My Experience Upgrading vCenter to 5.5 Update 3b

I recently upgraded my vCenter from 5.5 Update 2, to 5.5 Update 3b.  As this is a fairly straightforward process, I didn’t expect anything to go wrong.  I proceeded through all the main components and once completed, attempted to connect to vCenter…  I found I couldn’t connect.  Further investigation found that the service would not start! Attempting to start the…

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Place a vSphere Host into Maintenance Mode via PowerCLI

So, we had two different vSphere hosts, in two different environments, have hardware faults this week.  One had a bad memory module, and the other a bad FAN.  As I launched the VI client for each environment and placed the problem host into maintenance mode, I started to think… “I bet I can automate this!” Depending on how complex your…

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You should backup your VDS Configs with PowerCLI

So, another vExpert that I follow on twitter (@h0bbel) recently had an issue in his home lab where he cut power to his lab, and his vDS lost all the portgroup names.  Seeing this post made me think, “I should probably backup MY vDS configs too, as my backups were pretty old! Here are some PowerCLI commands that I found…

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New book announced: Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5

Now that VMware has officially announced vSphere 5.5, we’re very happy to announce that the new version of the best selling Mastering vSphere series will be released as well!  Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 will be out a little bit later this year and brings with it all that you need to know about the new version of vSphere. Nick Marshall…

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