VM-Aware

Duncan Epping of yellowbricks has written many excellent articles in his time, but I have recently needed to check the free disk space of VMFS volumes at regular intervals and Duncan came to the rescue.

Check this article for a script that will check the disk space of all VMFS volumes and format the results into a nice table. Then check this post to find out how to email it to yourself every day at 10am.

Really excellent stuff.

The Desktop Virtualization blog have posted a handy article on how to change the root password if you have forgotten/lost/mislaid it.

Check it out here.

Following a request on a previous post, I have written this post about how to change the timezone of an ESX host from the command line.

* - None of the below requires an ESX host reboot.

Check the current timezone using the following command:

cat /etc/sysconfig/clock (more…)

One of the great new bits of functionality in ESX 3.5 Update is the ability to hot extend non-boot virtual disks without shutting down the VM.

I decided to give it a go with a Windows 2003 Standard VM and thought I’d provide a How To for anyone that might need/want it.

You can download the pdf here.  It is the first version of the document so please feel free to comment and let me know how to improve it.

I’m working on a Linux equivalent, but to be honest, I have never tried this before in Linux so it might be a while until the Tech Note appears

VMware have recently announced an update to 3.5 & ESXi. Normally VMware slip a few cool features into interim releases, but nothing as major as the inclusions in Update 2. Here’s an overview of some of the major functionality additions.

• VSS quiescing support - Windows 2003 VMs now have application & file system level VSS support via VMware tools.
• Hot Virtual Extend Support - This will allow virtual disks that are running out of disk space to be increased on the fly while the VM is running
• iSCSI & NFS over 10GB Ethernet
• Live Cloning of Virtual Machines - This means that instead of having to power off a machine to clone it, this can now be done while the machine is turned on. Possibly a fore-runner to continuous availability?

All of these features have a massive impact on the way VMs are used and administered and take another leap away from Microsoft in terms of functionality.

I can’t wait to see what will be included in ESX4.

Virtualization.info reported today that VMware will give ESXi away completely free.

I have no idea how much revenue was brought in by ESXi, but I’d imagine compared to ESX proper it was a small proportion.  Nonetheless it is going to be a big shot in the arm for virtualisation proliferation.

A great move I think, as it will cause Microsoft a little concern that companies will use this as a shoe in to a far superior product.

It’s not free yet, but should be at the end of the month, according to virtualization.info.