Week 16, no small talks just the facts:
- Eric Sloof – Online Training – Automating vSphere with the VIX API
The API 1.10 Beta was released last February; this is the preliminary standalone VIX release that runs with VMware vSphere 4.x. This release also bundles earlier VIX libraries, including the libraries delivered for Workstation and VMware Server. I’ve created a new tool called the vmFilemanager; this tool is completely built on the VIX API 1.10 Beta. It’s not available for download yet, but I’ve recorded a demo which show how to copy files into a virtual machine. The awesome part is that I’ll also show you how easy it is to create such a tool in the free version of Microsoft Visual Basic 2008, AKA the Express Edition. - Maish Saidel-Keesing – ESXi Deployment Solution – Part 1 & Part 2
The idea is basically the same. There is the same kind of client/server framework. The ESXi host is deployed and when completed it notifies (client) a Powershell script (server) of its existence. The script then performs the configuration steps that you define on the new host. I was not satisfied with the results I was getting from the ideas that were posted above. There are some flaws in the process (at least from my point of view) and the flexibility of being able to make changes was minimal. I find that this new approach simplifies things for me and allows for greater flexibility. - Scott Drummonds – A Performance Tip for ESX 3.0 and ESX 3.5
Because hardware assist was once so slow, older versions of ESX would utilize our faster-performing binary translation in many situations. But virtualization assist in today’s processors–and here I am talking about Intel and AMD processors manufactured in the past two years–is generally faster than binary translation. This means your virtual machines running on ESX 3.5 on shiny new processors may not be reaching their full potential performance. - Luc Dekens – Find unused portgroups in a cluster
This cmdlet returns a VMware.VimAutomation.Types.Host.VirtualPortGroup object, which contains a very useful property called Ports. In that property it lists all the guests that are connected to a port on the portgroup. That would be the solution to find unused portgroups, I thought. But while the vSphere Client also shows powered off guests that are connected, the Port property returned by the Get-VirtualPortgroup cmdlet doesn’t. - Steve Kaplan – Cloud computing lessons from bacterium
This private cloud model of Infrastructure as a Service is still in its infancy, but will undoubtedly prove to be very effective for larger organizations which can easily justify the investment in new equipment and software. They also are more likely to have the qualified IT staff available to manage it. Even so, many are likely to utilize some aspects of public cloud computing such as SaaS or hosted disaster recovery.
