Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Howto

SRM Failback?

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I get this question a lot:Does SRM have Failback capabilities? The answer is short but not simple, yes it does. Keep in mind that there’s no big red button labeled “Failback” which is the “not simple” part of the answer. Luckily for us the VMware Uptime Blog Team wrote an extensive article on how to do a failback with the current version of Site Recovery Manager. In short this is what one needs to do to failback:

  1. Reverse the replication direction in the storage layer to be from Site B to Site A
  2. Clean up the shadow virtual machines and protection groups on Site A
  3. Clean up the Recovery Plans configured on Site B
  4. Configure the protection group(s) on Site B
  5. Configure the Recovery Plans on Site A
  6. Test recovery from Site B to Site A
  7. Perform the recovery from Site B to Site A

Read the complete article on the Uptime Blog for all the details and show the article to your manager. It includes a table with an the estimated amount of time a failback would normally take manual vs SRM.

Train Signal

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Almost a year ago I wrote an article on a CBT by Train Signal. I really enjoyed watching the CBT and that says a lot coming from someone that never used to be a CBT fan. In the end the ease of learning when and wherever you want is what convinced me. Another reason to use a CBT instead of a classroom training is costs, which is most definitely a valid reason in these times of financial crisis.

If you’re not familiar with CBT’s check out this example:

I managed to get a discount for my readers, buy one of the virtualization related(VMware ESX, Server, Workstation etc) CBT’s and get a 25% reduction! All you need to do is head over to Train Signal and enter the following coupon code “YELLOWBRICKS”. And by buying a CBT you also support Yellow-Bricks.com!

VMReference Card 1.3

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Forbes just released version 1.3 of his VMReference Card.This card can be very useful for those studying for VCP/VCDX. But it might also come in handy when doing troubleshooting on the Service Console:

I’ve just finished updating my reference card.  The biggest change is that I’ve moved everything to the latest update of 3.5 as the default.

  • Updated the details to the latest Confuguration Maximiums PDF.
  • Updated it to include 3.5 update 3 release notes.
  • Changed the versioning to include the latest VMware release, so its more obvious how up to date (or not) your card is.
  • Some minor additions (NAS maximums) and corrections.

Many thanks to all the readers who have written in with comments.  Always welcome.

Go and grab it here: http://www.vmreference.com/vi3-card

Go to VMReference.com and download the Card. Leave a comment while you are there!

Check if autostart is enabled from the COS

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I didn’t know this was possible. But you can easily check via the COS if autostarting of VM’s in enabled or not according to this KB article:

  1. Log in as root to your ESX host with SSH.
  2. Open the /etc/vmware/hostd/vmAutoStart.xml file in text editor.
  3. Search for a line that reads:

    <enabled>true</enabled>

  4. If you find the line, the functionality is enabled. If you do not find the line, the functionality is disabled.
  5. If you want to disable autostart for all virtual machines on the host, remove the line.
  6. If you want to enable the functionality, add the line immediately after the line ending with:

    7. <dynamicProperty>

  7. Save your changes and exit.
  8. Restart the management agents on the ESX host:
    service mgmt-vmware restart

Exchange (2007)on VMware

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I had to prepare a meeting on virtualizing Exchange 2007 on a VMware VI3.5 environment. While searching the internet I found an enormous amount of pdf’s and whitepapers and decided to share them with you:

VMware.com:

VMworld.com:

(You’ll need an account to access the VMworld material)

Cisco / EMC / VMware: