Author: Wouter

New VMware fling: View Client Resizer

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I must have missed i during the holiday season but VMware has released a new fling: the View Client Resizer. It’s a simple fling that let’s you easily select any resolution you want to check your VMware Horizon View environment on to see how it behaves. The steps below I have done on a 2-screen setup.

  1. First you go to https://labs.vmware.com/flings/view-client-resizer and download the zip file
  2. Next unpack the zip file
  3. Start the executable
  4. Start the Horizon View client and open a VDI session
  5. Push refresh in the tool and it wil show the active sessions in the pulldown menu
  6.  
  7. Click resize and the session wil go to the top left corner of the Primary monitor in that resolution.

You can pick any of the default resolutions or make one up (smartphone resolutions for example ) as long as the x is between the digits with a minimum right now it seems of 800*600

 

Beware of MS KB3170455 with Windows 7 floating desktops

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Yes I know 3170455 was released last summer but early last month when I released our new golden image we ran into a problem with this update. What happened was that users had problems with some printers. When adding them they got this warning:

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(This is an example picture, I believe Xerox has proper drivers now)

And when they logged in to a fresh desktop they couldn’t print and when we checked their printer it said it needed drivers.

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What I found was that this only happened with drivers of the non packaged type. Microsoft has been pushing to use packaged drivers ever since Windows Vista came out but apparently some manufacturers stil use older style not supported drivers. This is easily checked when you go into Print management and have included the column packaged.

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Microsoft has been giving these warnings for a while but up until this kb there was a workaround by setting this group policy setting:

Computer Configuration>Policies> Administrative Templates>Printers>Point and Print Restrictions from Not Configured to Disabled or enabled with some settings.

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With this KB installed and probably also with he other kb’s for other OS mentioned in the accompanying security bulletin: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/MS16-087 Windows ignores this setting and gives the warning anyway. For most systems clicking the allow once won’t be a big issue but when you have floating desktops where the printers get added every logon this is an issue so please be aware of this!

VCAP6-DTM Deploy prep started

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After VMworld I decided vcap6-dtm deploy would be my first real attempt at a vcap (I don’t count the design since 2 weeks prep impossibly is enough). In between the vcp7-dtm beta came around so the prepping for the Deploy exam really starts now. I am currently rebuilding my homelab for this since this wil take hours and hours of lab time. Some very good people have already attempted and failed this exam so i really need to take all the time I can get. To bad the blueprint isn’t available as a pdf but I copy/pasted the page from VMware.com and it can be found here. I have downloaded most of the documents stated in there and those can be found over here.

 

vSphere 6.5 announced

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Today vSphere 6.5 was announced. I won’t bore you all with another page that doesn’t have all info (yet!) so i will point you to Brian Graf’s site for all information you want and need.

Click here!

Is updating @VMware ESXi at @Nutanix really that easy?

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Do you want the short answer or the long answer?

Short: Yes!

Long: Absolutely!

The real story:

  • After doing several Acropolis (CVM) & NCC (Health check) upgrades before on my customer’s Nutanix clusters today was the first time to do an actual hypervisor upgrade. Since we run everything on VMware we wanted to go from 5.5u2 to 6.0u2. The first things to do is to check all compatibility charts and with Acropolis at 4.6.4 and NCC at 2.2.8 we had green lights all over the board.
  • What I always do first before doing anything is running a health check. Since NCC 2.2 you can run some of the checks parallel to save some time:
ncc health_checks run_all -parallel=4

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  • After the check and make sure DRS is set on automated and vSphere HA is turned on as it should otherwise you won’t be updating anything!
  • Next up is heading to Prism, no we’re not doing any cli work when a GUI is better and just as fast!
  • The first thing to do is upload the software (Offline bundle zip file from VMware.com and json file from Nutanix.com)

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  • Go to Software Upgrade

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  • Select Upload the hypervisor Binary

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  • Select the binary and the Json files and hit Upload Now

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  • When this is done hit the arrow besides the upgrade button and select the pre-check (the real upgrade also does this but it is never wrong to check twice!)

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  • Enter the IP of the vCenter (not DNS!) and credentials

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  • This won’t take long but if you get bored hit the Nothing do to button for a game of 2048 presented to you by our friends at Nutanix

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  • You might need to re-open the Software Upgrade but but somewhere it will be done now

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  • When this finishes successful it’s time to hit the real upgrade button

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  • You know what to do here right?

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  • The waiting game has started since there will be a lot of vMotion’s and reboots
  • This it might be time for this again

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  • If you re-open the Software Upgrade bit it will show the versions of ESXi the cluster is now running

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  • Aaaaaaand we’re done

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So actually creating this post took longer then the preparation and actions for the upgrade themselves. For me that was 5 minutes work in preparation and about 20 minutes per host for the upgrade itself.

 

 

 

 

Received the VCAP6-DTM Design beta exam result

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Well as expected I failed this one miserably! I scored 183 where 300 was required while the scoring range is 100-500. Points to improve are all over the place so I guess it’s all back to the drawing boards while I’m still not sure if I want to do the deploy first or not.

Also I only hard from people whom also failed this Beta and no passes yet!

VMworld 2016 US Part 4 – the last one!

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So right now it’s thursday evening and here I am in my hotel room too damn tired to even go outside. VMworld is a wrap and wow it was awesome. Yesterday I had 2 more sessions. First a quick vExpert session at the Docker booth where we got a nice vExpert embroided hat.Then it was time to get the vExpert Raspberry Pi 3 at the Datrium booth. Men they had big issues on getting them in but succeeded at last so thank you very much for that! I ended with a Rubrik session with Chris Wahl that was pretty good. In the evening it was time for the biggest party of them all at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. To be honest I think the sound of the bands sucked and the music of the dj’s wasn’t good either but I had an awesome time playing all the games, talking to people ad even made a lap in 1 of the 50! Rental cars that wil probably be going back to budget with hardly any tires left.

So today was the last day and I did only 1 session and that was about troubleshooting Horizon and killed the time by doing some labs and hanging at the vBrownbag area where I learned a lot by listening to the sessions. This space just seemed to be vExpert HQ the whole week.

All in all I think this was the best way ever to experience your first VMworld. I really want to thank all vExperts for welcoming me in the community because I don’t think I would have had such an awesome experience without you guys!

VMworld 2016 US report part 3

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Wow it’s wednesday already, time flies at VMworld! Yesterday again was an awesome day, first the 2nd keynote and after I had to head out to the Luxor for the Inner Circle fireside chat.

The Inner Circle is a group of about a 1000 people that is engaged by the VMware Customer Advocacy program. We have our own forum, weekly polls on the site and surveys by mail. Our feedback gets handled by VMware on a high level and personally I really have the idea that they listen to us. The fireside chat they had an idea of how to do it but it ended as an organized free for all where VMware received honest, harsh but really good feedback. In short they got slaughtered on several topics. They did not expect this so it was good to see that they seemed to handle it pretty wel. Later in the day I went to stop by at their boot hand asked them to get more vExperts involved because I think we are exactly the kind of people that can give this feedback.

Because of the Inner Circle session running way over time and me getting hungry pretty bad I missed the uem 9 sessions so I hope that one is recorded. My final session of the day was the vSphere 6.x Host Resource Deep Dive by my fellow Dutchies Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort. This session was soo deep the entire Mount Everest might fit into it. Really good stuf and very useful.

After the sessions it was partytime! First a quick beer and a snack at the Inner Circle reception and after I hopped on the bus to The Mob Museum for my first vExpert party. First we had our mugshots taken. We got a print but also digitally by mail so please check mine on Twitter. We had great fun over there and had Pat Gelsinger over doing a Q&A for over an hour! Best quote? Hyper-V is free as a puppy!

Today I had a hard time waking up, not getting out of bed but during my first session at 8 am I was not paying enough attention at all. But still it was a good session on how to architect a HA resilient scalable mobility & desktop environment. After that I had a session about troubleshooting avSphere 6 environment by a couple of GSS guys and picked up a lot of good stuff!

VMworld 2016 US report part 2

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Òk so in part 1 I stopped after the Partner General Session. After lunch I wanted to do some labs but the queue was really awfull so I decided to attend a group discussion about vCloud air or mobile management in general. I got some good info on the view about this from the us people while I managed to spice it up now and then with things we dutchies like or don’t like.

Monday was the first real day of VMworld. During the keynote VMware cloud foundation was announced but I don’t think I will use this multi cloud management platform in the near future. After this it was time to prepare for my vBrownbag session. I was really nervous and went over my stuf way to fast so I was done in 6 minutes or something. If you want you can find it here.

The afternoon I had 2 awesome sessions: enforcing a vSphere cluster design  with powercli by Duncan Epping and Chris Wahl and after that a ask the experts session about VDI wich where both just awesome. I finished the day at the CXI Party on the 59th floor of the cosmopolitan with a great view.

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VMworld 2016 US report part 1

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RIght now I am setting in the Partner Exchange lounge and since I have some time at hand it might be time for a short message from the US. Since this is my first VMworld, first time in the USA I have to admin I am really in awe of everything over here. Everything is just soo big.

Now about VMworld itself, yesterday I was in a vRealize Automation bootcamp for the whole day and really liked it. It seems to be very complicated but after you create the blueprints everything will be easy (Really?) I do see the advantages that are to be gained so it was nice. In the end we went over all exam questions as a group before most of us did the exams. I managed to pass the first but with the 2nd one I really started to get tired so I’ll gues I need to do that again. We do have 99 times to try it so it’ll be good.

Now to the sunday morning. I had 2 deepdive sessions. One about EUC & NSX and the other one about app volumes. Both where not as deep as I expected but a lot of knowledge was gained in those 2 hours. After that we had the Partner General session were wounded warrior Pat Gelsinger had a nice chat with Michael Dell and we had some information on stuff that is coming in the near future.

If I made some typos in this: they where on purpose or I blame the fact that I am still getting used to the time difference 😀