Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

I stopped PC gaming sometime back in 2009. I was working a lot and life just got in the way. I still had my gaming machine but I just used it for Hulu and general web browsing. Then my PC died. I was left to my iPhone and my wife's little netbook. When I heard the rumor of EA and Dice bringing back Star Wars Battlefront, all of that changed.

Tell me if this happens to you; You have a VMware virtual environment with a certain number of VMFS Datastores that are perpetually full all of the time. You might even need to Storage-vMotion VMs around to even out the storage load on your datastores and it's somewhat of a chore. Well, does it? This is where Storage DRS comes in. Just like how Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) for CPU and RAM resources manages VMs making sure the load between the hosts is relatively fair (or rather that the VM has the resources it needs to perform optimally), SDRS comes in to make sure VMDKs have access to the right amount of free storage & IOPS.

It's with great excitement that I get to write here to let you (my one and only reader, Gary) know that I've put in my 2 weeks with my current employer and have accepted an offer for a new job, which I'll be starting soon. This isn't a post about trashing my current employer, nor is it a post for generic quitting-your-job advice (don't make a scene, be professional, actually work during your notice period, etc.) This post is about how to best transition your position for the next guy or gal, something I had a hard time digging up info on.

I'm on Reddit for both productive and unproductive reasons. Recently on the /r/VMware subreddit, there was a discussion asking redditors how they're protecting they're vCenter servers. This got me thinking about what I'm doing for my current vCenter server and what my options are going forward as my virtual infrastructure changes.

I've never carried a pen on the regular. When I did, I had cheap BIC or the occasional Pilot G2. At the time, I was working night stock at a grocery store and used my pens fairly regularly. Now, I work in IT and most of the writing I do is digital (email, IMs, Powershell, blogs, etc.). However, I still have to sign for things. I receive packages at work and sometimes the delivery guy doesn't have a pen for me to use. I've been to meetings with important people from around my university campus where I need to sign in and I look unprepared by having to ask to borrow a pen to sign in. I'll go on job interviews (and at my level, I take notes) and I believe that using a nice pen could be the detail that sets me apart from other candidates. The reasons may not be great but they were enough for me to start carrying a nicer-than-a-disposable pen (but not a super NICE pen).

I've always carried my keys on my belt-loop via a cheap carabiner (you know, the ones that are stamped with "not for climbing" on them just in case). It was easy and it worked. However, I work in a rather quiet office and everyone knew whenever I moved thanks to my keys jingling. Pocket carrying keys with out a key ring is a recipe for lost key disaster and pocket carrying them with a key ring is a recipe for pocket tearing or leg stabbing disaster. What's one to do?

As a kid, I remember admiring my dad's wallet. It practically told a story in its appearance. It was filled with cards for various things, receipts and notes, money and checks. A man's entire life had to fit in a piece of leather. I was amazed and enthralled with it. (I can't explain it but I loved old cards, wallets, keys and other small things adults carry on their person for various reasons. As kids we can't wait to grow up and once you're grown, you can't help but think how simple life was as a kid.)

As a "computer guy", I've always built my own computers. It's really not that hard to do and you can get exactly what you want. However, building a computer isn't always the best decision for everyone. Below, I'll discuss MY OPINION on when to buy and when to build.

In the previous parts of this upgrade project, I discussed upgrading vCenter itself followed by upgrading the hosts & VMs themselves and I'll end with converting my Windows vCenter install to VMware's own Linux-based vCenter Server Appliance.

In my last post on my vSphere upgrade project , I wrote about my frustrating experience when upgrading our Windows vCenter install from v5.1 to v5.5. In this post, I'll talk about upgrading everything else. vCenter, while important, it's certainly not the only aspect of a vSphere install. You've also got VMware Update Manager (VUM), ESXi (the hypervisor installed on your host servers), your VMTools installs on your VMs and your virtual hardware version. Let's get started because we've got a lot to cover.

One of the awesome things about OpsMgr is that if you can't find a management pack to do something you need done, you can write your own. At a basic level, you don't need to write a whole management pack. If writing your own MP is akin to writing a cookbook, making a custom monitor is like writing a simple recipe. We're going to write a basic custom monitor in the instructions below.

As mentioned in the documentation for importing MPs, there's 2 kinds of MPs. Sealed and Unsealed. Examples of sealed MPs would be the majority of those available from Microsoft. Examples of unsealed MPs would be the MPs you make for a custom monitor. With an unsealed MP, you can get in there, root around, change things, etc. With a sealed MP, you cannot. The way to change the behavior of monitors and rules in sealed MPs are to create overrides. Overrides basically step in to tell OpsMgr “Look, I know what the Management Pack said but we're going to do it this way, kapeesh?”

OpsMgr is best described as a framework rather than an application. After installation, you'll notice there's really nothing going on. You have to teach it what you want it to do. This is done with Management Packs. This post is designed to provide a basic explanation of the purpose of Management Packs and how to import one into OpsMgr, not to provide in-depth detail as to what they are and their inter workings. If you do want to know more about the nuts and bolts of Management Packs, click here.

OpsMgr supports both Agent and Agentless monitoring. Agent monitoring is generally easier on the management server as collection processes and tasks run on the target host rather than the management server. Agent monitoring is akin to “So $server, tell me about yourself.” while agentless monitoring is more like “$server, tell me about your friend. Is she single? What's the deal?” Agentless monitoring is primarily used for monitoring network devices rather than workstations or servers. In my environment, cacti is already monitoring network devices with pings or SNMP queries so we aren't using agentless monitoring in OpsMgr in our environment. However, should you want to know more about it in the future, you can read all about it here. Below are instructions for deploying an agent in OpsMgr.

For longer than I care to admit, my DPM server has had the same error every night about an auto-protection failure on one of my SQL servers. I've looked into it before but never came away with anything useful until recently. I've finally found information on how to fix this annoying issue. The Advanced Information link in the error will tell you to make sure WMI is in a good state on the machine. The error itself isn't very descriptive. It'll look something like "DPM could not enumerate SQL Server instances using Windows Management Instrumentation on the protected computer $serverFQDN."

Protecting a server in DPM is a relatively simple process, but there's a couple extra steps for protecting Exchange 2013 that I wanted to discuss. This is assuming you've already got an Exchange 2013 server(s) and you want to back it/them up with DPM 2012 R2. You'll need two things before you go creating your Exchange server protection group on your DPM server. Firstly, on both your DPM and your Exchange servers, you'll want to make sure you have Visual C++ redistributable for Visual Studio Update 4 installed. I've found this step was only necessary for protecting Exchange 2013 with DPM 2012 R2. For say, protecting Exchange 2010 with a different version of DPM, then you only need the second item discussed below. Secondly, you'll need t copy a couple files from the Exchange server over to the DPM server. Specifically, you'll need to copy the ese.dll and eseutil.exe files, which are usually in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin. Copy those ...

When I worked in a Technical Support role, we installed Windows by disc. You know, next, next, computer name, next, accept the End User License Agreement, etc. It wasn't because I did it so long ago. My employer at the time just liked doing things manually for some reason. The way most modern IT shops work isn't by installing Windows "by hand" everyte a new machine comes in. They automate it by turning a single vanilla Windows install into an image they can push out or deploy to a new machine and any other new machine after that. This allows you to install windows on multiple computers simultaneously and with zero input from you, the IT guy/gal. There's a number of steps to creating a System Image but I'm only going to discuss the SysPrep tool and what role it plays in creating an image. Image-based installation is a method cloning or copying pre-configured OS onto target computers. This works for both servers and/or workstations.

DFS stands for Distributed File System. It's not a particularly new technology (it's been around for several Windows versions now) but it comes with a number of strengths and weaknesses. Before we dive into DFS and what it can do for your environment, let's look at how messy traditional file servers can become.

I've talked a few times about backups and one common word that comes up when talking about backups is replication. Well, what is Replication and how does it differ from backups? Replication is the process of duplicating all data to another source in real-time, or near real-time. It's very different than backups. Let's look at why.

So, here at phase 2, I'm off to a rocky start out of the gate. Firstly, an update, no pun intended. We've decided on going to v6.0 rather than just going to v5.5 because there's no compelling reason not to. Normally, when I'm upgrading software, I go to the latest version unless there's a good reason not to. In this case, there's no big issues with v6.0 that I've seen. Yes, people have had problems but it seems like they're usually one-off issues.

Got an interview coming up? Interviews are two-way streets so don't forget to interview them back. I've written about this and you can read it  HERE . Talking about money is something we all dread but we all need to do at some point in our lives. There's a point in one's professional career where it's basically expected to negotiate pay during the offer stage of hiring. I never negotiated pay or asked for a raise until my more recent professional positions. I'd like to tell you what I've learned about it so it can help you too.

Inconsistent replicas. Studies show that nearly half of all backup admins suffer from inconsistent replicas. But backups don't have to be this way. With Chkdsk, you too can reduce replica inconsistencies. (Please see a Sr Admin if your replicas are consistent for more than 4 incremental jobs.) Joking aside, as far as DPM is concerned, an inconsistent replica is a deal-breaker and that means other backup jobs won't run until you fix it. A common issue with file-level backups in DPM is that it'll get tripped up on s corrupt file, usually one in a shadowcopy volume. I'd like to discuss how to get around it.

"Documentation saves time? How does it save time when it takes me $time to write it out?" You might ask. Allow me to explain. Good documentation helps you, your team, and new-hires inheriting your environment. Allow me to explain.

I was recently given a task of moving a VM used by our application development team from it's own little host to our production VMware infrastructure. This VM in particular has 12 disks, totaling 665Gb of data. Since this was sort of a chore, I figured I'd lay out the possible approaches for the next admin out there who isn't sure how do this. First, the basics. An option for the VM is to migrate using vMotion. You can migrate a VM between hosts and/or datastores with either vMotion or svMotion (Storage vMotion), respectively. This is really your best option if both of your hosts or datastores reside within the same vCenter environment. The main reason I'm writing this document is for the time(s) when you have to move a VM from a standalone host or from a host within a vCenter environment to a different standalone host or to a host within a different vCenter environment.

If you've managed a backup solution before (DPM, BackupExec, UVB, Veamm, etc.), then retention was probably set by answering the simple question of "How long do I want to keep this stuff for?" Most of the time, retention is a simple setting. Set it & forget it right? in Tivoli Storage Manager, or TSM, it's a bit more complex than that.

Part of my responsibility is supporting our various Backup systems and for handling VM backups in the VMware world, there's 2 clear contenders winning the popular vote; The most popular is Veamm Backup&Restore, and the other popular option is Unitrends Virtual Backup (Formerly PHD Virtual Backup). I want to talk about my experience migrating from PHD v6.5 to UVB v8.

So you've identified a VM in your environment that needs a little boost and you've decided to up the resources on it so it can adequately run whatever services your VM is providing. You go to up the vCPU and ask, "Do I add more sockets or more cores? What's the difference?"

As our new virtualization admin, I've taken over the day-to-day administration of our UCS & vSphere infrastructure. I'm also in charge of the upgrade project for it. We're currently rockin' vSphere v5.1 on 2x Windows Server 2k8r2 vCenter VMs in a Heartbeat v6.6 configuration. We want to get to a single vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) v5.5. I've broken this up into 3 distinct phases. In the first phase, we need to get to a single vCenter configuration. That means tearing down the Heartbeat configuration & decommissioning our secondary vCenter VM. In the second phase, I'll do a simple upgrade to the vCenter server to v5.5, followed by the hosts, VM hardware version & VMtools upgrade (with either VUM or pounding out something in PowerCLI). In the third phase, I'll use the VCS to VCSA fling to convert our Windows vCenter server to the Linux-based VCSA.

My "Time Management" that I've been using for the last 27 years could be summed up with 2 words; "Wing it". I assume that since I'm a relatively smart person that I can just remember things. Well, I've never had a particularly impressive memory and I have forgotten things before. Birthdays, appointments, grocery items, assigned tasks at work... You get my point. Lately, I've been feeling like I'm spending so much brain-power trying to remember all I need to do that I hardly get anything done. It feels very odd to work for 8 hours and not think of a single thing you've completed. I knew that I needed a system but where to do I start?

We've all been at that point towards what's often the end of your interview where the interviewer asks "Do you have any questions for us? This is a crucial moment because not only can YOU interview THEM, but also you get to shine by asking good questions. Not asking questions can make you come across as uninterested or too aloof. Most employers don't share everything so just as they're drawing conclusions about you based on your answers to their questions, you can draw conclusions about them based on their answers. INTERVIEWS SHOULD ALWAYS BE A 2-WAY STREET! 

IKEA has discontinued the Galant. I know, by now, nearly a year after the new first broke, it's hardly news. I only learned of it's demise recently. My wife has added quilting to her crafting repitoire so to keep her from taking over our living room, I had to relinquish control of my office (which we call the Manitorium) and actually share. Our original idea was to get one huge Galant L-shaped desk and share the big desk but after seeing that it's been discontinued with no successor as configurable, we've made the plans to just get separate desks. I already have a nice Galant desk, which I get to keep, and she wants to get the Kallax shelf unit with the Linnmon desk add-on. The point of this post isn't to talk about how I'm sharing my office with my crafty wife. I wanted to provide some explanation for anybody just coming across the Galant-is-dead news for themselves. IKEA discontinued the Galant desks but not the other office storage add-ons. In case you just...

At my job, at the time of this writing, I'm the backup sysadmin in charge of our virtual infrastructure (Cisco UCS blades + vSphere 5.1). As my boss, who's the primary for these things, is taking on a new role (same company & still my boss), I'm on track to become primary for these things. As a part of that effort I've been playing catch-up to learn more about vSphere, PowerCLI & Powershell among several other things.

Aside from being invested in the Apple/iTunes ecosystem, I'm not an Apple fanboy. However, I'll admit that while most gadgets get my curiosity, the new Apple Watch has my attention. Not just because it's an Apple device. I like to believe I'm above fanboyism. I'm interested in just such a device for many reasons, particularly the health/sleep data gathering features. Recently, I was in a conversation where someone was discussing how pointless smart watches are so I wanted to try and explain what they're for and what they're not.