In Part 1 of this short series of configuring Windows Server 2012 SMB transparent failover we configured two VMs using the vSphere 5.1 web client to access shared RDMs. Then mounted and formatted on one node with a 16KB allocation size, to better optimize shadow copies for share folder performance. Now that...
Windows Server 2012 is Microsoft's biggest server OS release since Windows 2000. The number of features, enhancements, and optimizations is mind boggling. One major area of focus was SMB, which is Server Message Block. SMB is the protocol used to access file shares across the network. SMB 3.0 was introduced with...
Today Microsoft made a huge announcement. Their entire Office 2013 stack RTM'd today!! What all does that include do you ask? It includes Office 2013 (duh), Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013. According to Microsoft "This is the most ambitious release of Office we've ever done. It spans the...
At VMworld 2012 San Francisco there was some information publically shared about "vVols" (VMware Virtual Volumes) which is an entirely new and radical concept for VM storage. At VMworld 2012 Barcelona there seems to be a lot more talk about it, as major vendors are now blogging about their future...
A few days ago VMware released a new patch bundle for ESXi 5.0. The new build number is 821926. You can find the full details here. As always, you can download the patches from their download portal here. The fixes are of severity "Important" and require VM shutdown and Host...
In this post I cover the basics of replacing the Log Browser and Web Client SSL certificates for vCenter 5.1 Update 1. However, as I've mentioned before, VMware has released the vCenter certificate automation tool. That tool automates the replacement of the Log Browser and web client certificates, among others....
UPDATE 4/28/2013: VMware has released the vCenter Certificate Automation tool. This is a better tool for replacing the vCenter SSL certificates (post-install), and does not require pre-staging the certificates. Since this is an official tool, and does more than my pre-staging method, I strongly urge you to follow my refreshed...
This installment of the 15 part vSphere 5.1 Installation covers some basic VUM configuration that most people will want to do. In Part 12Â we configured VUM to use trusted SSL certificates. Now that the under the covers configuration of VUM is done, we need to perform some basic GUI configuration...
Welcome to the vSphere 5.1 Update 1 VUM SSL certificate replacement procedures. In Part 11 we installed VMware vCenter Update Manager (VUM) 5.1 Update 1. Recently VMware released the vCenter Certificate automation tool, which helps lessen the pain associated with replacing the self-signed certificates with trusted certificates. I recommend you use that...
This installment in the vSphere 5.1 Update 1 installation series will install VUM (VMware Update Manager) on your system. In Part 10 of this series we configured the VUM DSN in preparation for installing VUM. So now we are ready to deploy VUM. You can co-locate it on your vCenter server...
Now that vCenter 5.1 Update 1 is installed it is now time to create the VUM DSN. VUM, known as VMware Update Manager, lets you automate the patching process of ESXi hosts, update VMware tools, and also update some VM appliances. You still have to manage VUM via the legacy Windows vSphere client, as VMware...
In any enterprise environment, small or large, you should always used trusted SSL certificates for your VMware components. Very commonly people want to use a Microsoft Certificate Authority (CA). But, VMware requires certain properties be present in the SSL certificate to properly function. So you need to create a custom...