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Archive for the ‘Virtualization’ Category

Removing ghosted devices in a Windows VM

This post from Eric Sloof is near and dear to my heart: I’ve probably migrated around 300 servers to VM in my current position, and learning how to quickly clean up those VMs once they’re converted can save you a tremendous amount of time (time usually on the weekend or after hours!). I’ve always used [...]

VM-sickbay. Awesome.

Eric Sloof just posted up a fantastic resource for those in need of vmdk and general VM help: Ulli Hankeln’s Sickbay. Welcome – looks like something is wrong with your virtual machine. Before we go into details … relax … drink a coffee and follow the VM-sickbay-rules 1. DON’T PANIC 2. do not try to [...]

vReference 4.1 card released

Forbes Guthrie has released another vReference card – this time, updated with juicy 4.1 info. If you work in vSphere and don’t already use one of his incredibly useful previous vReference releases, you owe it to yourself to download the vSphere 4.1 version. Also available are Virtual Infrastructure 3 cards for those of you not [...]

Excellent vSphere 4.1 link reference

Seems that Scott Lowe has shelved his plans for a follow-up to Mastering VMware vSphere 4 – a book that sits, dog-eared, on my desk permanently. While working on that project Scott has amassed some really useful links to various resources and articles, and posted them today on his blog. Excellent reading for planning a [...]

vSphere 4.1 Last Version of ESX, ESXi is the future

So this is not really news, but is now big official news: the 4.1 release of vSphere is the last supported version of ESX. VMware is finally dropping the Service Console. Moving forward, ESXi will be the core hypervisor technology at the center of VMware’s virtualization strategy (for now). Can’t say I disagree, especially if [...]

More VirtualBox goodness: Lifehacker shows us the basics

Just saw a great article today covering my favorite desktop hypervisor, VirtualBox: Running multiple operating systems side-by-side gives you the chance to test applications, run platform-specific software, and tons more without ever rebooting. It’s also extremely cool. Here’s how to run Windows, Mac, and Linux simultaneously and pain-free as possible. I’ve already extolled the virtues [...]

Curious SQL database issue with vCenter Update 1

Ran into this error this morning, which of course took down one of our (1000+ VM) vCenter environments: The vCenter Server’s vpxd logs contain entries similar to: An unrecoverable problem has occurred, stopping the VMware VirtualCenter service. Check database connectivity before restarting. Error: Error[VdbODBCError] (-1) “ODBC error: (23000) – [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]Violation of PRIMARY [...]

Platespin Migrate v9 Upgrade Considerations

Novell recently released Platespin Migrate 9, which should address some Linux P2V issues we’ve been running into. Namely, that you can only migrate a Linux server in offline or “TakeControl” mode. We’ve been running into issues where network speed settings have prevented us from moving data from source to target – for example, if you’ve [...]

Troubleshooting Platespin P2V migrations

This post by Marcel van den Berg just saved my sanity today since I could not make heads or tails of what my beloved Platespin server was trying to tell me: Preparing <servername> (under PlateSpin control) For Synchronization No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:5036 Description: several one time synchronizations [...]