Yesterday I decided it was time to patch my VMware vCenter 5.5 hosts to the recently released Update 3. As I make use of properly configured SSL certificates, each component (SSO, Web Client, Inventory and vCenter Server) has to be installed separately. However when I came to install the last one, I ran into an issue. Continue reading
Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – another stoppage in play
If you have been following my series on vRealize Automation then you will have noticed I have not posted anything recently.
The installation has experienced a number of issues, the most recent being that I upgraded to version 6.2.3 and it appears to have caused an issue. Continue reading
Wednesday Tidbit: configuring a clustered MSDTC for vRealize Automation 6.x
A few days ago I found I was unable to add reservations to my vRealize Automation installation. After finding VMware knowledge base article 2089503, I realised it was because I’d forgotten to configure the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Co-ordinator (MSDTC) on my new SQL cluster. Continue reading
Editing vRealize Automation appliance PostgreSQL database by hand
About a month ago I accidentally deleted a SQL database as part of a migration to a new failover cluster. The database in question was the IaaS database used by my vRealize Automation installation, and no backup was available. Mistakes like that in a lab happen from time to time and are okay, as long as you can be the one to fix them. Continue reading
Wednesday Tidbit: registering multiple vCenters with vCOPs
Recently, the company I work for has done really well in bringing onboard new customers – nearly all of which we have provided with a private cloud solution running on the VMware platform. Continue reading
Fixing Emulex 10GbE on ESXi 5.5
Last year at VMworld in San Francisco I bought two Emulex OCe10102 10GbE cards for my home lab, and used two Dell/Force10 cables to connect them together. One card went into my Dell PowerEdge T710, and one in my HP Microserver Gen7. Continue reading
Gone phishing… back soon!
This post is a quick update to let anyone who’s following my blog (other than my mother) that I’m taking a few days off this week to digest all the interesting stuff that comes out of VMworld 2015 US.
If you’ve been following my series on VMware vRealize Automation or are a fan of the Wednesday Tidbit, rest assured they’ll be back soon.
Stay tuned!
Wednesday Tidbit: Using Cluster-Aware Updating to patch a Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Cluster
Recently I built a Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Cluster to run my SQL, file services and Certificate Authority workloads. For a number of reasons (mentioned in the article) I decided to build it on the Server Core edition of Windows.
Whilst this offers numerous advantages, simplicity isn’t always one of them. One example of this is patching. Continue reading
Wednesday Tidbit: Using PowerCLI extensions fling to configure vFlash
A couple of weeks ago VMware released the PowerCLI Extensions Fling. This gives users early access to experimental PowerCLI functionality in the form of modules.
Whilst the highlight of the release was undoubtedly Instant Clone (aka VMFork), a bunch of cmdlets appeared for configuring vFlash on hosts. Fortunately for me, I recently had cause to use them.
Create a Microsoft SQL 2014 Failover Cluster on Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Core
When it first came out last year, I installed Microsoft SQL 2014 and configured an Availability Group to host my vCenter database (despite it not being supported).
Unfortunately it has never worked perfectly, and today I decided it was time to do the job right. I still need high availability for my SQL Server, and Microsoft Clustering Services would be ideal. Continue reading
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