Recently, after a View upgrade, I had problems connecting to my VMware View desktops. I would try to connect to my VMs but I was met with a black screen. The login screen would never show up and I had no idea because it was working fine before.

A quick google search brings up quote a few KBs:

Connection errors and blank screen when connecting to a View desktop using PCoIP (1016753)

Black screen when logging into a VMware View virtual desktop using PCoIP (1028332)

Connecting to a View Desktop using PCoIP fails with a black screen (2039529)

Connecting to a VDI desktop with PCoIP displays a black screen and disconnects after 10 seconds (1016633)

Unable to connect to VMware View desktops using PCoIP (1028719)

I'm very excited that I've been asked to present at the NOLA VMUG this Thursday 6/6/13. I have been developing this presentation for the past two weeks and it's all about vCloud Director design. In fact, this is the presentation I plan on using if I'm selected as a VMworld 2013 presenter. I've put a lot of fancy graphics and time into it... as well as a little bit of knowledge :).

In all seriousness, this presentation is going to rock. You will learn about real world use cases that I've had the pleasure of designing for vCloud Director... some simple, some not so simple. We're going to cover how vCloud fits into an enterprise, service provider, or SMB, look into some of the core concepts of design, and then look at some real world examples.

If you know about me and my blog, my tutorials are very "spoon feeding" heavy. I expect that no one is a master of any trade so I try to explain things as I would like them be explained to me. Usually, I tell people to explain it to me like I'm a 4th grader (Micheal Scott reference).

So if you are in New Orleans this week come out and learn something awesome. If that's not enough for you, we will be giving away a copy of my latest book VMware vSphere Design - 2nd edition where I authored the vCloud chapter. Go ahead and register here for the New Orleans VMUG

Here's a sneak peak at all the work that has gone into this deck. Hope to see you there!

This week, VCE announced the availability of the VCE™ Developer Portal. The Developer Portal provides developers with access to all of the resources necessary to develop functionality using the VCE Vision™ Intelligent Operations API.  Within the Developer Portal, you will find:

• Developer Resources: A collection of all of the tools and materials you need to develop against the VCE Vision API, including the VCE Vision Intelligent Operations SDK.
• The VCE Developer Community: A community of passionate individuals dedicated to creating new and exciting uses for Vblock™ Systems.

Anybody can register for and join the VCE Developer Portal.  Just go to:  www.vce.com/developers

This is going to go over three common errors you may see when trying to install the vCD agent on the host.

The first error message is quite simple:

Failures occurred during prepare of host "ciscol01.r3hx.mlb03.lab.vce.com".
- Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password.
- Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password.

*UPDATED 4/19/13 FOR RHEL6* SCROLL TO END OF ARTICLE

This has been a fun project because I'm a n00b at Linux. If you know a better way of implementing this, please let me know. Most of the walkthroughs you find online about setting up a vCloud Director Cell (such as yellow-bricks) talk about just turning the firewall off completely or they completely skip this step. I see why now. There are a bunch of services that need to talk not only to other vCloud Cells, but to other services all around the datacenter.

The VMware vCloud Installation and Configuration Guide shows us what ports need to be open, but I came up with a few different kinds of implementation scenarios.

The first thing you need to do during the initial setup is to make sure the Firewall is enabled and turn off any services that are checkmarked by default (SSH should be our only default)

One of my most popular articles (that I even turn to from time to time) is How To Install VMware vCloud Director 5.1 & 1.5 From Beginning to End. The article focused on installing with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5. Since RHEL 6 is now a supported OS, it's time for an update. RHEL 6 does not have a GUI installed. So the install process is a bit different, but not far off. You just have to know what you are doing with the CLI.

Many of these steps follow the same steps as the original article, but need to be tweaked slightly.

Step 1. Prepare the environment.

Part A. Database. For an Oracle setup, you're on your own because I don't do Oracle, sorry. Though, since vCloud Director 1.5 supports Microsoft SQL Server, it makes my life much easier. Follow the step by step Installing vCloud Director 1.5 With SQL Server 2008.

Part B. DNS and IPs. Each vCloud Director Cell will need, at minimum, 2 IP addresses. The DNS names associated with those are going to be for the https request and the vmrc.  so VCD-CELL01.company.com and VCD-CELL01-RC.company.com. Repeat this for as many cells as you have. In this case, we will be using 2 cells for redundancy. You may need an additional IP/DNS addition for your cells if you plan on publishing your portal to the internet. See step 3 for the information.

Part C. Syslog. vCloud Cells have the capability to export syslogs. Make sure you have a syslog server setup prior to installation.

There was a discussion happening on twitter yesterday by Douglas A Brown (if you don't know him, you should. He's one of the very few professional bloggers out there. He founded www.dabacc.com) and David Davis that was around multiple hypervisors in the datacenter.

David Davis had a twitter poll going that asks "How do you feel about multi-hypervisor in the datacenter?". Unfortunately there were only 16 entries, but the results were split down the middle. Douglas chimed in with a respectable opinion:

@douglasabrown: "@davidmdavis multi-hypervisor datacenters are the future no matter if we like it or not..."

This sparked an interest in my head and i hope it sparks one in yours as well.

Yet again, time for another spoon feeding tutorial.

I'm getting started with vCAC and I found it quite the task to get a GUI Next Next Next type of installation to install correctly. There is already a great article by Randy over at killercouds, VMware vCAC 5.1 Install Process – Overview, but it needs a "beginner's" touch. We will reference it as we go along. This tutorial is going to be for lab purposes ONLY. I am installing everything on a single server, utilizing an existing SQL server, and not implementing anything SSL/HTTPS based. For any production installation, please follow https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vcac-51-installation-guide.pdf

Step 1. Start off with a clean Windows 2008 R2 VM. Download vCAC-51-Installation.zip and vCAC-51-Extensibility.zip, un-pack the archives to your desktop. Also download vCAC_PrereqSetup.ps1 from http://killerclouds.com/?p=203 and place it on the desktop. And download your XML license file and place it on your desktop.

Step 2. Download and install .NET 4.5 Framework.