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.
vcenter
Rescan for datastores, exploring the next version of ESX/vCenter
I love exploring new products, no matter how many times I click through the GUI and browse through the directory structure on the console you discover will discover something new everyday.
I never noticed this one, but as of the next version of ESX/vCenter you can rescan your complete cluster or datacenter just by right clicking on the object and click on “Rescan for Datastore”. Cool now I will not need to run a script anymore…
Cool tool update: RVTools 2.5
Rob de Veij has done it again…. a brand new version of RVTools, 2.5!
Here are the new features of this release:
- The installation file now understands how to upgrade without the need to uninstall the previous version first.
- The documentation file is now also deployed to the program directory.You can start the Adobe reader from the RVTools “help” menu.
- New fields on vInfo tab: Network #1 to Network #4
- New fields on vDisk tab: Level, Shares, SCSI Controller, Unit id and vmdk path name. I’m now using the “config.hardware” information to fill this tab page. In the previous versions of the program I was using the guest information which have a strong dependency with the VMware tools.
- New fields on vNetwork tab: Adapter type and Mac Address type.I’m now using the “config.hardware” information to fill this tab page. In the previous versions of the program I was using the guest information which have a strong dependency with the VMware tools.
- New field on vHost tab: Number of VMs per core
- New tab! vHealth. Displays health check messages.There are 8 possible “Health Check” messages:
- VM has a CDROM device connected!
- VM has a Floppy device connected!
- VM has an active snapshot!
- VMware tools are out of date, not running or not installed!
- On disk xx is yy% disk space available! The threshold value is zz%
- On datastore xx is yy% disk space available! The threshold value is zz%
- There are xx VMs active per core on this host. The threshold value is zz%
- There are xx VMs active on this datastore. The threshold value is zz%
- You can set your “own” health check threshold values in the “Health Check Properties” form.
Hytrust, virtualization under control
A few weeks ago I had a conference call with an unknown company, well at least for me it was still unknown. Eric Chiu contacted me if he, and his team, could demonstrate their new product.
HyTrust‘s product is an appliance. Not only virtual but also physical. But as a virtualization consultant of course the virtual appliance is what interested me the most. The HT appliance ensures host security and authentication compliancy. It’s not only a single point of management for security and authentication but it’s also a single point of authentication. This may sound weird but the HT appliance acts as a authentication/security proxy. This makes for instance configuring active directory based authentication a matter of seconds. Or what about giving a specific group of people the permissions to run a specific command or deny them the permissions to run the command.
I really liked what HyTrust demoed and I think it’s a very useful tool for those who need to enforce security policies / audit hosts and vCenter / extensive logging.
I can try to explain what the HT appliance exactly does, but it’s a lot easier to just check this youtube demo of the appliance:
You can find more info here:
Alarm Actions, exploring the new version of ESX/vCenter
Eric Sloof(1, 2, 3) already explored the new “alarms and actions” capabilities. There’s one that really stands out in my opinion in the next release of ESX/vCenter(vSphere):
Indeed, “Enter maintenance mode“. Now you might wonder when you would want to use this. Wouldn’t it be nice that when your hardware is degraded, for instance memory status changed or hardware power changed, the host enters maintenance mode. I wouldn’t want to run virtual machines on a host that has a memory error or runs on only one power supply. Of course this action only applies to the “host” objects:
