Installing Windows XP in the cloud (VMware vCloud Director)

The first thing you’ll notice in the XP install is that it doesn’t see the default vCloud provided hard drive.  Normally in vSphere, you can mount the Floppy drive with the image on ESX.  In vCloud, assuming you don’t have vSphere console access, you’ll need to copy the file from one of your ESX hosts to your local hard drive, the upload it to the cloud.   You’ll need to use a program such as WinSCP and grab the file from the ESX(i) host /vmimages/floppies/vmscsi.flp.  Once inside of vCloud Directory, go into your Catalogs/Media tab and upload the floppy image.  Assuming you’ve already uploaded your XP ISO into vCloud, mount them both and install away.

Lab Manager API deployment issue

Spent the last few days troubleshooting an issue, initially, we thought it might be a fenced vs. unfenced configuration conflict, but when users try to deploy Lab Manager environments from the API tool we wrote in house, the following error was generated:

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Unable to deploy virtual machines in resource pool "LBM4".

• DRS failed to find hosts to deploy the virtual machines on the resource pool "resgroup-32975".
• DRS failed to find host for virtual machine "049104-DC". vCenter reported: This operation would violate a virtual machine affinity/anti-affinity rule.
• Unable to find host for virtual machine "RuleViolation".
• DRS failed to find host for virtual machine "049105-VCM". vCenter reported: This operation would violate a virtual machine affinity/anti-affinity rule.
• Unable to find host for virtual machine "RuleViolation".
• etc…..

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Since verything worked great from the Lab Manager UI, we knew it must be an API issue, it turns out the answer was that the old script from the Lab Manager 3 days was using the “Do Not Span Hosts” option.

Of course you want to span hosts in Lab Manager 4 !!

vCloud User and Resource Organization

I’ve been struggling with understanding how PvDC’s(Provider vDC), Org vDC’s(Organization vDC), Organizations all relate inside of vCD.  I drew up a graphic that helps me understand, hope it helps you as well.

Click the picture for a full size graphic.  Thanks to our resident vCloud expert @tomralph for helping me understand

vCD (vCloud Director) Provider vDC Setup problem

You click “Add Provider vDC”, then you select your vCenter server, but the clusters you want to add do not show up in the right hand panes under “resource pool” and “VC Path”.  The reason is that you don’t have DRS setup on the clusters, Cloud Director will need that to create the resource pools while setting up the Provider vDC.

R.I.P. my first iPad2 4/4/11 to 7/8/11

Oh how I barely knew you, only a little over 3 months old before you were dropped to you death by my 7 year old daughter on the tile floor.  I always assumed we'd part because you’d get stolen out of my car. Why didn't she break my old iPad1?

Luckily, the story has a happy ending, when googling to find a repair shop, I found a number of people saying that apple had replaced their iPad for free as a one-time-only courtesy.  I went down to my local apple store, they did give me a replacement iPad right there on the spot, with a warning that next time it will cost me $350 to repair it.  Thank you Apple, nice job, very classy move.  I was most likely going to go with a droid tablet next time, now the decision will start out leaning twards and iPad3.

Minimum vCM (VMware vCenter Configuration Manager) 5.4 install

What you’ll need:

1) Hardware and Software Requirements Guide

2) Copy of vCM Software

3) License File

4) SQL 2008 R2 Software

5) SQL XML SP3

6) Windows 2008 R2 Server

7) At least one Domain Service Account

8) Add local hostname & local DC’s to the “hosts” file

9) Turn off IE ESC (at least for administrators)

10) Remote Desktop On & Firewalls Off

11) turn off UAC, enable IIS AD Auth

Can’t modify-edit-save hosts file under 2008 R2

Click on the windows button, then type in “notepad” in the search box, you will see the notepad icon near the top of the window.  Right click it, “run as administrator” then open the file “%windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts” then go ahead and edit it.