Vmware ESX/ESXi – ESX server – Virtualization – vCloud Director, tutorials, how-to, video

I had the problem where every now and then powering on vAPPs that utilize vShield fails and it reports that it failed because it could not create the required port group. This used to drive me crazy, especially the way I have found out to fix it was to reboot the vCloud Networking & Security Manager (vShield Manager) to sync it again with vCloud Director. This has end up being a known bug with vCloud Networking & Security 5.1.2 (I believe the same problem existed with 5.1.1 as well, but not sure of earlier vCNS versions). It seems that vCloud Network & Security 5.1.2 fails to synch back with vCenter … Read More

If you have already took the effort to build your vCenter Single Sign On server while upgrading to vSphere 5.1, then it might be worth while to benefit of it to unify your login to vCloud Director. Wouldn’t be nice if you don’t have to enter your credential separately for vCloud Director after you have already logged on to your vSphere Web Client or the opposite. Is not this the idea behind including SSO in vSphere 5.1. In this blog post, I will share with you the exact instructions on how to configure your vCloud Director to utilize vCenter SSO to login vCloud Admins to the system.

To configure vCloud … Read More

While trying to setup the Redhat Linux machine with two interfaces to install vCloud Director into it, I had some funny problem with my network cards configuration. I have not installed vCloud Director yet at that time, so I was sure it is some Redhat Linux or networking problem rather than vCloud Director in specific. The problem I had, that I was able to ping one of the two NICs IPs from a different subnet, where I could not get the second NIC which I was planning to use for vCloud Director Remote Console to ping. Other machines within the same subnet were able to ping both NICs IPs, while … Read More

While delivering a vCloud engagement to one of our enterprise customers using the latest vCloud Director 5.1.2 and vCloud Networking & Security 5.1.2a, my VXLAN configuration where failing at the stage where its preparing the hosts. I followed the same steps I have used for other customers and in my lab with previous versions, which is as well confirmed by different colleague to work and posted on other blogs.

For reference, the installation steps published by Rawlinson at
http://www.punchingclouds.com/2012/09/09/vcloud-director-5-1-vxlan-configuration/ are almost identical to the installation step I have followed, though I kept getting the following error while the vCloud Networking & Security Manager is trying to prepare my hosts for … Read More

While Changing the vCloud Networking & Security or vShield Manager Web Interface password is well documented at:
Hardening vCloud Networking and Security 5.1.x virtual appliances, changing the console password of vCloud Network & Security or vShield Manager does not seems to be as well documented. Actually I have read in few places that its not possible to change the console password and enable password for vCloud Networking & Security Manager & Appliances. While that is partially true, you can actually recreate the admin account with the desired password which give you a similar effect to changing the password of the console admin account. The below procedure shows how to … Read More

I have just been shown a demo by PHD Virtual of their latest version of ReliableDR, & the first thing I have noticed as the title stated that it is fully business SLAs focused. With the shift today to models like ITaas & IaaS where the availability of the full application from a business perspective is becoming more critical each day, more organizations will be looking for solutions that ensure they are meeting these SLAs. ReliableDR does a great job at this, as it does not only allow a user to configure protection groups based on your business SLAs from a Disaster recovery perspective, but will do the auditing of … Read More

I have came up with four sessions that I would like to present at VMworld 2013, but I need your help to make it reality. As you know VMworld sessions are chosen based on the community voting, so I need every vote I can get specially when many of the other sessions are done by commercial contributors who got an army of employees and partners who would vote for them. I would appreciate your vote on the sessions you would like to see at VMworld 2013. Please find my sessions information below:

4795 vCenter & Single Sign On 5.1 Best Practices

This session will discuss the various design considerations when … Read More

I have recently been delivering a Virtualization Assessment engagement for an Enterprise customer, where they have benefited of the recently introduced VMware Application Dependency Planner(ADP). I thought many enterprises & consultants out there would be interested to find out the what, why, when & how they can benefit of this new offering. Below I will try to give a brief of the answers:

What is Application Dependency Planner (ADP)?

VMware Application Dependency Planner is a consulting tool that provides automated, real-time application discovery and dependency mapping to accelerate datacenter migration, precisely plan infrastructure consolidations, and confidently virtualize business critical applications. VMware and partner consultants can use this agentless, non-intrusive, … Read More

With the release of vSphere 5.1 certificates started to play a much more vital role, where having invalid certificates in your environment is not an option anymore as it could break the operation of your environment as well forbid you from logging in. This change has been done to increase the security of your Virtual Infrastructure Management Components (vCenter Service, Inventory Services, SSO, Web Client, vCO, Update Manager, & vCenter Log Browser) & to compact the possibilities of man in the middle attacks. This change has brought a lot of challenges to many VMware customers who had invalid and expired certificates in their environment without even noticing it. The tedious … Read More

Yop, it is that time of the year again where all of us are looking for a way to get free VMworld Passes. Below is not one opportunity, but two of them & I will update it as soon I hear of more.

1- VMworld Calls for Papers: As with every year VMware is calling Employees, Partners, Alliance, Customers & everyone interested in presenting at VMware to  submit their requests before April 12, 2013 for consideration. If your paper  is accepted, you will be offered to present and a free pass to VMworld. Check out the following link for more details : https://www.vmworld.com/cfp.jspa

2- Veeam VMworld 2013 Pass Drawing: All … Read More

Since vCenter Single Sign On was introduced in vSphere 5.1, many questions have been rising around it. There seems to be a very limited amount of resources out there that document best practices related to vCenter Single Sign On, which is the reason for me to develop this post where I will try to combine as many best practices and answers related to vCenter 5.1 Single Sign On as possible.

I have been one of the lucky consultants who has already got to design/implement vSphere 5.1 for quite few enterprise customers where I have got to debate and drive best practices that I used across those implementations. I am sharing … Read More

While working with my home vSphere 5.1 lab the other day, I was trying to create a VMFS5 datastores on my local SATA disk. Each time I tried to do that I was just welcomed with the following error:

Call “HostDatastoreSystem.CreateVmfsDatastore” for object “ha-datastoresystem” on ESXi “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” failed.

Please note xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx stand for my host IP. To visualize the error below is a screen shot of the error as it has appeared in my home lab

After fuzzing around trying to figure out what happened, I have remembered this particular disk was used by one of my old lab ESXi hosts. As I do all kind of crazy things in … Read More

Backing up vCloud Director environment has been one of those hot topics lately, as not many backup vendors have mastered it yet. All the big players in town are promising a fully integrated solution by this year end, but we still to see a fully integrated solution. I believe within the next 6 months, we will have most major backup vendors offering different vCD backup solutions with varying integration levels.

Veeam has offered support for backing up vCD VMs, but not vAPPs & vCD metadata in the current release but this seems to change soon. Veeam seems to lead the league by planning to deliver the first real vCD backup … Read More

It seems there has been quite few articles that try to explain the vCloud Director 5.1 Upgrade Process out there in the blog sphere, but most of them focus on the steps on how to upgrade vCloud Director Cells and the Database. As many of them do quite good job at that, I am not going to re-invent the wheel and will just list few of them through this blog post. Though what seems to me missing of most of these articles is the order to carry out the vCloud Director environment components upgrade process in.

vCloud Director includes quite few moving parts and integrations, so you will need to … Read More

While installing vCloud Director 5.1 in my home lab, I have faced an odd problem while configuring vCloud Networking and Security 5.1.1 for VXLANs. If you follow VMware Configuration guides for VXLAN or any of the many articles on configuring vCloud Director/vCloud Networking & Security 5.1.1 for VXLAN, it will always mention that as soon you complete the configuration vCloud Networking & Security 5.1.1 will automatically create a dvPort Group that has a name of the format  vxw-vmknicPg-dvs-xx-xx-xx-xx, as well a vmknic interface. Few samples of such instructions can be found at:

http://www.punchingclouds.com/2012/09/09/vcloud-director-5-1-vxlan-configuration/

http://www.kendrickcoleman.com/index.php/Tech-Blog/how-to-configure-vxlan-in-vcloud-director-step-by-step.html

http://www.mikelaverick.com/2012/11/part-23-my-vcloud-journey-journal-creating-vxlan-backed-network-pool/

In my lab I was facing the odd case of the dvPort Group being created, … Read More