Was segregating out some of my home lab stuff from some of the nested things in the lab and came across this when dropping a VM into the vApp:

Basically telling me that this single VM will eat all of the Resource Pool Pie. Not familiar with the resource pool pie? Check out this post by Duncan Epping.

Also, some posts by Mike Preston:

• http://blog.mwpreston.net/2011/10/21/the-resource-pool-priority-pie-paradox-small-piece-of-big-pie-or-big-piece-of-small-pie/
• http://blog.mwpreston.net/2011/10/21/the-resource-pool-priority-pie-paradox-small-piece-of-big-pie-or-big-piece-of-small-pie/
• http://blog.mwpreston.net/2011/10/24/the-resource-pool-priority-pie-paradox-part-2-the-formula/

Once you turn DRS on and set it to fully automatic, unless you have some affinity / anti-affinity rules in place, your VMs will get up and dance around your cluster. In most cases this is fine and dandy. However, occasionally there are times where you will want to know where the VM was, where it went, and when it went there (sort of like tracking a teenager who is out for the night).

To do that, you can check DRS History in the vSphere client:

For better or worse, I run my vCO Client from the vCenter Server in my lab, up till today, that wasn’t an issue either. That is, after upgrading to vCenter 5.0 U1 I was presented with:

“You may not have the appropriate permissions.” – What? Ok… let’s browse to the directory:

Even after clicking “Continue” here, I had no luck.

Fix

The only fix I have for this at the moment, is to uninstall and reinstall vCO on the vCenter server.

There are a few situations you might want to do this, security and least privileged accounts comes to mind, as does auditability. However, you will also need to do this when your SQL server is using Windows Authentication. Otherwise you’ll run into: “There was an error connecting to VMware Update Manager… Database temporarily unavailable or has network problems” when trying to enable the plugin:

Configure the VUM Service to use a Service Account

The fix is easy however. On the VUM server:

1. Start > Run > Services.msc
2. Select the VUM Service, right click, properties:
   
3. Select the Log On tab, then “This Account”
   
4. Give it a user & password for a user you don’t mind having “Log on as a service” permissions.
5. Ok, and restart the service

Reference: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015223

I’ve talked about vMA and Active Directory (AD) integration before, also upgrading and troubleshooting it. This time out, we’re going to talk about doing this on vMA 5.0. I’ll start with the assumption that you’ve deployed vMA already.

Attaching vMA 5.0 to Active Directory (AD)

1. Make sure vMA is in DNS
   
2. Make sure vMA is using your DNS server(s):
   
3. Check DNS:
   
4. Set the hostname:
   sudo hostname vma.provmware.local
5. Do this stuff:
   vi-admin@localhost:~> sudo domainjoin-cli join provmware.local provmware@provmware.local
   vi-admin’s password:
   Joining to AD Domain:   provmware.local
   With Computer DNS Name: vma.provmware.local

   provmware@PROVMWARE.LOCAL’s password:
   Warning: System restart required
   Your system has been configured to authenticate to Active Directory for the first time.  It is recommended that
   you restart your system to ensure that all applications recognize the new settings.

   SUCCESS

Once you’ve rebooted, all should be good! Really:

Going over some of the vCO book material I found this diagram I made for the troubleshooting system of the vCO book

Basically, it lists out most of the various systems that the vCO engine talks to or depends on out of the box. Useful when you have something that died and you’re not sure where or what could have caused it.

On 8/3 we talked vSphere performance as it relates to the VCAP-DCA exam. Specifically objective 6.2 on the exam blueprint. We also had special guest Hersey Cartwright along for the ride. First the Video, then some of the links:

The Video

ProfessionalVMware BrownBag – VCAP-DCA Objective 6.2 from ProfessionalVMware on Vimeo.

The Links

• Generating Load (Load Storm): http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/04/09/generating-load/
• HCL (for searching for hot-add supported guest OS): http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software
• http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10129
• http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10066
• http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10179
• http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41U1/html/Get-Stat.html

For this week’s BrownBag we’ve scored Hersey Cartwright to come talk to us about vSphere performance as it relates to the VCAP-DCA.

Hersey has a little over 20 years experience in system and network administration. Currently he is the Network Operations Manager for a community Credit Union located in Southeastern, VA. he is responsible for the design and management of the Credit Union’s network and virtual infrastructure. Hersey also blogs at: http://www.vhersey.com/

Critical Details:

Topic: VCAP-DCA Objective 6, vSphere Performance
Date/Time: 8/3/2011 @ 7PM CST
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/351927521

Oh my… when it comes to tasks that are set and forget, this one was mostly forget. Not so much setting up the ODBC Connection, rather installing the SQL Native Client ODBC Driver for SQL 2008 when SQL is running on a host other than vCenter.

Finding the installation

The link in the sources below states you can find the installation files here:
%CD%\Setup\

This is only about 1/2 right. Depending on your CPU Architecture these files can be found in the following spots:

x86

..\1033_ENU_LP\x86\Setup\x86

x64

..\1033_ENU_LP\x86\Setup\x64

Installing

The installation itself is a bouncing ball style… next, next, done.

Sources

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131321.aspx

I can’t say this will fix it for everyone, or will even be the cause of your 500 error. Earlier today an epic battle played out between Windows Live Writer and the WordPress install this site sits on. More specifically, I was greeted with a “500 Server Error”.

In my server logs I found the following:

[25-Apr-2011 17:43:30] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 2769

Out of memory? What? After some searching I came across this article by Asif Rahman which listed 4 possible solutions, of which #1 fixed it for me:

Add the following line to the wp-config.php file:

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

With luck and judging by the number of posts asking for help when I Google’d around this should help some others out.