DiscoPosse Review: VMware Cookbook – Matthew Helmke, Ryan Troy – O’Reilly Media

The name sums it up perfectly: “The VMware Cookbook: A Real-World Guide to Effective VMware Use”. This great guide by Matthew Helmke and Ryan Troy is a perfect companion for the novice to intermediate VMware systems administrator. The flow of the subject matter is very organic and in line with what anyone goes through as … Read more

Linked Mode separation? Veeam to the Rescue

Let’s suppose that we have a configuration where our VMware data-centres are geographically separated and we use more than one vCenter instance running in Linked Mode. I’m using this type of configuration in lab and production environments with great success, except there is one distinct drawback. When two VMware data-centres are running with Linked Mode vCenter … Read more

PowerCLI – Globally setting VM Tools time sync and version upgrade options

Recently I was presented with the need to change the time synchronization and VM Tools installation options for a number of VM guest machines. While this is not challenging to do through the UI, I’m a big fan of doing everything possible through PowerCLI. And if you have larger numbers of machines in your VMware … Read more

The art of the shutdown – A PowerCLI adventure

One of the most talked about processes in VMware environments is the process of shutting down. While we strive to create “always on” systems, the reality is that we will at some point have to shut down a vSphere environment for one reason or another. Whether it is a planned event, or if we have … Read more