PowerCLI Resources

VMware have just released a PowerCLI session from VMworld.

I was also alerted by the excellent VMreference site to the existence of a PowerCLI reference card which is equivalent of the VM reference Card.

VI Internals has a pretty decent introduction to PowerCLI.

Extending the Disk of a VM

Apparently the only safe way/time to extend the size of a virtual machine's disk(s) is when you do not have a snapshot of the disk.

Through the VIC, you are prevented from increasing the size of a vmdk file. When the VM is running all options are greyed out. Via the command line on the server, you can still enter the vmkfstools -X command.

However, according to VMware support, as soon as you enter that command on a disk that has a snapshot you've completely hosed your VM!

Better have a good backup! Preferably a recent one.

I'm glad to say I didn't discover this first hand. Some colleagues of mine did. I just had to clear up their mess. So it goes!

Well, that's that.

IIS FTP Accounts

I had an interesting problem with the Default FTP Site on an IIS server. Perhaps at the time, I was thinking frustrating, not interesting!

The root directory had been created and had been selected by browsing to it in the Properties page. In this example, lets call it d:\ftproot

A whole group of us were logging in as the main user of this ftp service. Every time it went into a sub-directory of the root directory. I changed the configuration to allow anonymous login, which logged in to the FTP root directory. 

It took a shamefully long time to realise that the sub-directory had the same name as the account logging in.

It seems that FTP accounts with the same name as a directory in the FTP root directory will be  handled as though that directory is the account's Home Directory. We resolved the problems just by re-naming the sub-directory. D'Oh!

I had the devil of a job finding anything on Google before realising this was a home directory issue. Actually even after realising it, Google failed me. Not a situation I'm familiar with, I must admit.

RVTools #7 version 2.5

I just surfed by the robware.net and saw there was a new version of RVTools.

There has been quite a lot of changes. In a juvenile way the change I'm most glad to see is that it will no longer be necessary to uninstall before upgrading! Huzzah!

There is a lot of new functionality, which I'm looking forward to exploring when I get back to work. The vHealth tab looks like it could be useful. And there've been a number of small amendments to some of the other tabs too.

RVTools was already very impressive, but it is now even more so.

LOL

I've just seen the 99 bottles of beer website.

Much respect!

VMware & Changes on the PCI bus

All the ESX servers at work are IBMs. In fact most all the x86 servers in the datacentre are IBMs. Heck, even quite a lot of our training is sourced through IBM.

I thought I had blogged about vmnics changing ID/name earlier on in the same manner as on this blog from SysAdminHell, but must have been mistaken. One of my first (bad) experiences with ESX was having to go in and undertake the same procedures as in that blog.

That blog entry only suggests that moving the physical NIC card causes the problem. My experience is that any change on the PCI bus can cause the vmnics to be renamed.

Perhaps that is only a problem with IBMs. Or perhaps not!

RVTools #6 version 2.4.1

Yet another new version! WooHoo!

This one is just a bugfix for the filtering features, where the absense of a cluster could cause a crash  if the right (?! wrong ?!) circumstances.