Wednesday 20 December 2017

VM shows as orphaned in vCenter - Web Client

This week we've been creating and deleting VMs, and in one of the labs we delete a VM and then when we access the Web Client and connect to our we see the VM shown as orphaned.

This is because the vCenter server database still see the VM.

The fix for this in vSphere 6.5 is a straightforward task.

Step 1. Download PowerCLI 6.5

Step 2. Run PowerCLI and connect to your vCenter Server from PowerCLI

connect-viserver vc-fqdn (replace with FQDN eg vc01.bryanoconnor21.co.uk)

Step 3. List the VMs

get-vm | select name

Step 4. Delete the orphaned VM

remove-vm VMName

Step 5. Verify deletion

get-vm | select name

The machine should no longer be listed.

Another way to delete the orphaned VM is to use the Web Client

Highlight the VM right click the VM > All Virtual Infrastructure Actions > Remove from Inventory





Thursday 14 December 2017

What is vSAN? - Lightboard from VMware

This week we've been looking at vSAN and mentioning the many advantages of the product.

VMware have produced a light board session explaining the vSAN product.

To summarise vSAN takes local storage on your ESXi hosts and presents this as Shared Storage.

The session is presented by Elver Sena Sosa and is less then ten minutes long.


Enjoy.

Tuesday 12 December 2017

Free eBook – The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure

Microsoft have now released a new version of their developer guide to Azure as a free ebook

Free eBook – The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure

The book authors are Michael Crump and Barry Luijbregts

The book is 62 pages and downloaded as a PDF

Introduction from the book itself

"We created The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure to help you on your journey to the cloud, whether you’re just considering making the move, or you’ve already decided and are underway.

This e-book was written by developers for developers.

And it is specifically meant to give you, as a developer, a fundamental knowledge of what Azure is all about, what it offers you and your organization, and how to take advantage of it all."

Enjoy

Sunday 10 December 2017

Free Access to Azure Services and Training

In my role as a Microsoft Certified Trainer I deliver courses on Microsoft Azure (Microsoft's Public Cloud).

Obviously I would like people to books courses and come and have a chat, but sometimes it's good to have access to additional resources.

With The above in mind Microsoft have a useful resource:

Microsoft Azure Essentials

"You've arrived at the best place to get started with Azure and learn new skills. Whatever your level of expertise, Azure Essentials can help you take it further. Choose a topic and use the curated set of demo videos, hands-on labs, and product trials to learn about and try Azure at your own pace. Azure Essentials also offers multiple learning paths, Azure certification, and support. Best of all, we'll guide you every step of the way."

Sign up, it's worth a look.

Saturday 9 December 2017

Webinar: Accelerate your cloud transformation with Microsoft Azure

In my day to day job I deliver both VMware and Microsoft courses, and as such I can see the benefits and flaws of these technologies.

Microsoft Azure can help you transform your VMware environments by delivering cost-effective economics, modernising your workloads with a truly consistent hybrid cloud approach, and streamlining the Azure migration process.

On Wednesday, December 13th 1:00pm PST Microsoft are running the following Webinar:

Accelerate your cloud transformation with Microsoft Azure

The webinar will cover the following:

In this webinar, learn how to transform your VMware workloads and apps on Azure while saving money for your organization. More specifically, we will cover how you can:

  • Migrate your VMware workloads to Azure using migration tools and services for your apps, infrastructure, and data
  • Use Azure to modernise your VMware workloads using the latest cloud architectures
  • Integrate/Inter-operate your VMware workloads with Azure services for backup, replication, management, networking, etc.



Friday 8 December 2017

vSphere Integrated Container Fundamentals - Free elearning


The vSphere Integrated Container Fundamentals - Free elearning is available now, covering the following:

This course covers a series of topics on cloud native basics such as container technology, Kubernetes, and container related infrastructure technologies.


  • Cloud Native Basics
  • What is a Container?
  • The Benefits of Containers 
  • Kubernetes in 5 mins
  • Docker Networking Options
  • Networking with Kubernetes
  • An Analysis of IT Technology Silos: Consumers & Providers
  • Container Registry
  • Developer Ready Infrastructure
  • Pivotal Cloud Foundry and vSphere Part 1
  • Pivotal Cloud Foundry and vSphere Part 2
  • Pivotal Cloud Foundry and NSX
  • Containers on vSphere
  • vSphere Integrated Containers Networking Overview
Definitely worth a look, it's self-paced and 2.5 hours long.

The future is Devops not Sysops (Well that's what I've been Told) 😀



Thursday 7 December 2017

HOL-1704-SDC-1 - vSphere 6 - Performance Optimization

One of the topics covered on the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.5] course is VMware Fault Tolerance.

You can use vSphere Fault Tolerance for your virtual machines to ensure business continuity with higher levels of availability and data protection than is offered by vSphere HA.

vSphere Fault Tolerance is built on the ESXi host platform and comes as a function of the VMware vSphere HA cluster support. vSphere Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability by having an identical virtual machine run on separate ESXi hosts.
You can use vSphere Fault Tolerance for virtual machines that require protected against hardware failure.

vSphere Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability for such a virtual machine by creating and maintaining another virtual machine that is identical and continuously available to replace it in the event of a fail-over situation.

The fault tolerant virtual machine is called the primary virtual machine.

The duplicate virtual machine is called the secondary virtual machine.

It is created and runs on another ESXi host. The secondary virtual machine’s execution is identical to that of the primary virtual machine’s. The secondary virtual machine can take over at any point without interruption due to an ESXi host failure, providing fault-tolerant protection.

The primary virtual machine and the secondary virtual machine continuously monitor the status of each other to ensure that fault tolerance is maintained. A transparent fail-over occurs if the host running the primary virtual machine fails, in which case the secondary virtual machine is immediately activated to replace the primary virtual machine. A new secondary virtual machine is started, and fault tolerance redundancy is reestablished automatically.

If the host running the secondary virtual machine fails, it is also immediately replaced. In either case, users experience no interruption in service and no loss of data.

For a Hands on Experience of FT and more visit VMware Hands on Labs website and try:

HOL-1704-SDC-1 - vSphere 6 - Performance Optimization 







Tuesday 5 December 2017

Broken Trust relationship in Windows 10

This week, I've been using Windows 10 in a VM environment and had issues with checkpoints and system restores.

The issues have been that in one of the labs we restore back to a previous snapshot/system restore point and that breaks the trust relationship.

In order to fix this issue launch Windows PowerShell on the Windows 10 device and then type the following command. Replace the dc-name with the name of a Domain Controller in the organisation.

Test-ComputerSecureChannel –Server dc-name -Repair -Verbose

If successful the trust relationship is now fixed

Monday 4 December 2017

VMware vSphere - What's New Fundamentals [V6.0 to V6.5] - Free elearning

With VMware VCP certification, it has become a requirement to renew you VCP certification ever two years.

If you are already a VCP6-DCV , a way to renew your VCP is to pass the:


In order to help prepare for this exam, VMware have provided a free elearning course:


The course lasts 1.5 hours and covers the following.

Overview:

This course highlights the new features and enhancements in vSphere 6.5. It also presents use cases that describe how the new features align with customer needs.
This course begins by discussing VMware vCenter and VMware vSphere administration. 

To simplify what’s new in vSphere 6.5, we can break the advancements down into three primary categories under vSphere and vCenter server administration. 
  • First, we have dramatically simplified the administrator’s experience which makes IT more efficient than ever before. 
  • Second, we have added comprehensive built-in security into vSphere 6.5 to secure your entire data centre. 
  • And the third is that it provides a universal application platform giving you the ability to run any application, anywhere.
Enjoy