Every time I go into a Site Recovery Manager engagement and we start talking about how the test functionality works I always get the question of how to make a domain controller available to the test network. I always say I have a script for that, so I thought I’d share it with anyone who might need it. The script…
I’ve been working with a pretty big client the last couple weeks planning and upgrading around 20 vCenter 4.1 servers to 5.0 Update 2. This client runs all their databases on Oracle, currently version 10.2.0.4. I checked out the Interoperability Matrixes and found that 10.2.0.4 is supported for vCenter 5.0 Update 2. This client also uses the Oracle 11g client.…
In my previous post I talked about the requirements this customer had and the high level architecture and products used to fulfill their requirements. In this post I’ll walk through the installation of each component and protecting it with vCenter Heartbeat. In each site we’ll need a total of 15 public IP’s and 10 channel IP’s, by public IP I’m…
Over the past couple of weeks I got to work with a client who generally would have not used PSO for a vCenter upgrade but because of the new features, such as SSO, introduced in 5.1 they brought me in. The customer, like many, didn’t really understand SSO and the different options to deploy it. Many customers I talk to…
I haven’t done much with templates in quite a while. Last week a client requested I assist with creating a Windows 2008 R2 template. We installed the base OS, did some minor configuration such as installing VMware Tools, enabling RDP and disabling the firewall using netsh, since this template would be used for various server types and we had no…
This past week I was working with a large Telco on their first vSphere deployment. This particular deployment was with vSphere 5.1 and was a lot of fun getting to use some new features in the real world such as Auto Deploy Statefull Install, enhancements in the distributed switch, among others. That’s not to say we didn’t have any issues…
I’m currently at a client who is moving their SRM protected VM’s onto Hitachi VSP arrays. It’s been close to 6 years since I’ve done any work with Hitachi and replication so I assumed it would have gotten better since then, unfortunately it hasn’t, it’s exactly the same as it was. The storage admin, thankfully, is pretty sharp and had…
I’m currently working on a SRM 5.0 project. This is the end of week 5 and up until yesterday everything was going perfectly. A little background. This environment is running vSphere 5.0 Update 1b, vSphere 5.1 isn’t an option because of lack of support from Symantec on NetBackup. The client wants to use vSphere Replication, AKA Host Based Replication. Yesterday…
Thanks Gregg for doing these, always a great read and happy to see mine up! : ) If you haven’t seen it already you can read my VCDX Spotlight entry here: http://thesaffageek.co.uk/2012/08/02/vcdx-spotlight-mike-brown/ Mike
Looking back over the past four months I can say 2012 has been one of the best years for me both professionally and personally. Professionally back in February I became VCDX certified, a couple months later I accepted a position with VMware and just last week I was recognized as a vExpert. I start my new position at VMware tomorrow…
