Events – Part 4 : Who started that VM ?

In a comment on my Events – Part 3 : Auditing VM device changes post, Ian asked if it was possible to report who started a VM.

To take away the suspense, yes that can be done by using the information from two of my earlier post.

Poweredon-report

Since I considered it a bit too long to give the solution in a comment, this post.

Continue reading Events – Part 4 : Who started that VM ?

Events – Part 3 : Auditing VM device changes

In a comment on my Events, Dear Boy, Events – Part 2 post, Sham was wondering if it was possible to find out which device was actually changed on a guest.

Sham was able to find out who did a change, at what time and on which machine, but he also wanted to know what exactly was changed.

Since this is the kind of audit information that I would like to have as well I had a closer look. And luckily the VmReconfiguredEvent object had all the required information in the configSpec property.

Continue reading Events – Part 3 : Auditing VM device changes

Dutch VMUG event 2009 – The (nearly) lost tapes

During my Dutch VMUG event 2009 presentation there was a technical problem with some of the demo videos I prepared. Luckily an audience member came to the rescue by downloading the excellent VLC Video Player via his cell phone. Thanks again for the assistance 🙂

To make up for this technical mishap, the demo videos with a short explanation.

Continue reading Dutch VMUG event 2009 – The (nearly) lost tapes

Dutch VMUG event 2009 – handy scripts

Today the Dutch VMUG event 2009 took place. It was my first visit but this truly is an amazing event. Lots of knowledgeable and interested visitors.

During my session I showed some small, handy scripts that I use on a regular base. In fact they are stored in my profile.

As promised, here are the scripts.

Continue reading Dutch VMUG event 2009 – handy scripts

Switching to the Paravirtual SCSI Controller

Since ESX 4u1 you have a new SCSI controller type available for your guests, the VMware Paravirtual SCSI Controller.
From several sources we learn that the performance of this controller is better.

See for example the New !! Open unofficial storage performance thread where Lars gave some interesting performance figures.

And in the PowerCLI Community there is a recent thread, called Change SCSI adapter to paravirtual with PowerCLI, where the user asks how he can change his disk adapters.

Reason enough to look how I could use PowerCLI to migrate guests to the VMware Paravirtual SCSI Controller.

Continue reading Switching to the Paravirtual SCSI Controller

Raiders of the Lost VMX

One of the more popular post in the VMTN PowerCLI community is this one HowTo search for all VMX files in all datastores and register them into VC ?

The original script that I provided in the thread is now more than one year old and there seem to be some issues with clusters in a vSphere environment.

Time to re-write the script and make it a bit more userfriendly.

Update 1: there was an issue when scanning empty datastores

Update 2: added the option to find and register Templates

Update 3 – April 29th 2010: added the option to ignore specific folders

Update 4 – April 30th 2010: fixed parent datacenter lookup problem + added -checkNFS and -whatif option

Update 5 – May 2nd 2010: fixed a bug with nested folders and the -ignore parameter

Update 6 – August 6th 2010: minor changes to the parameter testing and the Get-Usage function

Update 7 – August 17th 2010: fixed a bug with the -dsNames option. Thanks to goonzie for reporting the bug

Indiana-hat Continue reading Raiders of the Lost VMX

Alarm expressions – Part 2 : Event alarms

In the previous part of this series (Alarm expressions – Part 1 : Metric alarms) I showed how you could create alarms that are triggered when a metric crosses a watermark.

zenIn this part I will show you how to create alarms when one or more specific events occur in your vSphere environment. More specifically I will show you how to create an alarm that will fire when someone adds or removes a license from your vCenter.

Continue reading Alarm expressions – Part 2 : Event alarms

Alarm expressions – Part 1 : Metric alarms

In a previous entry (Scripts for Yellow Bricks’ advise: Thin Provisioning alarm & eagerZeroedThick) I showed how you could use performance metrics to fire an alarm. The MetricAlarmExpression in that script requires a PerfMetricId to specify which performance metric the alarm should monitor. The counterId in that object is an integer and it is perhaps not too obvious which value corresponds with which metric.

metric-alarm

This blog entry shows how you can quickly get a list of permitted counterIds (and instances) for a specific entity. And it will show how to create some “impossible” alarms !

Continue reading Alarm expressions – Part 1 : Metric alarms

PowerCLI and the SDK – Part 1

In the Developer forum there was an interesting post called Resources for folks new to the vSphere Web Services SDK. Now unfortunately the Hello World guide was (again) only aimed at Java programmers.

Although PowerCLI is nearing perfection, you sometimes will have to go to the SDK methods and properties to make your script go that extra mile. Since I know, from first-hand experience, that the first steps in the SDK are not that simple for PowerShell programmers/scripters I decided to start a series to make the SDK more accessible for the PS people.
Continue reading PowerCLI and the SDK – Part 1

Onyx – Why Learn PowerCLI ?

The PowerCLI Team yesterday published with the Onyx Project a great tool with lots of potential. The blogging community received Carter’s announcement enthousiastically (see for example The Onyx has landed).

As a casual PowerCLI user you might think, the product has a strange name but it is the answer to all my scripting and automation needs. Why should I bother learning all these PowerCLI cmdlets while this tools produces working code. But think again !

Continue reading Onyx – Why Learn PowerCLI ?