The Lowercase w

Category: Virtualization

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Using PowerCLI to Create a Local Scratch Partition

My company recently purchased some Dell Servers with ESXi installed to local SD cards. The issue we had was that the 8gb SD cards that came with the server and there wasn’t enough space on the cards for a scratch partition.  We ordered the servers with a single 300gb HD in order to get the RAID controller, so we decided to use that drive to store a scratch partition. The first step in the process, was to convert the drive

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

vDocumentation: Check Out These Scripts To Automate Your Documentation!

Now that VMworld 2017 US has come to a close, many of the sessions are already up on youtube to watch. One of the ones I watched yesterday was SER2077BU – Achieve Maximum vSphere Stability with PowerCLI Assisted Documentation.  My friend, Ariel Sanchez Mora (@arielsanchezmor), and his friend, Edgar Sanchez (@EdmSanchez13), put together these scripts to automatically document your environment.  I HIGHLY recommend you check these scripts out!  Also, please send them a tweet or DM as they’re looking for

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

PowerCLI script to forcibly delete a Datastore that is reported as in use.

Have you ever tried to delete a datastore and get an error saying the Datastore is in use? You browse the datastore and see nothing on it. The pre-checks when you unmount it all pass, yet you cannot delete it. We had this problem. VMware support directed us to delete the partition using the partedUtil command, but I didn’t like the possibility of human error in doing it their way. I wrote a PowerCLI script that performs the following. 1.

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Updating Dell Firmware/BIOS en mass

We recently ran into an issue where we had to update the Firmware & Bios on a bunch of Dell servers.  As these are VMware hosts, we couldn’t just run the Dell System Update Utility, as I would on a normal Windows host.  My coworker, @bspagna, and I decided to look at doing this via the iDRAC. Prerequisites:  Dell Repository Manager, a TFTP Server (like Solarwinds Free TFTP Server) First, we used Dell Repository Manager (Data Center Version) to build

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

PowerCLI Script to Check Host Over-commitment Percentage & Ratios

At my previous employer, we had a Dev/QA vSphere environment that was very over provisioned.  The environment had lots of CPUReady issues with VMs having to wait for CPU time, which caused things to be slow, etc.  We knew this but the application teams didn’t understand.  I ended up writing a PowerCLI script to check the CPU overcommitment and sent the results to my manager who was able to go to the application team’s management and get them to clean

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Script to backup your vCenter DRS Rules

I was thinking yesterday, I have a script that I run on a monthly basis to backup my vDS configs…  Shouldn’t I also have something that does the same for my DRS rules?  So, I wrote a script that I can schedule to run on a weekly/monthly basis to backup my DRS rules. I have multiple vCenter servers, so I used an array to connect to each one and then exported the rules for each cluster within those vCenters. The

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

PowerCLI Script to create new vDS Portgroups

We deployed new hosts into one of our office locations.  Because these hosts would have different number of uplinks as well as use a LAG group instead of normal dvUplinks, we decided to create a new vDS Switch.  Then, we needed to re-create all the portgroups as well.  I figured, instead of manually adding 15-20 portgroups, I’ll automate it.  I used this blog post as reference to do some of the work, and added the LAG and uplink changes. When

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Disabling FCOE on vSphere 10gb NICs per VMware KB 2130092

So, we recently had an issue with some of our Dell blade vSphere hosts.  Seems they all crashed (PSOD) at the same time (6 nodes across 2 different clusters).  After submitting the log bundles and Dell TSRs, support recommended, along with upgrading drivers & firmware (the support go to!) that we remove FCoE from the NICs (as it’s not being used).  VMware said the FCoE messages in the logs was just “log spam” and not anything they felt would have

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Creating shortcuts for PowerCLI that automatically log you in.

So, I started a new job a couple of months ago and we have multiple vCenter environments.  My friend & temporary co-worker, Brian Spagna (@bspagna) and I both wanted to have shortcuts to launch PowerCLI windows and have a different background color for each to easily identify which environment we were in.  We thought it would be cool to have it automatically connect to it’s respective vCenter also! I recommend you upgrade to the latest version of PowerCLI (6.5.1) for

Read the full post

Post info:
Ben Liebowitz

Configuring my Dell PowerEdge R920 for dual SD Cards instead of Internal HDs

We recently setup a Dell PowerEdge R920 that was in storage to add to our VDI Environment for additional resources.  This server differs from the other R920s in our environment as it has dual SD Cards internally instead of Hard Disks.  I had to configure the SD Cards in a mirror so we had fault tolerance, so this is the procedure I followed… 1. Power on the server.  The server will undergo a memory test. 2.  Once the memory test

Read the full post

Posts navigation