Monthly Archives: October 2010

VCAP study notes – 9.3 Configure vCentre server Linked Mode

VCAP, VMware

Knowledge

  • Identify Linked Mode Prerequisites
  • Identify differences between Linked and non?linked vCenter Server Configurations
  • Identify when a role requires reconciliation

Skills and Abilities

  • Reconcile Roles in a Linked Mode Configuration
  • Create and Join a Linked Mode Group
  • Determine use cases for vCenter Server Linked Mode
  • Troubleshoot Linked Mode Configurations

Tools & learning resources

Continue reading VCAP study notes – 9.3 Configure vCentre server Linked Mode →

VCAP study notes – 8.2 VMware Orchestrator

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Automation is becoming increasingly popular and important, and VMware’s Orchestrator is another automation/scripting product but with loftier aims – to provide an extendable orchestration platform to enable a dynamic infrastructure. To date it seems to have gained very little traction or attention (most blog and twitter articles cover PowerCLI) but VMware obviously want to promote it – hence it’s inclusion in the VCAP-DCA blueprint.

Knowledge

  • Identify vCenter Orchestrator requirements
  • Identify default Orchestrator plug?ins

Skills and Abilities

  • Install and Configure vCenter Orchestrator
  • Configure vCenter Orchestrator database
  • Configure vCenter Orchestrator LDAP connection
  • Configure vCenter Orchestrator vCenter server connections
  • Run a Workflow
  • Administer Actions, Tasks, Workflows and Policies
  • Administer Packages
  • Identify appropriate Workflow for a given management activity

Tools & learning resources

Continue reading VCAP study notes – 8.2 VMware Orchestrator →

VCAP study notes – section 8.1, PowerCLI

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PowerCLI has been increasingly popular due to the need to automate larger vSphere environments. This section, more than most on the VCAP-DCA blueprint is one where you have to know what you’re doing – writing code can’t be done in theory, you have to get stuck in and play with it.

The main references for this section are the VMware PowerCLI homepage and the VMware PowerCLI Administration guide. PowerCLI has received extensive blog coverage from numerous people far more experienced than me – check out Virtu-Al, Luc Dekkens, Hal Rottenberg or Jonathan Medd’s blogs for more info than you can handle….

Installing PowerCLI

PowerCLI is simply an extension to Microsoft’s Powershell environment so installation consists of installing Powershell (it’s built into Windows 2008 onwards) and then adding PowerCLI;

Client requirements:

  • WinXP SP2, Win2k3 or greater
  • 32 or 64 bit
  • .NET framework v2.0 SP1 (or greater)
  • Powershell v1 or v2

Server requirements:

  • ESX or ESXi v3.0, vCentre 2.01 (or greater)

Continue reading VCAP study notes – section 8.1, PowerCLI →

VCAP study notes – 8.3 vMA

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Like many I’m hoping to take the new advanced VMware certification VCAP-DCA later this year. This is my first post in my VCAP-DCA study notes series and covers section 8.3, Administer vSphere with the vMA. The notes are mainly intended as a revision list rather than a tutorial so you should have some knowledge of the topic before starting (there are links at the bottom to help you get started if not). Most of this content has been covered elsewhere previously so kudos to those who spent time discovering it – I’ve simply collected it all together for reference.

I’ve covered the topics on the VCAP-DCA blueprint and included some detail on the new vSphere 4.1 features as you never know when they’ll get included in the exam. The only exceptions are esxcli and vmkfstools which I’ll cover as part of section 1 (managing storage) and section 6 (troubleshooting).

Main uses

  • syslog server (vilogger component)
  • centralised scripting repository
  • replacement for ESX service console (scripts and third party plugins)
    • easier to port service console scripts rather than converting to PowerCLI
    • scripts may need amending (new authentication methods etc)
    • facilitates move to ESXi

    Prerequisites, installation and updating

Prerequisites

  • ESX host must support 64-bit VMs (Intel EM64T and vT technology)
  • ESX 3.5U2 onwards, vCentre 4.0 onwards (2.5 NOT supported)
  • 512MB, 1vCPU, 5GB+ disk space

Continue reading VCAP study notes – 8.3 vMA →