I’ve created a simple Microsft SQL Server Transact-SQL script to configure the database for vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.1 . This allows you to quickly create the database on the primary site and the recovery site. I’m not too impressed by the description in the Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Installation and Configuration documentation on page 20 as seen below… This information provides the general steps that you must perform to configure an SQL Server database for SRM to use. For specific instructions, see the SQL Server documentation. Procedure 1 Select an...

When you use Microsoft SQL Server on a regular basis with Transact-SQL scripts, it is a sometimes useful to quickly find the proper line of code. This is a quick tip on how to activate the Line Numbering when working with Transact-SQL. I hope this will be helpful.  

Preamble It’s now 2013, and it’s time to have a peak at my homelab refresh for this year.   Background In the past three years, I’ve ran a very light homelab with VMware ESXi. I mainly used my workstation (Supermicro X8DTH-6F) with Dual Xeon 5520 @2.26Ghz (8-Cores) and 72GB of RAM to run most of the virtual machines and for testing within VMware Workstation, and only ran domain controllers and 1 proxy VM on a small ESXi machine, a Shuttle XG41. This gives a lot of flexibilty to run nearly all the virtual machines on a large beefed up workstation. There are quiet a few...

Looking back at the screenshot of the vSphere Web Client, we see that the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 2.0 has identified 27 Known Application Services. If we want to see how the vCenter 5.1 communicates with other infrastructure elements in the virtual environment, there are two ways to look at it. First from the vCenter 5.1 VM we see that there are a few dependencies. When examining the Show Dependencies we get the Map view. Here is only a element of the Map View as it scales to over 47 dependencies. But you can also see the Table View, where we see incoming dependencies and outgoing...

Today VMware released vCenter Operations Manager 5.6 and vCenter Infrastructure Navigator 2.0. These products are now very tightly integrated with the vCenter 5.1 and plug into the vSphere Web Client. In the screenshot below, you see two new floating windows with the proper information for the element you are managing. In this case, I’m looking at a my pVDC_1 Cluster, and vCenter Infrastructure Navigator has identified 27 known applications, while vCenter Operations Manager 5.6 is telling me that the health of my Cluster could be better. In addition, within vSphere Web Client, you can...

With the release of the vCloud Director 5.1, a series of networking enhancements to how Organization vDC communicate have been made. This gives Organizations (Tenants) a lot more choice in creating their vApps and even allows connectivity with other Organizations (Tenants). vCloud Network and Security (vCNS) now provides a Gateway which was previously known as the vShield Edge Gateway. In previous releases of vCloud Director, the vCNS Gateway providing network services and security was not visible to the Organization (Tenant) in vCloud Director. The newer vCNS Gateway has become a...

Web Interface Timeout Issues I often use the Web Interface of vCenter Operations Manager to check the infrastructure. Because while the client module exist for the vSphere Client, I don’t find it as optimized in the display and the pane jumping. One of the smaller annoying parts of using vC Ops via the Web Interface is the quick timeout of the user authentication. This can been tweaked by making a small change on the User Interface virtual machine. Simply edit the /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat/webapps/vcops-vsphere/WEB-INF/web.xml  file, near the top you will find the following section...

[Update 10/30/2012 Thanks to Maxm] I use Visio a lot to create diagrams for my customers and colleagues. But when I tried to import Cisco Stencils I retrieved from the Cisco website, or HP Proliant Stencils from VisioCafe with the Visio 2013 RTM, you get the following error message. There is a setting in Visio 2013 in the Options, Trust Center, File Block Settings that should enable you to allow Visio 203-2010 Stencils to be opened (HP, Cisco, EMC) But unfortunately something is wrong… the Option at the bottom cannot be changed from “Do not open selected file types” So think hard before...