Over the past year I've been developing Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 VM templates for my VMware environment. However, the process has not been without its challenges. One of the features I wanted was a customized default user profile so that things like WMP, IE, and other settings...
During my regression testing of my vCenter 4.1 U1 installation instructions on Windows Server 2008 R2, I came across a problem that made me scratch my head. I was updating the vCenter SSL certificates, per my blog here. However, when I opened IE and tried to connect to the vCenter...
Update 2/11/2011: VMware has re-published the article and limited the applicability to 4.1 U1 (released 2/10/2011), since it directs you to use the new VMware Update Manager Utility. The new procedure is easier to follow and uses a new tool that makes it debut in 4.1 U1. However, IMHO, it's...
UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier)Â are also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique IDentifier). A UUID is 128 bits long, and can guarantee uniqueness across space and time. Why do I care about UUIDs? Well VMware attempts to assign a unique UUID to every VM. Generally they succeed, but sometimes you can end...
With the release of ESX 4.1 and vCenter 4.1, VMware has greatly increased the performance of vCenter. I accidentally stumbled upon this VMware document called VMware vCenter Server Performance and Best Practices.It's a great read covering benchmark performance differences between vCenter 4.0 and vCenter 4.1, plus a lot of tips...
Back in the days of vCenter 4.0 it required a 32-bit DSN to connect to your SQL database. Now that vCenter 4.1 and ESX 4.1 are out, it now requires the use of a 64-bit DSN. This makes sense as vCenter now requires a 64-bit server. The PowerShell script I...
VMware just released a killer whitepaper on how to optmize SQL 2008 performance for vCenter 4.0. It has quite a few details that I was not aware of and will result in changes to my production environment. Tips that were new to me included:- Optimizing the clustered index fill factor-...
This past weekend I worked on automating our SQL installs and scripting security lockdowns. During that effort I found the new policy evaluation tool in SQL 2008. This built-in tool allows you to run specific checks against your SQL 2008 installation to report on best practices. During my evaluation everything...
I stumbled upon this technical note from VMware on how to install vCenter and the vSphere client silently via the command line. Unfortunately the syntax is pretty convoluted, unlike the SQL 2008 unattended method. The vCenter command line install document can be found here.Just to give you a flavor of...
After installing and re-installing VMware vCenter and VUM many times (mostly for testing) all of the manual database creation steps got old pretty fast. So I put some effort into creating a T-SQL script for SQL 2008 that automates most of the tasks.The T-SQL script below does the following:1. Adds...