Wednesday, 26 February 2014

new vCheck plugin: Orphaned VMDK File (v0.1)

What is an orphaned VMDK file?

I believe that it really depends on your perspective, or in this case the vCenter Server's. I would suggest that a file is orphaned (at least from the perception of a given vCenter) when it (the vCenter) is not aware of what purpose the VMDK file serves; or, to which virtual machine it belongs. This does not always hold true, but that's my general explanation.

Saturday, 22 February 2014

has it been five months already?

Yes, it has been five months now since I began this journey as a newbie blogger with my site empiricvirtualization.com - wow, how the time has flown by! I chose the word empiric because it aptly describes my mission to share some of my hands-on knowledge and experiences. I’ve had the privilege to share some fairly unique posts with you (i.e. the hunt for the elusive dvSwitch config, and my virtualized OpenVPN server), and also become more active in the virtualization and tech communities.

I’d like to say a big THANK YOU to my readers and followers; because, it really is you that motivates me to keep blogging, even though the time required can be rather elusive. It is my intention to continue to deliver unique and educational content, and to start new conversations.

Have you enjoyed these posts? Is there a topic that you would like me to write about? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Here is a sneak peak at some upcoming posts:

  • vCenter 5.5 Gotchas
    • This post will cover some of my experiences deploying vCenter and Site Recovery Manager 5.5, some of the issues I encountered, and how I successfully overcame them.
  • Deploying an OpenVPN Server on my Raspberri Pi
    • This is the fourth installment in the DIY home VPN experiment series. This post will discuss my OpenVPN deployment using my Raspberri Pi running Pidora.

If you enjoy this content, or other virtualization blogs, please consider voting in VSphere-Land's 2014 Top VMware & Virtualization Blogs  and support the #vCommunity. 

Keep on virtualizing!

Friday, 21 February 2014

new vCheck plugin: SRM RPO Violation Report (v0.2)

Updated: February 26, 2014.

Have you ever tried working with vCenter Site Recovery Manager’s built-in alarms? How about recovery point objective (RPO) violations? I have, and I quickly grew frustrated by the number of e-mails - essentially, false alarms - that I was receiving. When an RPO was exceeded - even by one minute - an alert would be triggered. While the alarms were technically valid, when you are protecting multiple VMs, and brief RPO violations occur frequently in SRM … well, you get the picture. Overwhelmed by these seemingly non-important alerts - "the boy who cried wolf" - they quickly became ignored. I needed a way to adjust, and fine-tune the RPO violation alerts so that I wouldn't miss something important.

Thursday, 13 February 2014

the DIY home VPN experiment (part three - my virtualized OpenVPN server)

Part Three: My Virtualized OpenVPN Server

Overview

In this post, I'd like to share my most recent home lab project - a nested OpenVPN server. I refer to it as nested, because it is running completely within my desktop computer. See the illustration below.

The idea for this project came along when I working on setting up a VPN with my older Linksys router. Basically, I wanted to come up with a way to run a home lab VPN server without requiring any additional hardware, and I wanted to incorporate virtualization into this project. In addition, running it as a VM allows for fairly safe and controlled experimentation, without running the risk of bricking one's router with non-standard firmware.