vSphere 6 host randomly disconnects from vCenter

Posted on October 17, 2016

I got a few email alerts recently from my vCenter regarding host not responding and disconnect at a random time. At first I tried to find a pattern for what could be potentially causing the issue and quickly realized that nothing funny was happening in vSphere-land. So I had a... [Read More]

Convert LUN canonical name to datastore and vice versa

Posted on October 13, 2016

Someone recently asked in a VMTN post for a way to know what datastore is associated with a LUN canonical name (naa.xxxxxx). It can actually be quite annoying to find which datastore we are talking about when all we have is a canonical name. It’s either putting on the... [Read More]

Snapshot consolidation: vsphere 5 vs vSphere 6

Posted on September 23, 2016

Prior to vSphere 6 the consolidation mecanism worked such a way that it could lead to issues where the consolidation of snapshots would fail and retry over and over again and could lead to crazy long stun times with unresponsive guest OS or a snapshot that doesn’t want to go... [Read More]

vExpert 2016 program

Posted on September 21, 2016

A couple weeks ago VMware sent over the emails to notify the new and returning vExperts 2016, and it is with great pleasure that I received mine! The vExpert program is an “award” given to the professionals who get involved in the VMware community by sharing... [Read More]

Hyperion + Lightberry + OpenElec + Kodi

Posted on August 15, 2016

I did this project to create a mood lighting behind the TV that “follows” the colors displayed on the screen and enhance the experience of movie watching. It is pretty much an open source version of Philips’ Ambilight except it can work on a wide range of devices and is... [Read More]

Move VLAN to a different vSwitch

Posted on August 5, 2016

Recently after we had a network change aimed to consolidate our uplinks, I had to move a whole bunch of VMs to a port-group in a different vSwitch but in the same VLAN without losing connectivity. It is a very easy process and not a single ping is lost (maybe... [Read More]

Update from vSphere 5.5 to 6.0 Update 2 using the DCUI

Posted on July 29, 2016

After upgrading one of the hosts in my lab with VUM I had to update the second one in order to install the FVP extension from Pernix Data. My VMs (VUM, vCenter, DNS) were then on this host’s local storage and I couldn’t be bothered migrating them to the... [Read More]

Update a Dell host from vSphere 5.5 to 6 update 2 using VUM

Posted on July 25, 2016

One of the most important operations in running a virtual environment is to perform major upgrade of the system. The vSphere Update Manager simplify greatly the process and makes it look transparent when everything goes well. Even if 9 times out of 10 everything will be fine, it is always... [Read More]

Pingou: ping on steroids in powershell

Posted on July 7, 2016

Pingou is a powershell script that allows to test connectivity using ICMP and open TCP ports on a remote host. This command is meant to be easy to use, intuitive and faster than the built-in Test-Connection and Test-NetConnection cmdlets. Link to the script : Pingou ... [Read More]