Few days ago VMware open for public vCenter Log Insight 0.9.1 Beta. Anyone can download and install and configure it in its own environment. What is vCenter Log insight- is a virtual appliance run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 X64. Software collects events from vCenter server and logs from ESXi hosts and helps administrators to analyse and find correlation and dependencies across whole device stack.

Appliance is capable to collect data also from:

• storage and network devices
• Windows and Linux operating systems
• Applications

vCenter Log Insight gives overview across whole datacenter and its components and helps to monitor, identify, find and predict problems much quicker and more efficient way then standard solution. Read more about features.

Installation and configuration

• Download virtual appliance in OVF format from http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-log-insight/overview.html
• Import into vSphere environment
• In network properties specify:
  • IP
  • netmask
  • hostname
  • DNS
  • gateway
• Finish to complete deployment.

After import, power VM on and wait for auto-configuration to complete. On a welcome screen one of the information is IP address on which you can use browser to navigate to start initial configuration

• Browse to IP address visible on the console screen and begin with software configuration
• In less than 10 steps you can configure virtual appliance by:
  • specify new password
  • specify NTP server
  • email notifications
  • connect to vCenter server

Next  step is to enable ssh for root user:

• open virtual machine console from vSphere client
• press Alt+F1 to switch to command prompt
• type root (password is blank)
• system automatically ask for change password for root user

When basic configuration is done one can configure ESXi hosts to send their logs to vCenter Log Insight Appliance

To complete configuration, configure ESXi servers to send logs to vCenter Log Insight Appliance.

• Log in to appliance via ssh
• execute script ./configure-esxi which will configure hypervisor to send its logs to appliance

configure-esxi --username 'my-vc-user' --server myvc.mydomain.com --target udp://loginsight.mydomain.com

Events Dashboard

• Download PFSense ISO from PFSense repository, in fact is a LiveCD with option to install on disk.
• Create virtual machine with following:
  • 1GB RAM
  • OS base line – FreeBSD 64bit (if you downloaded 64bit version, otherwise choose FreeBSD 32 bit
  • at least 2vNIC, one connected to “WAN” network and one connected to “LAN” network.
  • 4GB disk drive

• Mount ISO to VM and boot it from CD
• On a welcome screen choose Default option [1]

PfSense boot screen

• On a first boot configuration wizard ask for configure networking:
  • if you do guest tagging specify vLAN ID, otherwise type n
  • decide which vNIC is connected to WAN – in my case em1 network was connected to external network called WAN01.
  • and which one to LAN network, in my scenarion – em1 was connected to network called LAN01

PFsense network card assigment

• After initial networking configuration, main configuration menu appears
• Choose second option and onfigure IP addresses for LAN and WAN interfaces accordingly to your network topology

PFsense main configuration menu

When network configuration is ready, let’s install PFsense on virtual machine hard disk

• From main configuration menu choose 99 and proceed with PFSense installation.
• Choose between advance or simple installation, I choose simple
• Verify console settings

PFsense installation console config

• Next screen choose between standard kernel and embedded kernel

install kernel

• Wait until installation complete, after reboot login to webtool to administer firewall. default credentials for web interface are:
  • username: admin
  • password: pfsense

default username and password

web management interface

Features:

• management web interface
• router
• firewall
• network load balancer
• VPN:
  • IPSec
  • OpenVPN
  • PPTP
  • L2TP
• DHCP server
• DHCP relay
• DNS forwarder
• DynamicDNS support for most of the main providers.
• Traffic shaper

and many, many more. For full list of features check pfSense website.

pfsense summary screen

In the next few days I will blog out couple of post about deployment and basic configuration.

1. PFSense homelab firewall – Part2 – installation

Full list of nominated vExperts in 2013

From Poland this year 7 experts got nominated, Polish vExperts crew is growing

1. Grzegorz Kulikowski @psvmware
2. Maciej Lelusz @maciejlelusz
3. Piotr Masztafiak @pmaszt
4. Remigiusz Mikula @remik72
5. Marek Zdrojewski @MarekDotZ
6. Artur Krzywdzinski @artur_ka
7. Karol Boguniewicz

Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
#variables
$VC='vcenter-server-FQDN-or-IP'

#import credentials
$pwd = Get-Content D:\tools\scripts\ap-vcs-credentials | ConvertTo-SecureString
$credentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PsCredential “username“, $pwd
#Connect to vCenter
Connect-VIServer -Server $VC
$sourceVM = 'test01'

#in $respool you can specify ESX host, cluster or resource pool
$respool=Get-VMhost -Name "ESXi host name"
$datastore=Get-datastore -Name 'datastore name'
$cloneName = $sourceVM+'-01'
#Remove second copy of VM
Remove-VM $sourceVM'-02' -Confirm:$false -DeletePermanently:$true
#Rename latest VM copy
Get-VM -Name $sourceVM'-01' | Set-VM -Name $sourceVM'-02' -confirm:$false
#Clone VM
if(New-VM -Name $cloneName -VM $sourceVM -ResourcePool $respool -Datastore $datastore -DiskStorageFormat Thin ){"DONE"}else{"Something wrong with cloning"}
Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

What’s new:

• Support for virtual machine hardware version 9
• Guest operating system support for Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012
• Guest operating system support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
• Support for virtual and physical machine sources with GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks
• Support for virtual and physical machine sources with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)
• Support for EXT4 file system

• Release notes
• Download VMware converter 5.1

This release of VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1a offers the following improvements:

• vCenter Server is now supported on Windows Server 2012
• Additional vCenter Server Database Support: vCenter Server now supports the following databases.
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2
• Additional Guest Operating System Customization Support - vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
  • Windows 8
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Ubuntu12.04
  • RHEL 5.9

• Download vSphere 5.1 U1a
• Release notes

Export

Get-VM | ForEach-Object {
$VM = $_
$VM | Get-Annotation |`
ForEach-Object {
$Report = "" | Select-Object VM,Name,Value
$Report.VM = $VM.Name
$Report.Name = $_.Name
$Report.Value = $_.Value
$Report
}
} | Export-Csv -Path D:\VMAnnotations.csv -NoTypeInformation

Import

Import-Csv -Path D:\VMAnnotations.csv | Where-Object {$_.Value} | ForEach-Object {
Get-VM $_.VM | Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute $_.Name -Value $_.Value
} 

Source: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/325475

vCloud Director

Using the vCD API, Veeam will display the vCD infrastructure directly in Veeam Backup & Replication™, backup all vApp metadata and attributes, restore vApps and VMs directly to vCD, and support restore of fast-provisioned VMs.

vSphere Web Client

Monitor backups and backup infrastructure directly from vSphere, identify unprotected VMs, and simplify capacity planning.

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint provides instant visibility into SharePoint backups, advanced search capabilities, and quick recovery of individual SharePoint items.

Virtual Lab for Hyper-V

Archive to Tape

Archive to Tape provides another option for archiving Veeam backups – disk, cloud and tape. It supports virtual tape libraries (VTLs), tape libraries and standalone drives. And, it’s fully integrated into Veeam Backup & Replication and tracks VMs and restore points across tapes, making restores simple

Enhanced 1-Click Restore

Self-service recovery of VMs and guest files

Virtual Lab for Replicas

Reduce risk and put your replicas to work

SureReplica lets you automatically verify every restore point in every replica, and Virtual Lab for Replicas also delivers fastest agent-free recovery of application objects (U-AIR) and On-Demand Sandboxes for testing, training and troubleshooting.

Backup from Storage Snapshots

Dramatically Improve RPOs

Make backups and replicas as often as every 5 minutes – even during business hours – with no impact on the production environment and running VMs.

Built-in WAN Acceleration

Get backups offsite 50x faster

Remove the hurdles to offsite storage with automated, agent-free backup copy jobs and built-in WAN acceleration.

1. When host profiles was applied, ESXi host lost completely it’s networking configuration (IP, management interfaces). I couldn’t restore networking from DCUI (error message: Management network interface cannot be found), the only way to restore functionality of DCUI was reset to default settings from DCUI.
   
2. When hosts profiles was applied, ESXi host lost IP configuration and all option in DCUI to manage networking were greyed out the only way to restore networking configuration was to restore networking configuration via DCUI

Work around for first problem.

This problem was caused by IPv6. Disable IPv6 on host profile reference host, update host profile and problem solved.

Work around for second problem.

Problem comes fromVMware kernel assignment order. In my case in host profiles vMotion interface above management interface. Delete vMotion portgroup or any other portgroup which is before management portgroup and recreate it manually.

Make sure that vmknic name in management portgroup is set to vmk0