Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 34,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Click here !

Enjoy …

Chris

If you are like me then your a contractor . Your company basically doesn’t send you to training . Let me be clear (Don’t I sound like the President ?)this is totally acceptable to me . I never asked anyone for anything in my life and that holds true for training . If you want it bad enough you will get it . I find if you pay for something yourself then chances are your going to do better because you know what you invested in it. It was not given to you.

If your like me you already hold a vcp 4 certification . If you don’t then the decision to get your VCP 4  is a personal one . Check out this blog post which might help you . Take a realistic view .Some or maybe most shops still run 3.5 and have yet to upgrade to 4.X . What are you running at your company  ? If you are very close to getting your 4.X certification then go for it and DO NOT look back. Once you have your VCP 4 you will jump right into getting your VCP 5.

Now if your like me then where do you start ? You basically start a square one . Read as much as you can .Read on a train,Bus,Lunch break but don’t read while driving (Do you want to live LOL) A good thing to do is to print out the Blueprint for the exam . (In this case though its for the beta exam ) To download the blueprint go to VMware site under education services … You should already have your login for this site . Then download the blueprint just like you did for the VCP 4.

Another thing to do is gather your list of bloggers .. these are people who do this stuff 24 /7 . They are your inspiration sort a speak . Chances are they are going to be covering a lot of material . If they work at VMware then chances are the stuff that they are blogging about is prime material (not that the other bloggers don’t have prime material .. That is not what I’m saying !)

Here is a list of whats new in vSphere 5 (Again another link ).

If your like me your busy with your life and your work . In order to achieve this goal your setting for yourself there is going to be some sacrifices to be made . An hour a day of studying is reasonable. Prepare for that mentally . It is harder then your think and NO TIME OFF on weekends . On weekends or your days off you should be building your lab,testing and learning . That is the goal .

But your saying “Chris really come on that is the only time I get to relax “.. My answer is …”Do you really want this ?”

Now if your like me your a VCP 4 and in order to become VCP 5 you can take the exam without taking the What’s New Course (This is until February 29th 2012).  Then it becomes compulsory in order to update your certification. This is something to think about really . I might just go ahead and take the what’s new course will see .

Here is my list of links to some things I have seen so far :

http://vmwaretraining.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-posts-related-to-vsphere-5-release.html (a bunch of links here )

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/ (If you are serious about VMware then follow this blog . )

http://www.boche.net/blog/

Scott Lowe (I bought his Mastering vSphere 4 book and it was awesome I will be buying his new book too)

Hopefully I got you thinking about VCP 5 and maybe got you interested in it as well . Remember if your like me your company is not sending you to training . The What’s new Class is feasible possibly and we have to rely on blogs ,books and trial software . Luckily there is a ton of data on the internet . Choose wisely and be dedicated .. Now would be the time to start putting a plan in place to study .

Till next time …

Chris

First check the video driver . It is recommended of course that you install VMware tools on all of your VM’s. The problem is that the tools don’t load the correct driver . The Standard VGA driver is chosen. This is the reason for the sluggish behavior when you open the VM console .

To fix this browse for the SVGA II driver in the following location :

c:\program files\common files\VMware\Drivers\video

The correct driver will be loaded and will require a reboot .

Done .

I can only confirm this on a Windows 2008 R2 VM . If you have similar experiences with other OS’s please comment

I just received my VMware welcome kit for VCP 4.0 . All I can say is good things comes to those that wait … When I was younger that really meant a lot but now that I’m older …not sure if I have the time anymore .. Can you feel me ?

VMware Certificate

You get the certificate with a nice letter that has your free VMware Workstation 7 permanent Key ..

Nice

Chris

Quick one liner to get the local time of your vmhost . Its good to check to make sure that your host is not out of sync because your VM’s depend on it.

get-vmhost -Name (FQDN of Host ) | % {Get-View $_.ExtensionData.ConfigManager.DateTimeSystem} | %{$_.QueryDateTime().ToLocalTime()}

Happy New Year

Chris

This is different post then usual . I recently got a new TV stand for a 55 inch TV (Samsung un55c8000 ) . I wanted to write a review because its such a beautiful stand. So lets get to it .The box it comes in looks something like this :

TV Stand Box

Next, a picture of all the parts and pieces. The directions say no tools required although you will need a Phillips screwdriver for a couple of screws.

Now each part is labeled with a number . The “5′s” go on the sides . The “6′s” Go on top. Here is a look at what it should look like.

There are 2 long straight pieces that basically support the shelves . The frame is very light but very strong as well .

The next step is attaching the back plate . The back plate is where you slide the 2 shelves in (It has these slots for each shelf ) . Also the 2 holes for cable management. There has been a lot of reviews saying the screw that attaches the back plate doesn’t fit . In my experience I had to put some muscle behind it to start the screw then it got easier. So it does fit.

At this point once you have the frame put together move it close to where your going to install it because the shelves are heavy . They are tempered glass .. Here is a picture :

There are 3 of these : 2 same size ones (the second and bottom Shelf and one large one that sits on top of the stand . )

Here is the finished product . (Sorry its a bit dark )

All in all this is an awesome stand . Very modern and at an awesome price. The box it comes in is heavy so the UPS guy won’t like delivering it to your house but it is all good .

Hope you enjoyed this review.

Chris

Finding out what snapshots you have can be a very important house keeping step to keep your virtual infrastructure running smoothly .

Here is how :

1) Install PowerCLI from here : http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vsphere/automationtools/powercli

2) Launch powercli

3) connect to your vcenter server

connect-VIServer -Server ServerName

4) List snapshots

get-vm | get-snapshots

Have Fun!

Here is the script in its entirety :

Function Process-ComputerObject ($server)
{

# set the date to be used as a limit - 180 days earlier than the current date
$old = (Get-Date).AddDays(-180)

#Disabled Computers OU
$DestOU = "contoso.com/disabled Computers"

#This pipeline creates the report.
Get-QADComputer -Identity $server.Name -IncludedProperties pwdLastSet -SizeLimit 0 | where { $_.pwdLastSet -le $old }|select-object Name,ParentContainer,OperatingSystem,Description,pwdLastSet |Format-Table -AutoSize| Out-File -Append -Width 700 ".\Disabled_Computers.txt"

#This pipeline is to actually Disable the server and move it to the disabled computers OU
Get-QADComputer -Identity $server.Name -IncludedProperties pwdLastSet -SizeLimit 0 | where { $_.pwdLastSet -le $old } |%{ Disable-QADComputer $_ } | %{Move-QADObject $_ -NewParentContainer $DestOU}

}

Function Send-EmailReport ()
{

#Send Mail message
send-mailmessage -from "ServerTeam@contoso.com" -to "Supportperson@contoso.com" -subject "180 Day Stale Computer Object Report.**PLEASE DO NOT REPLY**" -body "Please see the following attached text file for Computer objects that were disabled and moved to the disabled computers OU." -Attachments ".\Disabled_Computers.txt" -smtpServer mysmtpserver

}

####################Entry Point of Script##########################

#Load Quest Cmdlets
Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement

# No Errors shown
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"

#Builds an Array of Ad Computer Objects and Uses the Quest CmdLets.This is where 2 filters are defined.
#One that excludes the OU's that we do not want to search and another that defines the Type of Systems we want to search.
#$Computers is the variable that holds this Array.

$Computers = Get-QADObject -SizeLimit 0 -SearchScope OneLevel |? {$_.Name -ne "Australia"} | ? {$_.Name -ne "Disabled Computers"} | ? {$_.Name -ne "NetIQRecycleBin"} | % {Get-QADComputer -SearchRoot $_.DN -Includedproperties pwdLastSet -sizelimit 0 -OSName 'Windows 2000 Server*','Windows Server 2003*','Windows Server 2008*'}

#Start pipeline
$Computers | %{ `

#Clear Errors
$error.clear()

# Load .net Ping Class Object
$net = New-Object System.Net.NetworkInformation.Ping

#perform ping on Server
$result =$net.send($_.Name)
if ($Error)
{

Process-ComputerObject $_

}

}

#Call the Send-emailmessage function
Send-EmailReport

sleep -Seconds 10

#Delete Text File
del ".\disabled_computers.txt"

Now that you see the script let me explain some of the parts .There are 2 functions : one to process the object and another to send an e-mail to the support team that includes a report attached.

Let’s start at the entry point into the script :

I’m using the Quest cmdlets which are really easy to work with . So that is what I do first is load the PSnappin.
Add-PSSnapin Quest.ActiveRoles.ADManagement

Remember we are going to run this as a scheduled task and want to make sure that the quest ad cmdlets get loaded.

Next is we do not want errors shown . (I may change this in the future) $ErrorActionPreference = “SilentlyContinue”

The next part is a bit tricky .We have a variable $computers . What we are doing is creating a list of OU’s we want to exclude. You might not want to search everyOU.

So we set $computers to get every object on the root level of AD then we build our exclude list : In this case I DO NOT want to search the Australia OU ,Disabled ComputersOU or the NetIQrecyclebin OU.

The rest of the objects pass thru the pipeline. Now I use the Get-QADComputer cmdlet to get computers (only servers in this case) 2000,2003,2008 Servers . I include the pwdlstset property which I’m interested in.

Now $computers is set to go … I start my final pipeline ….

Clear any errors from $error. Load the .net ping class .

I perform a ping on the System to see if its offline . This is important cause you will find some systems like Cluster Names that might have a stale pwdlast set value but they are very much alive and needed . That might be because they haven’t failed over to the other node in a long time. So I want two conditions met (Not online and pwdlastset greater than 180 days.)

If not online then I call the process computer object function.

This function processes the computer object ,disables it if its past 180′s and moves it to the disabled computers OU . I also creates the text file to be used in the report.

Last but not least I call the mail function which uses the send-mailmessage cmdlet .

Hope this helps you fight those stale computer objects in your environment. Now where did I put those peanuts again ?

Hope this helps …. Not a powershell tip but I will research that later.

Chris