Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Management & Automation

vSphere, finally available…

· ·

When ESX 3.0 was released people were excited about it but it can’t be compared to the buzz that has been created around vSphere. It’s all over the blogosphere, I think every single blog out there published articles  about vSphere weeks even months before it was released . Now the time has finally come, it’s available! Go to the download section of the VMware website to download it.

Equally important is the update documentation section. Be sure to download all the documents and start reading!

Have fun today guys, while we in the Netherlands enjoy our holiday.

Bluebear Kodiak 0.0.3 has been released

· ·

If I can find the time I will test it today and add some screenshots to this post. You can get it here. Here are the release notes:

This version of Kodiak represents a significant change in our server-communication architecture.

  1. We’ve added a schema-compliant request/argument builder engine that populates requests based on known information. This makes building requests much easier.
  2. A lua scripting engine. Each server connection gets its own independent Lua script.
  3. Independent object pools.
  4. Improved mapping response and control.
  5. Map connection node & link display control.
  6. We’ve created a “plugin api” where a user may build a plugin to communicate with any kind
    of data service. We’ll be publishing information on this on our wiki.
  7. We’ve added a number of “boilerplate” features that will become more apparent in the next
    few releases as we push Kodiak towards our goal of creating an “IT IDE”.
  8. Access for users to create their own scripts. Kodiak’s UI/inspector controls are driven by a “global schema” that allows a user to create their own customized scripts for management. Please visit the bluebear wiki for further information regarding customizing the script engine. As yet, we don’t have a full UI for managing user scripts, but we will shortly.
  9. The remote event log has been removed for this release.
  10. For Windows users who experience the dreaded “SSL certificate bug”, we’ve added a preferences option to bypass the windows SSL stack. This option is accessible from the Preferences menu.
  11. Password vault & credentials storage. Kodiak now has the ability to save username/password pairs in an encrypted password vault, locked with a master password.
  12. Server object creation is disabled while we migrate the control components into the VMWare plugin, we will re-enable these in a couple of days.

Change the license server from the Service Console

· ·

Got a question today on how to change the licensing server from the Service Console or how to add the license server via a scripted install. Of course “vmware-vim-cmd” is the keyword here. If you want to use a license server you will need to use the first option, if you want to add a license file you will need to use the second option:

  1. vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source server
  2. vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source file

Don’t you just love “vmware-vim-cmd”….

Check if your license server is still running…

· ·

After I wrote the licensing server post a couple of days back one of my colleagues(Thanks Horst!) was so kind to email me the following script. What it basically does is check every server for the availability of the license source. Of course it can be improved by adding for instance a check to see if the license service is running on the license server and for instance email the results if there’s an error… [Read more…] about Check if your license server is still running…

HyTrust Appliance, the community release

· ·

I wrote about HyTrust a month ago. Today HyTrust announced a community version. In short, for up to three host you can use a fully featured version of the Hytrust Appliance for free…

HyTrust Appliance, Community Edition is now available for download now as a pre-built, VMware-compatible virtual appliance to members of HyTrust Community. To join the community free of charge, go to http://www.hytrust.com/community/register. Support for Community Edition is provided by the Community via online forum participation and direct community member interaction.

You can find the full press release here.

Now, back to the VMware vSummit again… and I hope to do some technical blogging again soon.