This kb article I found explains the basics. What do you need to do for registering license for a desktop product bought at VMware.

If you don’t you might not be able to come back and get updates for your products.

1. Navigate to the VMware Account Management page by going to www.vmware.com/account.
2. Log in with your credentials and click Register a Product.
3. Enter your license key. You can include up to 50 license keys and register them all at the same time.
4. Complete the required fields and click Continue to register your VMware software.

Not only registering your desktop software, you will need to do the same for your vShere 4 license too. If you’re a small shop and you bought your vSphere license on line directly, you need to register too to be able to get future versions, like the 4.1 which will will be released in the near future…with new features.. 

Source: VMware KB.

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• How-to install an evaluation license for the Cisco Nexus 1000V switch
• VMware changed names for their product line
• P2V ramblings with OEM server installation
• Second Shot to became VCP 4 or when upgrading from VCP 3
• New Website Design of VMware Website and new product launch – VMware View 4

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: license register vmware, register license

Service Console commands.

In the last series I explained how to change the IP address of the Service console (SC), which is an interface called vswif . You can see all the configured vswif interfaces with this command:

esxcfg-vswif -l

Normaly the first SC is vswif0.

Before adding second SC we will first create a second vswitch. To create a vswitch via CLI it’s not so difficult. In my first article about VMware CLI commands I explained some of them. Especially the one to list already configured vswitches.I suppose that our vswitch0 is still in place so I’ll be creating vswitch1.

To create a new vSwitch just use this command:

esxcfg-vswitch -a vswitch1

As you can see the esxcfg-vswitch -l helps you to see the new just created vswitch… The result can be seen via VI client….

To be able to add SC to this vswitch we need first create a portgroup. A portgroup is….

A port group specifies port configuration options such as bandwidth limitations and VLAN tagging policies for each member port. Network services connect to vSwitches through port groups. Port groups define how a connection is made through the vSwitch to the network.

To add a portgroup to our newly created vswitch1 use this command:

esxcfg-vswitch -A vladportgroup vswitch1

And we again can verify our work via GUI and the VMware Virtual Infrastructure client.

Well, ok. Now we can attach some NIC to our switch. What do you say?… Yes we need to atach a NIC so the vswitch can communicate to the outside world. We will do it again via CLI. Let’s go. (I see that vmnic0 is already used… I’ll take vmnic1 as a NIC).

Use this command:

esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1

And again check in the VI client….

Well, now as promised at the beginning, we can add a second SC to this portgroup…

Use this command:

esxcfg-vswif -a

For example to add second service console:

esxcfg-vswif -a vswif1 -p “vladportgroup” -i 192.168.40.10 -n 255.255.255.0

And again check in the via the VI client….

Now we have a second working service console. This was a step-by-step demonstration creation a new vswitch, portgroup and service console with attaching to a NIC. I expressively used step after step, to see the progress. Now I’m sure there are shorter ways…. Maybe next time… Stay Tuned..

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• VMware ESX – Configuration of Service console via CLI
• vCenter Server Service does not start automaticaly
• How to increase the amount of RAM assigned to the VMware ESX service console
• How-to root access VMware ESX Server from WinSCP, Putty and others…
• How to change IP address of your ESX Server

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: service console, VMware CLI commands, vSwitch via CLI

Together with VMware Player 3.1 and VMware ACE 2.7 public betas released.

As I spotted on Rich Brambley’s blog there has been a new release (public beta) of VMware Workstation 7.1 announced. While with the public beta you have a serial number which is good until the 15th of May 2010.

In the release notes I hoped to find support for 64bits nested VMs while running virtual ESX 4or ESXi 4 but no. I’ll have to wait for one of the next releases. For now you are still only able to run 32 bits nested VMs. This is ok while testing the functionalities of vSphere 4 with 32 bit systems, but I wanted to test Microsoft Exchange 2007 as a nested VM. And as you know, Exchange 2007 requires 64 bit OS to run…

Together with Workstation, there are beta releases for VMware Player 3.1 and VMware ACE 2.7 Beta.

There is new guest and host support… -:)

New features availables in this release of VMware Workstation and Player:

• OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Vista guests — Improves the ability to run graphics-based applications in virtual machines.
• Improved Graphics Performance — Enhanced performance with better benchmarks, frame rates, and improved rendering on Windows 7 and Vista guests allows you to run various graphics-based applications. In addition, major improvements in video playback enable you to play high-resolution videos in virtual machines.
• Automatic Software Updates — Download and install VMware Tools, new, and maintenance releases updates when available.
• Autologon — Save your login credentials and bypass the login dialog box when you power on a Windows guest. Use this feature if you restart the guest frequently and want to avoid entering your login credentials. You can enable Autologon when you open guest applications from the host.
• OVF 1.0 Support — Import or export virtual machines and vApps to upload them to VMware vSphere or VMware Cloud. The VMware OVF tool is a command-line utility bundled in the VMware Workstation installer. Use this tool along with VMware Workstation to convert VMware .vmx files to .ovf format or vice versa. VMware recommends that you use the OVF command-line utility. For more information, see the OVF Tool User Guide.
• Eight-Way SMP Support — Create and run virtual machines with a total of up to eight-processor cores.
• 2TB Virtual Disk Support — Maximum virtual disks and raw disks size increased from 950MB to 2TB.

There is a new logo which appeared and which captured my attention too. You can see it if you go and update vmware tools on a VM created with VMware Workstation 7. Also the icon in the status bar has changed and it looks pretty sexy…

I suppose that the public beta will stay here for some time since the serial number for this release expires the 15the of May. But who knows.

For now, when using this public beta, you use it with debug option activated by vMware. This is quite anoying since it terribly slows the execution of the VMs.

I saw on Dave’s blog that it’s possible to deactivate that and also I found that it’s been done before in previous releases too… Like in the beta 6 in this article. But I haven’t tried this hack yet…

You can download VMware Workstation 7.1 beta from this link.

You can buy VMware Workstation 7 from this link. You can also check our PROMO section to see if there are any coupon codes available at the moment.  Well, there is 5% off the price at the moment…. for upgrade or full version. Check this out.

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• Vcb front end console 1.0.6 beta
• WMware Workstation 6.5 final is here
• New Virtual Network Editor in VMware Workstation 7
• Xtravirt reload – Virtual Infrastructure VI3.5 installed on WMWare Workstation 6.5
• Create a Virtual Machine in VMware Player 3.0

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: VMware ACE, Vmware Player 3.1, VMware Workstation 7.1

As my readers already knows I work and live at Reunion Island (FR). A French overseas department which I ignored that it exists until about a 5 ears ago, where this magnificent island was located and why it’s part of France and Europe.

So few weeks ago I make the move and purchased some parts for my new All in one Box. Since not all those parts were purchased at the same online shop, the delivery took much longer for some parts. One of those pieces was this SSD which I’ll take for a spin in my future articles.

For now, I ended with One box which has 12Gigs of RAM DDR3, some SATA local drives, and this new SSD. The SSD is a Kingston Second generation 64 Gigs “hard disk”, which is 2.5′. The pieces has arrived with mounting rack for 3.5′, cables, a nice USB enclosure (do one say that?), and also Acronis HD cloning software on a boot CD for upgrade your system drive (if you want to). That’s really cool.

After the mounting all the pieces inside, I formatted a NTFS volume on about half of the SSD. Why? I wanted to do some tests first with Workstation 7 VMs on it. And the other half of the storage I’ll be using together with Starwind iSCSI SAN software and create an iSCSI target for my virtual ESX Servers I’ll be running with VMware Workstation 7.

Little disappointment came here by the way. I don’t know if everyone is aware, the other day on Twitter it was Rick Vanover who asked the confirmation and yes it’s true….  The virtual ESX or ESXi does not support nested VMs running 64bits OS….And as I wanted to do some testing on Exchange 2007 with Fault tolerance, I won’t be able to use this configuration…-:(.

If anyone knows a solution for VMware Workstation 7…. There might be a parameter in the VMX file for the Virtual ESX ….. I’m interested… -:) And I’ll post it on one of my future posts…

Anyway, I’ll start to build my new vCenter in a VM stored on the SSD. The other day I prepared some First installations VMs, so I’m able to copy-paste them directly to the SSD to see some performance jump… I can see already (or hear….).

Stay tuned for more…

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• Happy x-mass, I’m taking some break
• Joyeux Noël
• My vExpert Award has just arrived at the Reunion Island…
• Thanks for a gift VMware…
• About

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Today I’ll show you another video from VMware KB Website.

You know that VMs in your production Virtual environment should not run on snapshots all the time. The snapshot feature is there so you can chesk some patches before you say… Ok those are fine.. no troubles for my application etc… and then you should delete the snapshot taken before you installed those patches.

But this is not a case every time, and if your virtual environment is big, you might forgot which VM has snapshot and why…

Snapshot does what. It creates a copy of the virtual machine disk file (VMDK) at a certain point in time. All the new changes to your VM are recorded to a new VMDK file , which is read/write. This file is called –delta.vmdk file. The 1st VMDK becomes read only. If you create a second snapshot, what was currently writable will be from now on only read only etc etc.. Snapshots are great, just don’t run your VMs with snapshots ALL the TIME.

So here it comes this little video which will help you to configure alarm in vCenter as a reminder which VM is running with snapshots.

Source: VMware KB TV

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• How-to make your VMs running more silently
• How to know where is my VM if vCenter is down?
• Use snapshots on Virtual ESX with VMware Workstation
• Starwind iSCSI SAN – configuration RAID 1 Mirror and connection to ESX 4
• VMware Backup Recovery solution upgraded to 1.0.1

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Configruation alarm vcenter, Snapshots in a VM, VMware Snapshots

VMware guest console – a free product available to download at VMware labs.

This post should not be published.. but I’m a human too. Work hard. The scheduling feature in Wordpess is really great as the Wordpress too. I just really wish to be able to find more time for blogging, because I’m enjoying that.

Sorry guys about this one. Since it’s already out, I’ll leave it. It was meant to be a follow up post for VMware Labs new products from VMware.

Enjoy the video…

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• vSphere Guest Console – a nice tools from VMware Labs
• VMware ACE
• Vcb front end console 1.0.6 beta
• How to increase the amount of RAM assigned to the VMware ESX service console
• Vmware Data Recovery Part 4 – How-to Restore files inside of your VM Video

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: VMware Guest Console, vmware labs

With the public apparition of  VMware LABs few days ago there is some nice tools available… One of them is a tool called VMware Guest Console (VGC). It uses DotNet to interact with vSphere 4.

VMware Guest Console is a little free software application to manage the Guest Operating Systems installed on VMs.It permits to manage multiple VMs and can connect to multiple hosts simultaneously.VGC works not only with ESX server but also with vmware server and desktop products like vSphere, Server 2.0 and Workstation.

VGC includes a Unified Task Manager, Guest file system explorer, Snapshot Manager, VM Manager and more.

There is a video from YouTube presenting the functionalities.

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• VMware Guest Console – another video
• Multiple update VMware Tools how-to
• New version of RV tools available
• VMware PVSCSI driver – in linux VM speeds up disk access
• Nice to have Ware – RVTools – updated to 2.7.1

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: VGC, vmware console, VMware Guest Console, vmware labs

Two new Xangati’s products has just being released for VMware ESX.

Those 2 new products are virtual appliances which you can install in your vCenter environment. Xangati provides a video-like visibility into all communications across both the virtual and physical worlds. It can monitor and manage both of them. It’s multi-platform so it works well on  Hyper-V and Citrix Xen Server and others.

Xangati was designed  to act as a complement of VMware’s vCenter. It manages all the objects that appear in vCenter. Not only it provides an instant visibility but also with a feature like DVR-like recordings which saves the data for later use. You’re able to replay for exemple a critical moments to actually speed the resolution process and contact and interract with VMware Support providing those datas.

Xangati’s virtual appliance suite consists of the following components:

Xangati’s virtual appliance suite consists of the following components:

• Xangati for ESX – tightly integrates with VMware’s hypervisor to instantly summarize traffic traversing a vSwitch, providing valuable visibility that completely eliminates these once troublesome “blind spots.” The turnkey appliance is offered via a 14-day high-value trial, with the true plug-and-play nature of the solution enabling it to be installed and yield value in less than 30 minutes.
• Xangati Management Dashboard – can track up to 5,000 identities (e.g. a hypervisor, virtual server, virtual desktop, VoIP phone), providing complete enterprise-wide visibility, alerting, reporting and recording for hundreds of applications. The solution comes in both a Standard and Enterprise edition, depending on the size and scope of the IT infrastructure and budget. It too is plug-and-play, with ROI in less than two hours.

Alan Robin – the CEO says:

“The inability to explicitly see virtual communications within a hypervisor using traditional management solutions is perhaps the most fundamental ‘blind spot’ in a virtual infrastructure. We believe that to effectively manage the virtual world, you have to be of the virtual world, which is why we’ve come to market with a suite of virtual appliances that solve this virtual communication void. Couple our innovative product introduction with an aggressive ‘try-before-buy’ pricing model that allows virtualization administrators to solve problems before even committing to a purchase, and Xangati not only provides a win-win for everyone but positions itself as a disruptive force for virtualization management as we know it.”

The solution is Agent-Less, so immediately after deployement, you are able to monitor and manage your ESX Servers. No agent is needed to be installed on your ESX servers.

Xangati for ESX can be downloaded directly from here. You have a possibility to test the solution for 2 weeks. The pricing details can be found on Xangati’s website. Just to give you an ide, the cost per ESX server is  $299. The Xangati Management Dashboard Standard edition is available for $4,999, and the Enterprise edition for $9,999.

There is also a Starter Kit at a discounted rate of $9,999, which includes Xangati for ESX for up to 20 hosts and the Xangati Management Dashboard Enterprise edition.

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: VMware Management, Xangati for ESX, Xangati Management Dashboard Enterprise edition, Xangati virtual appliance

Save 500$ with this new offer from VMware.

I was quite surprised with this one and I’m wondering what’s the strategies behind this move. Is that the bundle for the SMB market does not sell well? Or is that the new upcoming product will be released the 16th of June 2010 and there might be some changes in the licensing model? I hope so… -:) But for now it’s just my thoughts. One think is sure, this offer will ends 15th of June 2010. In 3 months.

Because right now, when you buy The essentials pack, you basically can’t upgrade to standard or enterprise. You’re stuck with it and if you want to change for having vMotion or DRS you must buy the standard/entreprise package AND the vCenter management server license too, and through away the essential bundle.  The essential bundle is limited to 3 physical servers with 2 CPU each and the vCenter server can only manage 3 physical hosts.

Since for some small shops this is fairly enough, and they will never need more, I witnessed a customer who went through a procedure like I described above and had to re-buy the standard version because there is no upgrade available…

As you can see in the above image, with this promo you get the Essentials pack, not the Essentials plus with High Availability and VMware data recovery – VDR- (backup product). Thus you can buy VDR as a separate product.

50% OFF VMware vSphere 4 Essentials – Buy Now for just $495 (Reg.$995)
VMware vSphere 4 Essentials – Affordable consolidation, availability, and data protection for small offices – 50% off for a limited time. Save $500 on vSphere 4 Essentials Sale Price: $495, Reg. $995. Offer ends: 6/15/2010
Coupon Code: There isn’t any -:)

Source: VMware

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• vSphere for SMB – Small business
• Get 20% off the regular price at TrainSignal CBT courses
• You have your last chance to get some Training with 20% OFF
• vCenter 2.5 update 5 is available
• VMware Data Recovery – part 3 – Restore Your Data

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Vmware for SMB, VMware vSphere 4, vSphere Essentials

Disable or Enable the VMware vSphere Web Access Service.

Why would you want to disable Web Access service? Well, it’s another entry point to your vCenter and you might want to secure that as much as possible, right?

Disable the vSphere Web Access service on vCenter Server

1. On the vCenter Server machine, select Start > Run.
2. Type services.msc and click OK.
3. Stop the VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices service.

1. Right-click VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices and select Properties.
2. In the General tab, select Disabled from the Startup type drop-down menu and click OK.

You can also delete vSphere Web Access from vCenter Server. How to do that?

1. Stop and disable the vSphere Web Access service.
2. Use Windows Explorer to open C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps and delete the ui directory.
3. (Optional) Use Windows Explorer to open C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\work\Catalina\localhost and delete the ui directory.

Source: VMware KB article 1009420

When you installing vCenter on a server where there is IIS installed on the port 80.

If you cannot stop IIS, you may need to install the VirtualCenter Web Service on another set of ports than port 80 and port 443. For more information about VMware application TCP/UDP port usage, see TCP and UDP Ports for vCenter Server, ESX hosts, and other network components management access (1012382).

You might also be interested in those related posts from my website:

• VMware vCenter Mobile Access Technology download
• VMware vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) first look
• 3 New Products for vCenter from VMware released
• How To Shrink VMware Virtual Disk Files and disable shrinking
• How to know where is my VM if vCenter is down?

This post was originaly posted at www.vladan.fr by Vladan SEGET. Do want to learn some more about vSphere? Do it the easy way (smart way) with Train Signal and their great video learning courses. Get the best training course for VMware vSphere 4 today.

You can follow me on Twitter. or see me at Facebook.

Technorati Tags: Disable WebAccess vCenter Server, VMware Disable Web Access