Upgrading from VI3 to VI3.5
So I was going to write an article about my experiences upgrading from VI3 to VI3.5, but Mike over at RTFM-Education beat me to it. He has put out a great PDF talking about a lot of the steps and nuances involved in the upgrade process for both VC2.5 and ESX3.5. I highly recommend you take a look...
Making MS-SQL boot before VirtualCenter
VirtualCenter is an eager beaver. It really wants to start when your server does. The problem is that it starts too soon if it is installed on the same server as Microsoft SQL. The Windows event log will record two types of errors: the first will be in the Application log and detail how...
Technosium 2008: VMware Update Manager now with offline patching

I am blogging from the Technosium Global Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California. While here, I will be providing you important VMware info from the show. VMware Update...
VI3.5 – 18 new features you need to know about
VMware Infrastructure 3.5 (VI3.5) saw major updates last fall with the release of ESX 3.5, VirtualCenter 2.5, and ESX 3i. Just what do these new products mean for IT administrators? What functionality have these three SKUs added to the VI3 bundle? Mike Laverick from RTFM-Education fame produced a...
VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2 released
Today VMware announced the general availability of a new addition to their Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) -- VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2 (VDM2). Some of the new features of VMD2 include: - SSL secured connections - Second-factor authentication with RSA SecureID - Integration with...
VLAN tagging for ESX virtual machines: Making the case

VLAN trunking, or tagging, is a powerful feature that allows ESX virtual machines to connect to multiple networks. However, your network team may not want to enable that. In fact, I have come across many situations where trunking is not done to servers, but only to switches for VLAN availability....
VMware ESX Server training video released

Besides being an IT Knowledge Exchange Blogger and SearchVMware.com author with VCP and CCIE certifications, I also create video training courses. Recently, I created a video training course covering VMware ESX Server, VirtualCenter and the VMware Infrastructure Suite. This is a 15-hour video...
The VMware VI Client – Why is it Windows only?
Have you ever wondered why VMware's VI client is Windows only? The most obvious reason is that it is written in C# using the .NET framework. However, the client could easily be written in Python or Java or some other OS agnostic language. So why Windows only? There are in fact two reasons the VI...
Monitoring the Virtual Infrastructure for authentication attempts with Perl
Rick Vanover recently wrote a terrific blog on how to monitor the VI database for authentication attempts. While you can certainly monitor the...
ESX 3.5: Configuring for HA errors

I recently upgraded to ESX 3.5 on a test system, and had an issue that was really stressing me out. The issue was that each time I would perform the "Reconfigure for HA" task, I had errors causing the task to fail and the new ESX host sits there with a red triangle like a car broken down on the...