Data Center Etiquette

For the last 10 to 15 years, I have been in and out of Data Centers of all types. I’ve also had the privilege of working in many different capacities, from corporate IT pawn, to the guy running the project. During this time I have had the privilege of working with and learning from some
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Upgrading to VCSA 6 fails

I began an upgrade of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 5.5 to 6 for a small (in VMware’s own terminology ‘Tiny’) vSphere environment of 3 hosts and about 30 VMs. I certainly didn’t anticipate any trouble beyond the usual hassles associated with upgrading an infrastructure-level service like vCenter. Unfortunately, carefully following VMware documented procedures
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Request a vSphere Lab?

One of the advantages of my job is: unprecedented access to vendors and resources! If there is a specific lab you would like to see, just comment on this post and I will try to get it done! I am approaching a long bit on-the-road (until January 25th!), so no promises as to how quickly
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Backing up and restoring the vCenter Server Appliance 6 database

One extremely important advantage of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is its native PostgreSQL (vPostgres) database. With the embedded database and VCSA, it is now possible to support installations which scale to the maximum capability of vCenter, without additional Operating System or Database licensing costs. Incumbent with the use of VCSA, however, comes a
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Mission Critical Virtual Machines on VMware vSphere

Building Mission Critical VMs on VMware vSphere is pretty simple. There are just a few commonly acknowledged Best Practices with which to adhere, regardless of whether you are installing Windows or Linux: Use Paravirtualized drivers wherever possible Remove unnecessary hardware from the VM (settings) Disable unnecessary or unused devices in BIOS Assign no more resources
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