Author Archives: Alan

About Alan

Alan Renouf has a role of Automation Frameworks Product Manager at VMware responsible for providing the architects and operators of the cloud infrastructure with the toolkits/frameworks and command-line interfaces they require to build a fully automated software-defined datacenter. Alan is a frequent blogger at http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell and has a personal blog at https://virtu-al.net. You can follow Alan on twitter as @alanrenouf.

Running ESX and ESXi in VMware Workstation

We have been able to run ESX and ESXi in VMware workstation for a while now, I find it particularly useful for testing and for the odd demonstration.

If you are unsure how to do this I came across a nice article today which includes a step by step video on how to configure this useful feature…

http://www.petri.co.il/running-vmware-esx-and-esxi-in-workstation-on-your-desktop-pc.htm

It reads…

In the following new video, I demonstrate, step by step, how you can run VMware ESX Server 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 inside VMware Workstation 6.5. This is also shown in my Train Signal VMware ESX Server video training course.

While you wouldn’t run ESX in Workstation for a production server, running ESX in Workstation is an excellent way to test and demonstrate ESX Server (and the entire VMware Virtual Infrastructure suite) on a single PC. Think about it – what if you had a single PC with 2 ESX Servers, an iSCSI virtual SAN, and a Windows Server running Virtual Center. With that, you would have “VMware Infrastructure in a box” and be able to run powerful features like VMotion, SVMotion, VMHA, and Update Manager, all on a single PC.

VMworld Europe 2009

VMworld Europe 2009 - Virtually anything is possible

Register now to take advantage of the
Early Bird Pricing.

The Americans have done, it now it’s Europe’s turn….If anyone feels like ‘sponsering’ me to go please just let me know 🙂

Now in its second year, VMworld Europe is the must-attend event for all IT professionals looking for actionable ideas, innovative products and best practices for virtualizing the enterprise – from the desktop to the datacenter.

Learn
Get new ideas to take back to your office and stay up-to-date with the latest virtualization technologies. VMworld Europe 2009 offers a content-rich program:

  • Breakout Sessions – Hear the experts share their knowledge about a variety of virtualization topics – desktop virtualization, virtualizing business critical applications, technology, architecture, or planning and operating a datacenter.
  • Hands-on labs – Gain valuable hands-on experience in these instructor-led labs, where you can see the technology first-hand and ask the experts questions in an interactive environment.
  • Self-paced workshops – Explore the technology on your own in a hands-on environment at your own pace.

Experience
This year, over 100 companies will showcase cutting-edge virtualization products and services at the Solutions Exchange. Drop by and experience for yourself the solutions that are helping companies solve complex IT and business challenges.

Network
Meet and mingle with peers and virtualization experts. You’ll have ample opportunity to connect, share ideas and learn from like-minded professionals.

Don’t miss out — Register Now!
Register today to join your peers at VMworld Europe 2009, the leading virtualization event.

UK London VMware User Group

The next UK London VMware User Group meeting has been announced, sponsored by Compellent (www.compellent.com), to be held on Thursday 30th October 2008.

The meeting will be held at the Capital Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444.

The nearest tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here.

Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm.

Agenda:

12:30 – 13:00 Arrive & Refreshments
13:00 – 13:15 Welcome & News
13:20 – 14:05 Sponsor Presentation – Compellent
14:10 – 14:55 Presentation on Lifecycle Manager by Alexey Stokes, VMware
15:00 – 15:20 Refreshments Break
15:25 – 16:00 “If I knew then what I know now” Virtualization lessons learned, Tom Brand, Morse
16:05 – 16:45 VMworld debrief and VI4 – what we can tell you
16:45 – 17:00 Close
17:00 – Pub

Please feel free to contribute to the ‘UG content ideas’ forum thread here.

The meeting organisers will not be able to incorporate any of the ideas for this coming meeting, but they will do there best to include some of them next time.

To register your interest in attending, please see the forum for details. If you do not receive a confirmation mail, please don’t just turn up since they will not be able to admit you to the meeting.

If your going look out for me !

Veeam Reporter Enterprise 3.0

Veeam have just released a new version of there popular reporting application, I’m working on a powershell script that will produce similar functionality to the Visio diagram and mostly everything else can also be done in powershell but still, its nice to have it all in one app…..

Veeam Reporter Enterprise is the first reporting solution specifically designed for large VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) virtual environments. Veeam Reporter Enterprise provides unattended data collection and scheduled or ad hoc reporting, as well as centralized data storage to help you discover, document and report on all the objects within your VMware virtual infrastructure right now, and at any point in the past.

Reporter Enterprise collects information about your VI3 environment, its components and configuration settings, on an ongoing basis. Using this data, it provides comprehensive and easy-to-understand reports for analysis, documentation and change control.

Designed for use by VI3 administrators, system integrators and datacenter managers, it is fully integrated with VMware VirtualCenter and supports change control for both ESX and ESXi servers.

Download a trial here

Powershell Audit Script


Time for my first stab at WMI, I have just completed my audit script which will give you a nice html audit of each of the computers in a file or if run with no parameters and it will use localhost.

This is a conversion of an old vbscript which I have been using for a while, updated and enhanced and very much quicker !

Usage: Audit.ps1 ‘c:\servers.txt‘ or just run Audit.ps1 with no parameters to audit the localhost.

The txt file must consist of each server on an individual line.

Best viewed in IE but will work in firefox (minus the expanding of cells)

As always your comments are welcome.

Free ESX Secuirty Compliance Checker


Compliance Checker is a free, downloadable tool that provides a real time compliance check for multiple VMware ESX host servers at a time.

This product is a robust utility providing detailed compliance checks against both the VMware Hardening Guidelines and the CIS benchmarks for ESX. Unlike other free tools in the market, Compliance Checker is a fully functional product.

For example, you can print the reports that Compliance Checker produces, and can run compliance checks across multiple ESX servers at once.

Download it here

Powershell Email Locks attachment

I came across an issue when I was trying to manipulate a file which I had just emailed using the standard email code which is on multiple places on the web.

All descriptions on the web (that I have seen) which show how to do this so far have left the email attachment open which means if the script is continuing after the email and you wish to use the file you have attached you will not be able to as it will show as locked, use this example to close the attached file correctly using .Dispose()

Thanks to Jaykul on the Powershell IRC channel.

Powershell Citrix License Alerts

We had an issue today where we ran out of Citrix Licenses and therefore some of the users were unable to login, the Citrix License server seems to be a pretty basic app with alerting feature.

After purchasing and installing some licenses so that the users could gain access to there applications again we started thinking about ways to monitor this so it didn’t happen again.

I was sure we could monitor this using powershell and started to look into it, first thing I came across was a BSonPoSH article explaining how to get license information from WMI, that guy has done some impressive stuff with Citrix and powershell, check it out on his site.

Ok, so all looked fine and dandy, until we ran it and found that one of our licenses was not showing in the figures 🙁

Looking into it a bit more and exploring WMI gave us the same results, one of the licenses was missing. Sod’s law says it was the one we were after too !

Looking on the Internet again it would seem this is a “known problem” which there is a private fix for.

Not to be beaten I thought of other ways to get this information, I know I had pulled information from websites before so decided to try and access the information direct from the license web page.

Looking at the html code that was dumped, it was changing, this made it hard to just read the specific lines I wanted, so as you can see from the code I searched for the license type I wanted ‘Enterprise’ and then worked out where the figures are that I needed from there.

If nothing, this is a useful script to see how to retrieve html information and work with it to get the end results.

Run it normally and if the License usage is above 90% it will fire off an email or run it with the send parameter to send an email anyway.

Any comments or quires please leave a comment below.

Download the script here