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The applications are now open for the vExpert 2012 title.

The annual VMware vExpert title is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. The title is awarded to individuals (not employers) for their commitment to sharing their knowledge and passion for VMware technology above and beyond their job requirements.

This year there are three different paths to becoming a vExpert. Here are the three paths:

Evangelist Path
The Evangelist Path includes book authors, bloggers, tool builders, public speakers, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others with the leverage of a personal public platform to reach many people. Employees of VMware can also apply via the Evangelist path.

Customer Path
The Customer Path is for internal evangelists and community leaders from VMware customer organizations. They have contributed to success stories, customer references, or public interviews and talks, or were active community contributors, such as VMUG leaders.

VPN (VMware Partner Network) Path
The VPN Path is for employees of our partner companies who lead with passion and by example, who are committed to continuous learning and to making their technical knowledge and expertise available to many. This can take shape of event participation, video, IP generation, as well as public speaking engagements.

VMware vExpert Benefits:

• Public recognition of the vExpert award with a certificate, gift, permission to display a logo, and inclusion in any public vExpert listing

• Access to a private vExpert community of your peers

• Free subscription to conference session materials on VMworld.com

• Access to exclusive events, beta programs, software licenses, and other exclusive opportunities to participate in activities with VMware. vExperts do not represent VMware and are not required to participate in any activities

Applications are now open for the vExpert 2012 title. Use the vExpert 2012 form to submit your application.

 

 

When you want to customize the VMware ESXi 5 installation media you need to use Image Builder. Image Builder CLI is a set of PowerCLI cmdlets that you can use to manage vSphere image profiles and VIB (VMware Installation Bundle) packages, such as driver VIBs and update VIBs. You can also use Image Builder cmdlets to export an image profile to an ISO or offline depot ZIP file that you can use to install ESXi with a customized set of updates, patches, and drivers

In this blog post are the steps outlined on how-to create a customized VMware ESXi5 ISO with the latest patches. Adding the latest patches can be useful because it contains for example the updated HP Emulex net-be2net driver needed for HP Flex-10 ESXi5 installations.

More drivers can be found on the VMware download site:

Prerequirements

1. Download and install PowerCLI 5.x. Open PowerCLI and set the remote signing to RemoteSigned by using the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

2. Create a folder structure like this:

<drive letter>:\ImageBuil\ESXi

3. Download the VMware ESXi Offline bundle from the VMware download website and save the file in <driveletter>:\ImageBuil\ESXi

The ESXi offline bundle we use is named ESXi500-201111001.zip

Create a customized ESXi5 ISO

1. Add the ESXi offline bundle and latest patches to depots

Add the VMware ESXi offline bundle and the latest patches use the Add-EsxSoftwareDepot command.  First add the offline ESXi depot by using the following command:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot F:\ImageBuil\ESXi\ESXi500-201111001.zip

Return a list of all the VMware Installation Bundle (VIB) objects, use the Get-EsxSoftwarePackage command. This example list all the software package (VIB) objects sorted on release date:

Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | select Name,Version,ReleaseDate | sort ReleaseDate

Add the URL of the patch depot (we use the VMware Update Manager URL) using the following command:

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

List the VMware Installation Bundle (VIB) objects again and see the new VIBs added:

Get-EsxSoftwarePackage | select Name,Version,ReleaseDate | sort ReleaseDate

output using: Add-EsxSoftwareDepot F:\ImageBuil\ESXi\ESXi500-201111001.zip	output using: Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl https://hostupdate.vmware.com/softw are/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

2. Clone the existing image profile

Run the Get-EsxImageProfile cmdlet to find the name of the profile that you want to clone.

Get-EsxImageProfile | Select Name,CreationTime,AcceptanceLevel | Sort CreationTime | FT -AutoSize

Clone the latest image profile using this command:

New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.0.0-20111204001-standard" -name "VMware ESXi5 custom" -Vendor "Beerens"

3. Export the image profile to ISO

Export an image profile to an ISO image or a ZIP file of component files and folders. The following command export the image profile to an ISO:

Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "VMware ESXi5 custom" –ExportToIso -FilePath F:\ImageBuil\esxi5custom.iso

 

And you are ready to boot from the new installation media named esxi5custom.iso. Check the following components to see if the customization has the desired result:

- VMware ESXi 5 Boot Menu

- VMware ESXi build

- Image Profile name

During a health check I needed to know the SAN/iQ version, installed patches and the up-time of the HP P4000 storage nodes because of a nasty bug in SAN/iQ 9.0 or 9.0.01 that hang or reboot nodes after 208.5 days (More information about the bug can be found in the HP Customer Advisory found here)

To see the SAN/iQ version, installed patches and the up-time (thanks to Calvin Zito @HPStorageGuy for guiding me to the up-time counter in CMC)

 

Here are the steps:

1. Open the Centralized Management Console (CMC)

2. Login

3. Expand the cluster

4. Expand the Storage Systems

5.  Select Diagnostics for the first node (1)

6. Select “Hardware information” (2)

7. Select “Click to refresh” (3)

8. The Storage System Software displays the SAN/iQ version and Software Patches installed:

9. Scroll down to the Stat section and look at the Machine Uptime. The up-time is in hours, 2138/24= 89 days up-time for one node.

10. Repeat step 5 till 9 for all storage nodes

 

On vSphere-land the yearly voting for the top VMware and virtualization blog(s) is open.  

By voting you can reward the bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them.

You can vote till 7 February 2012, so please take a couple of minutes and vote for your favorite 10 blogs and rank them (if you want to vote for my blog it’s on the left side in the middle). You can win a copy of the Train Signal’s  new vSphere 5 and View 5 video training courses.

Please vote by clicking the button or here.

 

The result will be announced on a special podcast after 7 February 2012.

Last year my blog was listed as “Virtual Ief”. This year as “Ivo Beerens”.

When looking for performance data in vCenter 4.1 from the past week, month or year, I got the message “Performance data is currently not available for this entry”. Only real time data is visible in vSphere client.

In the vCenter Service Status the warning “Performance statistics rollup from Past Day to Past Week is not occurring in the database” appeared.

The vCenter server is installed on MS Windows 2008 R2 and uses vCenter server version 4.1 Update 2 Build 491557 with Microsoft SQL Server 2008  Express R2 64-bit.

When looking in the VMware Product Interoperability matrixes, it says is a supported configuration.

Searching on the VMTN I found more people who are experiencing this problem. The following KB article says:

To resolve this issue, migrate the SQL database to a full edition (32bit or 64bit) or a 32bit SQL Express edition. For more information on how to move the vCenter Server SQL database, see Moving the vCenter Server SQL database (7960893).

For small environments this is not an option! When installing vCenter 4.1 Update 2, the MS SQL Express 2005 database is default installed. MS SQL Express 2005 is 32-bit and you can have a maximum database size of 4GB. With MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit you can have maximum database size of 10GB. 

vCenter 5 installs by default MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit and doesn’t have this bug.

The MS SQL Express database is only supported for test and small VMware environments (5 hosts and 50 VMs maximum).

So watch out when considering MS SQL Server 2008 Express R2 64-bit and vCenter 4!