at The Virtualization Practice blog.

Critical Details:

• Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/909625585
• Date/Time: Tuesday June 22, 2010 @ 2PM CST
• Note: If you registered for the last one, you are registered for this one.
• Recording will be made available within 48 hours after broadcast.

Submit Your Questions!

If you have questions for Ed, but won’t be able to make the Brownbag, drop a line in the comments section of this post. The more the better!

About Ed:

Edward L. Haletky graduated from Purdue University in 1988 with a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. Since then, he has worked with programming graphics and other lower-level libraries on various UNIX platforms. When at Hewlett-Packard, Edward worked in the Virtualization, Linux, and High-Performance Technical Computing teams. He owns AstroArch Consulting, Inc., providing virtualization, security, and network consulting and development. Edward is very active on the VMware Communities Discussion Forums providing answers to security and configuration questions and is also one of the VMware Communities User Moderators and Guru. In addition, Edward has earned his LPI, RHCE and VCP certifications. Lastly, Edward is a very active blogger in the virtualization space.