Server

Extra Cyber Monday deal… 4.1 book also $ 4.99

Duncan Epping · Nov 27, 2011 ·

As multiple people asked for it, Frank and I decided to also put the 4.1 HA/DRS Deepdive on sale. Just wanted to inform you guys about it. Here are the links:

Once again, please note that Amazon might charge extra if you are ordering/downloading the book from remote. We cannot control that unfortunately. Never the less, this is the bargain of the year for sure when it comes to VMware books. No book out their with such an insane price/page/quality ratio!

Crazy Black Friday / Cyber Monday deal!

Duncan Epping · Nov 25, 2011 ·

I know there are a lot of crazy deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but this is most definitely the deal of the year for all virtualization fanatics! I just changed the price of the vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive to $ 4.99 and 3.99 for my European friends. Yes that is correct…. Less than 5 dollars for over 350 pages of deepdive material. Keep in mind that this is a limited offer, Tuesday the 29th the price will be back to “normal” again.

Pick it up, tell your friends / colleagues / family about it… Here are some snippets from Amazon reviews, but with 15 extremely positive reviews, all of them 5 out of 5, you know you can’t go wrong:

“If you’re serious about VMware virtualization this book is a must have. Regardless of you responsibilities with a virtual infrastructure administrative, or from a architecture design stand point this book is for you. The level of knowledge and depth which Frank and Duncan cover in this book about the new clustering changes in vSphere 5 is priceless. The design tips and illustrations through the book are truly invaluable. There is no other book that gets into the core of all the different vSphere 5 cluster technologies like this one, ”

“Whether you are longing to know about the transition from AAM to FDM, best practices for DRS and DPM, or are just curious to know what those acronyms are this is a great book! The technical detail, practical advice, and comparative analysis throughout make this book one of the most thorough yet concise technical books available.”

“The book is clearly written, a special emphasis has been made on making it understandable even for professionals like me who use vSphere daily yet do not manage huge production environments. The book goes to great lengths to explain all possible scenarios and I found answers to all my questions. Not only sections cover HOW the technology works, but the authors go as far as explaining the way the algorithms are working, which will satisfy the curiosity of everyone.”

“The complete explanations provide the reader all of the information needed to make informed decisions about their environment with excellent diagrams to provide strong visual reinforcements.”

** Please note that Amazon charges for remote downloads, so the price listed here is “local” download price without the additional Amazon transfer costs **

Using the vSphere Syslog Collector and want to change rotation/sizing?

Duncan Epping · Nov 23, 2011 ·

Yesterday I received a nice tip from @Shaun_Gee. During the installation of the vSphere Syslog Collector you have to select the max size of the log files and when a rotation will happen. But how do you change this after the installation? The answer is straight forward, but unfortunately not well documented, thanks Shaun for sharing.

The vSphere Syslog Collector settings can be found under:

Windows 2003 –> C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector\vmconfig-syslog.xml
Windows 2008 –> C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Syslog Collector\vmconfig-syslog.xml

If you open this file you can change all the settings you configured during the installation.

<defaultValues> <port>514</port> <protocol>TCP,UDP</protocol> <maxSize>2</maxSize> <rotate>8</rotate> <sslPort>1514</sslPort> </defaultValues>

You never know when you might need it 🙂

Using the vCenter Appliance for the Web Client?

Duncan Epping · Nov 22, 2011 ·

Today on twitter there was a discussion around having an appliance for the vSphere Web Client. I didn’t get the question as there’s already a vCenter Appliance out there. Apparently not everyone realised that the Web Client is part of the vCenter Appliance. On top of that you could even split out the components and use the vCenter Appliance just for Web Client functionality. I remembered seeing an article from one of my colleagues not too long ago. I dug up the links and here they are. I included a short snippet so you know what to expect. These articles are by Michael Webster so all credits go to him:

Deploy vSphere Web Client without Additional Windows Server License

Prior to running through the steps below you should have downloaded and deployed the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (VCVA) from the VMware web site. This process assumes you already have the VCVA connected to the network and configured with the correct timezone already. To de-register the local embedded vCenter System and to register an existing vCenter Server with the vSphere Web Client do the following….

This is the first step you can take to get the vSphere Web Client up and running. But what if you want to provide some additional redundancy. Or what if you have dozens of people literally using the Web Client and want to add some load balancing? Well Michael thought about that as well and came up with a cool solution for this.

Increase vSphere Web Client Availability and Scalability for Enterprise Environments

In the above design I’ve chosen to use the vCenter Virtual Appliance with the vCenter Services disabled to act as the vSphere Web Client Servers. I’ve used a F5 BIG-IP LTM VE to provide load balancing for the vSphere Web Client User access to the vSphere Web Client Servers, as well as for the vCenter Servers to access the vSphere License Plug-in. You can use any load balancer that will successfully load balance HTTPS traffic on port 9443, which is the port the vSphere Web Client uses.

I think this is a cool solution, and considering the Web Client is the way forward it is definitely an option exploring. I do want to point out that this has more than likely not been explicitly tested by VMware and I am uncertain if it is supported. I have reached out to our vCenter experts however to comment on it.