More ways to make the transition to ESXi are making it to market. Take a read at my previous articles:

• The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations
• The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations. Part II

This week, VMware Labs has created another free tool called VMware Auto Deploy. Here is a short description:

VMware Auto Deploy supports automatic PXE boot and customization of large numbers of ESXi systems. Auto Deploy allows rapid deployment and configuration of a large number of ESXi hosts. After a DHCP server has been set up, Auto Deploy PXE boots machines that are turned on with an ESXi image. Auto Deploy then customizes the ESXi systems using host profiles and other information stored on the managing vCenter Server system. You can set up the environment to use different images and different host profiles for different hosts.

 

As an update to The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations. Part II, I opened a VMware SR and it seems that the problem was on my end with host profiles not working with AD. I tested it out on a different machine and it worked, go figure.

Greg Stuart over at vDestination.com was one of the lucky people to snag a GestaltIT and Boche.net Free VMworld ticket. He is already paying it forward by holding a contest to Win the Ultimate vSphere Reference Library and more.

The lucky winner will receive the following prizes:

* A signed copy of Mastering VMware vSphere 4 from Scott Lowe
* A signed copy of VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference from Scott Lowe
* A signed copy of Maximum vSphere from Eric Siebert
* A copy of VMware vSphere Pro Series Training vol. 2: Site Recovery Manager (SRM), Veeam Management Suite, VMware Data Recovery,
Power CLI and vSphere Advanced Features from David Davis

I hope everyone is familiar with Mike Laverick's Podcast series called The Chinwag. Mike approached me a few weeks ago about being on the wag and I was more than happy to oblige. We discussed some topics relating to Free vSphere Tools, NFSv4, and VMworld. Don't know why my eyes look so squinty... must be because it was in the early AM and I was looking down into a camera :)

Chinwag with Mike… Kenny Coleman [Episode 23]

Here are some talking points I had that we didn't have enough time to chat about as an addition to my Why vSphere Needs NFSv4 post:

Some of the features of NFS from version 3 to version 4 are going to give VMware environments a big boost.

NFSv4 now has this thing called the stateful protocol. It basically gives a client temporary access to a server. Instead of accessing a file and having a stateless lock on it, the client must check back in with the server every 45 seconds or the file will become unlocked and the next client can access it. For VMware deployments, this could mean less of a chance of corrupted VMs if a server or NAS were to fail and kept locks on a file.

If you ever read my Top 10 Free vSphere Tools post, you would know that Embotics V-Scout tied for 8th place out of a list of over 50 free vSphere tools.

I got this email earlier today:

You are receiving this email because you are a registered user of Embotics V-Scout.

When we released V-Scout as a free reporting tool back in 2008, there were few tools like it available for VI administrators.   That situation has of course changed, and there are now many free reporting tools.

So, rather than continue to upgrade V-Scout, we have decided to retire it, effective immediately.      We would like to thank everyone who downloaded V-Scout, and hope you found it useful.   You are, of course, welcome to continue using it, but Embotics will no longer be supporting or updating it.

For my own purposes and to help out everyone, I've tried linking everything I can find on the web to go along with the blueprint (version 3.1) for the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Datacenter Administration Exam (VCAP VDCA-410 / VCAP-DCA). These links are a combination of VMware Documentation and user-contributed blogs.

If you would like to read these offline, I have taken the liberty to convert every single link into a PDF file.  (100mb)

There is some stuff I was not able to locate on this blueprint. If you find something I don't have listed, please leave a link in the comments stating the Objective, Knowledge/Skill/Tool, and Property, and it will be added to the list. I hope you find this useful as we all study towards the VCAP VDCA.

Section 1 – Implement and Manage Storage

• Objective 1.1 – Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions
  • VCAP-DCA Objective 1.1 : Implement and Manage Complex Storage Solutions
• Knowledge
  • • Identify RAID levels
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
    • Raid Levels Defined
  • • Identify supported HBA types
    • Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide
  • • Identify virtual disk format types
    • Identify virtual disk format types

Yesterday, I joined Rick Vanover and Colin Steele to talk about the migration of ESX to ESXi on This Week in Virtualization podcast. The titles is called VMware ESXi takes center stage in vSphere 4.1.

The weekly podcast is brought to you by the fine folks at SearchServerVirtualization, a part of TechTarget. Thanks again Colin for inviting me to be a part of the action.

VMware ESXi takes center stage in vSphere 4.1

" VMware vSphere 4.1 is the last version to offer any new features for the ESX hypervisor. For VMware, ESXi will be the primary hypervisor going forward.

Some users are hesitant to move from ESX to ESXi because ESXi does not use the popular Linux-based management console found in ESX. But VMware says ESXi is more efficient, flexible and secure than ESX.

In this edition of This Week in Virtualization, IT architect Rick Vanover and network engineer Kendrick Coleman discuss their own experiences with VMware ESXi. They say there's no easy way to migrate from ESX to ESXi, but the move to ESXi will be worth it for VMware and its customers.

In addition to the VMware ESXi discussion, this podcast also covers the surprising news that Dell and Hewlett-Packard will resell Oracle VM.Oracle, thanks to its Sun Microsystems acquisition, is a major hardware rival of both Dell and HP, and this news is just the latest example of the complicated vendor relationships that permeate the server virtualization market. "

I was in the process of upgrading some of the VMware Tools on some guests since we have migrated our infrastructure to vSphere 4.1. I was able to install VMware Tools two times before I started getting a very non-descriptive error: "Error upgrading VMware Tools" and the only related event was "Task: Initiated VMware Tools install or upgrade"

In my last post, The Migration From ESX to ESXi is Happening. Moving Configurations, I talked about the need to move from ESX to ESXi and some of the options that came along with it. Here we are, almost a month later, and I have started to take my production environment from ESX to ESXi. Here's what I've learned in the process.

Forget keeping your current ESX profile. It doesn't matter if you have Host Profiles, or if you had an old kickstart script. Toss them out the window. Host Profiles based on ESX are going to take into account security profiles which are no longer necessary, and with 4.1 adding new features, they won't be a part of the new host. I've built a sample ESXi 4.1 kickstart script and found out first hand alot of things that were possible with ESX aren't there with ESXi.

As of vSphere 4.1, ESXi now has the ability to perform a kickstart installation, whereby you create a script to configure your ESXi host during the install. Using a kickstart script, you can get an ESXi host up and functional within a matter of a few minutes. The fact that it's functional, doesn't mean it's fully configured. Kickstart scripts are still very limited and can't completely configure your ESXi host with all that vSphere 4.1 offers. Some features that can't be scripted (atleast in my own testing) are Local Active Directory integration, prompting a user for input to create a dynamic script, simply adding a host to vCenter, configuring a Distributed Virtual Switch (dVS) because it's not a part of vCenter, and more. This might be only temporary because Justin Guidroz has created a script to add your ESXi Host to vCenter Using MOB as part of a kickstart.