Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Archives for 2009

The Basics: Moving hosts from one vCenter server to the other

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It seems to be a question that often pops up on the VMTN forum, how can I move my ESX hosts to my freshly installed vCenter server? The answer is actually pretty simple:

  1. Just to be on the save side, set DRS to manual and disable HA on the “old” vCenter server / cluster
  2. Right click the ESX host and select “Disconnect”
  3. Go to the new vCenter server and add the host

It’s as simple as that. You don’t even need to shutdown your VMs.
Keep in mind though that you will lose your folder structure as well. (Thanks Joop)

Home Lab Storage

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Stephen Foskett already gave us a hint during the VMTN podcast. A brand new low cost SAN solution was about to be unveiled today…. After EMC / Iomega released the Storcenter IX2 and the Storcenter Pro IX4 it just released the rack mountable iSCSI/NFS SAN StorCenter Pro Ix4-200r.

The cool thing about the before mentioned SAN solutions is that all of them are on the hardware compatibility list:

Partner Name Model Array Type Supported Releases
EMC Iomega ix2 NAS ESX 3.5 U4, ESX 3.5 U3, ESX 3.5 U2, ESX 3.5 U1, ESX 3.5
EMC Iomega ix4-100 NAS ESX 3.5 U4, ESX 3.5 U3, ESX 3.5 U2, ESX 3.5 U1, ESX 3.5
EMC Iomega ix4-200r iSCSI ESX 3.5 U41 , ESX 3.5 U31 , ESX 3.5 U21ESX 3.5 U11 , ESX 3.51
EMC Iomega ix4-200r NAS ESX 3.5 U41 , ESX 3.5 U31 , ESX 3.5 U21ESX 3.5 U11 , ESX 3.51

How cool is that huh?

Just to give you an idea, you can pick up an IX2 for $ 299(1TB, NFS only), an IX4-100 for about $ 799 (2TB, NFS Only) and the IX4-200r starts at  $1,799 (2TB, NFS + iSCSI). I’m thinking of picking one up… Should be more than sufficient to run my home lab on. $ 299 for a device that’s on the HCL, amazing… and word on the street has it that EMC/Iomega is also working on an iSCSI firmware for the IX2/IX4-100…  but it’s just a rumor so far.

Check Stephen’s article for more details or Mark Twomey’s article(Storagezilla).

SRM 1.0 Update 1, patch 3

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I just noticed this SRM update, it’s just a small patch but looking at the problems it corrects it might be beneficial to upgrade!

Site Recovery Manager 1.0 Update 1 Patch 3 Latest Release Version: 1.0.1.2587 | 04/09/09 | 154949

This patch corrects the following problems:

  • a problem that prevents protected virtual machines from following recommended Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) settings when recovering to more than one DRS cluster.
  • a problem observed at sites that support more than seven ESX hosts. If you refresh inventory mappings when connected to such a site, the display becomes unresponsive for up to ten minutes.
  • a problem that could prevent SRM from computing LUN consistency groups correctly when one or more of the LUNs in the consistency group did not host any virtual machines.
  • a problem that could cause the client user interface to become unresponsive when creating protection groups with over 300 members several problems that could cause SRM to log an error rmessage vim.fault.AlreadyExists when recomputing datastore groups.
  • a problem that could cause SRM to log an Assert Failed: “ok” @ src/san/consistencyGroupValidator.cpp:64 error when two different datastores match a single replicated device returned by the SRA.
  • a problem that could cause SRM to remove static iSCSI targets with non-test LUNs during test recovery several problems that degrade the performance of inventory mapping.

VCP, VCDX… what’s next?

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Master VCP! How cool does that sound?

The VCDX, as cool as it is, is specifically targeted at a solution architect level. It is not for everyone. What should be for all of you is a “next” level. This “Master VCP” certification is something that we are working very hard on being able to provide soon. It would involve being a VCP, then taking the Enterprise Administration Exam, which is part multiple choice, part practical. That exam has limited scalability at this point, and we can’t roll out this certification until we resolve that issue. Of course that is only one factor, but it is the main limiting factor at this point.

So for all of you wanted the next level of mastery, just stay tuned and we will have it for you soon…

Jon C. Hall
Technical Certification Developer

For those who read Erik Zandboer’s blog on the VCDX Design Exam, Jon Hall also commented on the blog… take a look if you scheduled the Design beta exam or if you recently did the exam it contains useful information.

Minor Update: RVTools 2.5.1

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It’s just a minor update this time from Rob de Veij: RVTools 2.5.1

Version 2.5.1 (April 15, 2009) Bug fix! Better exception handling on the vDisk and vNetwork tab pages. With the help from Alan Civita this problem is now solved! Thanks again Alan.