Hyper-V is here.... at 09:27

A good article can be found on this here...http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9194

VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta 2 released at 11:33

Can we start a VM in ESX 3.5 on WS 6.5 ? Yes we can

The beta 2 of VMware Workstation contains a permanent fix for this problem......







New Features in VMware Workstation 6.5:

-Seamless integration of guest & host applications with Unity
-Advanced VM Record and Replay with Visual Studio integration
-Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
-Link state propagation networking
-Enhanced ACE authoring capabilities
-Easy Install Option's support for Linux
-Improved 3D graphics Support
-Virtual Machine Streaming

Thanks to NTPRO.NL

Ops Manager: MP Viewer at 10:48

Last week, Boris Yanushpolsky released MPViewer 1.6, which added exporting to Excel functionality. However, a programming bug caused the MPViewer to not be able to view the Exchange 2007 (also known as Exchange 12) MP in HTML (http://blogs.technet.com/stefan_stranger/archive/2008/06/25/goaaaal-mpviewer-with-export-to-excel.aspx), a feature Boris added last October.

Boris has corrected the issue and added some additional new features while he was at it - including frequency for performance viewers and breaking out monitors by type. You can get version 1.7 at http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2008/06/25/mpviewer-1-7-now-works-with-latest-e12-mp.aspx.

The MPViewer, a free utility (and not officially supported by Microsoft) displays what's in a management pack before importing it. Boris posted the earliest versions of the MPViewer in October 1007 (http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2007/10/10/what-s-in-my-management-pack.aspx), and has been making numerous enhancements to it.

You can download Version 1.7 from http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2008/06/25/mpviewer-1-7-now-works-with-latest-e12-mp.aspx.

My first Powershell at 15:16

I have seen on many if the VMware followers forums a way to use Excel to send commands to the VI server to create machines, alter vlans etc.

I wanted a way to export information and could not find anyone doing this yet other than using the export-csv so I created the following script which will export all the information for all Virtual machines in your virtual center straight to excel ready for you to manipulate. 

Don't forget to change yourservername for your virtual center server.

Get-VIServer yourservername

$Excel = New-Object -Com Excel.Application
$Excel.visible = $True
$Excel = $Excel.Workbooks.Add(1)

$Sheet = $Excel.WorkSheets.Item(1)
$Sheet.Cells.Item(1,1) = "Name"
$Sheet.Cells.Item(1,2) = "Power State"
$Sheet.Cells.Item(1,3) = "Description"
$Sheet.Cells.Item(1,4) = "Number of CPUs"
$Sheet.Cells.Item(1,5) = "Memory (MB)"

$WorkBook = $Sheet.UsedRange
$WorkBook.Font.Bold = $True

$intRow = 2
$colItems = Get-VM | Select-Object -property "Name","PowerState","Description","NumCPU","MemoryMB"

foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {
    $Sheet.Cells.Item($intRow,1) = $objItem.Name
           
    $powerstate = $objItem.PowerState
    If ($PowerState -eq 1) {$power = "Powerd On"}
        Else {$power = "Powerd Off"}
       
    $Sheet.Cells.Item($intRow,2) = $power
    $Sheet.Cells.Item($intRow,3) = $objItem.Description
    $Sheet.Cells.Item($intRow,4) = $objItem.NumCPU
    $Sheet.Cells.Item($intRow,5) = $objItem.MemoryMB

$intRow = $intRow + 1

}
$WorkBook.EntireColumn.AutoFit()
Clear

Great guide to ESX commands at 11:58

The authors of the following site have produced a nice guide to the ESX commands:

http://b2v.eu/b2vguide2vmware3.htm

Capacity Bottleneck Analyser virtual appliance released at 10:07

VKernel has released its Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer virtual appliance, and they are offering a FREE 14-day trial in your own data center. Everyone implementing virtualization is — or will be — challenged by capacity bottlenecks. To maintain optimal performance in your VMware ESX environment, you really should give the Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer a try. You'll quickly be able to:

• Find current capacity bottlenecks (CPU, memory, and storage).
• Predict future capacity bottlenecks — e.g., you will experience a memory bottleneck in cluster X in 7 days.
• See exactly how many more virtual machines can fit into any of your hosts, clusters, or resource pools.

The trial is free, deployment is instant, and you'll have 2 full weeks to put it to work. Why not download the trial right now ?

Thanks NTPro.nl

SVMotion 1.0 - VMware VirtualCenter Storage VMotion GUI Plug-in at 09:25

SVMotion is a VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 plug-in that provides an integrated, graphical tool that can be used to invoke storage VMotion (SVMotion) operations.   All you need to do is select the virtual machine whos storage you wish to VMotion and click to tell it which datastore you wish to move it to.  SVMotion does the rest.

 

SVMotion 1.0 ships with the following features:

• No longer counts RDM files against datastore size, fixing the bug that plagued the last version.
• SVMotion operations against templates are not supported since VMware does not support them.
• Added tool tips that explain why a relocation cannot take place
• Automatically registers itself upon installation so you dont have to enable it inside the VI client.
• All SVMotion events write out a log, enabling better understanding of what went wrong in case of an error.
• Aside from the library that loads the plug-in, all of VMwares internal code has been replaced with the VI Toolkit for .NET.
• The project is now supported by almost 20 unit tests, helping to ensure fewer bugs and greater stability.
• The unit tests can be expanded to include testing for a system-resource supported number of servers since they use mock testing designed to work with the VI Toolkit for .NET.
• The project is now built using NAnt, which allows nightly builds of the source, creates distributions, and builds the MSI installer.

 

Click here to download the "SVMotion 1.0 - VMware VirtualCenter Storage VMotion GUI Plug-in"

VMware + Powershell = Amazing at 12:18

I have already installed it and used it many times to gather stats and export them straight to Excel but here is a nice beginners guide on how to get started....

Mike Laverick released another RTFM white paper. This one helps you to get up and running with VMware's new PowerShell Toolkit – without having to learn any Powershell code!

Mike Lavaerick:

I was initially put of using the various SDKs, Perl Toolkits and PowerShell Tookits – although I'm pretty good with the CLI of an ESX host and write useful "shell" (.sh) scripts – I wouldn't say I was a VBS guru or C# guru. Then I discovered PowerGUI. PowerGUI puts a graphical shell around Microsoft PowerShell. It's a bit like the old style "macro" recorders you used to get in spreadsheet or a word processor. You click about making changes – and this creates the code you need. Sure if you want to really fancy things like loops and error control you then need higher level knowledge – but this really great for poor little admins like me who's eyes glaze over once some talks about object, properties, attributes and methods.

VMotion Info straight from the source at 11:50

Arne Fokkema over at ICT-Freak has written a nice little "how to". His post shows all the steps to take so you can get all the historic VMotion info and present it in an Excel sheet. The data is  extracted directly from the Virtual Center database and can be updated any time.

New Netmon at 11:41

Network Monitor 3.2 Beta is available!

We are our proud and excited to announce the release of NM3.2 Beta, available at http://connect.microsoft.com. Please visit the Network Monitor Project on Microsoft Connect and download the Network Monitor 3.2 Beta. You can also view the FAQ from the home page for more information about the latest version.

Also remember that you can visit our blog for continued updates about using NM3 and network troubleshooting in general: http://blogs.technet.com/netmon.

What's New since Network Monitor 3.1

• Process Tracking: View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.

• Find conversations: Quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Isolate TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.

• PCAP capture file support*
• Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. NM 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that NM 3.1

· Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! Parsers for the protocols covered by the Windows Open Protocol Specifications (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517.aspx).

· NM API: Create your own applications that capture, parser and analyze network traffic!

• Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by changing the parser search order in Tools>Options>Parser
• Support for frame truncation. Go to Tools>Options and limit the number of bytes captured per frame to improve performance.
• More extensive documentation of the NPL which includes documentation on the new NMAPI. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation
• Enhanced filtering on items within NPL while loops or arrays. You can specify an index into the array or while loop to filter on
• IA64 version now available.
• ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings. For example, ContainsBin(FrameData, ASCII, "msn").
• More UI indications of conversation status, dropped frames and the number of frames in the capture buffer.

• . and more. See our Release Notes in the NM3.2 installation directory for a complete list of new features and known issues with the Beta.

Found at VirtualWorld

VMware Prepares for Hyper-V at 08:58

Very interesting read: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Apps/VMware-Prepares-for-HyperV/

Customisation no longer working after VC 2.5 Upgrade ? at 08:27

If you have a problem customising a Windows 2003 Server template when deploying after upgrading to Virtual Center 2.5 then follow these steps:

To fix this you need to download the new sysprep files

Extract them on your VirtualCenter server and placed in the following folder: %SYSTEMDRIVE%\All Users\Application Data\Vmware\VirtualCenter\sysprep\svr2003

Once extracted the template should now work again.

For more details read the Virtual Center 2 Template usage and Best Practices found here: Usage and Best Practice Guide

Freeware: Check the Security of your ESX servers and Virtual Machines at 11:02

Tripwire ConfigCheck is a lightweight version of Tripwire Enterprise For VMware ESX Server a security and compliance-checking application designed to evaluate large server installations. Tripwire ConfigCheck is designed to sift through the hundreds of configuration settings within VMware's ESX Server and identify those that are not set according to VMware's recommendations.

The new tool also provides guidelines users can follow to fix the problems, if they choose to do so.

ConfigCheck

Article found on Run-virtual

Decrease login time for TS/Citrix servers at 11:27

An interesting article which may help decrease the login time for your TS/Citrix session....

http://www.brianmadden.com/blog/GabeKnuth/BriForum-Video---Decreasing-Windows-Login-Time