Month: May 2015

Changing Download Directory In VMware Software Manager

Manish Jha

In my last post I have discussed how to install VMware Software Manager and also discussed that the default directory for downloading the VMware products using this software is C:depot.

If you have enough space on your C: drive then its fine, you need not to worry. But if at the installation time you didn’t paid attention on how much free space is there in your C: drive (if it is running low on space) and just went with the default option presented at the time of installation then it can be cause of worry because in near future it can fill up all the space on your C: drive and which can cause unwanted effects on your system.

In this post we will learn how to change the default depot location for VMware Software Manager.

You will not find any option in the web interface to change the download directory after installation, so how do you change it?… Read More

VMware Software Manager- Simplify Your Downloading Needs

Manish Jha

These days it has become hard to keep track of all VMware’s Product Launches, upgrades, hotfixes and new releases.

To make things simpler VMware launched a new program called VMware Software Manager, that can help you track which is the most recent release of its products and more, download them while checking the integrity of them. It is a free product that dramatically simplifies the download of VMware suites and products.

VMware Download Manager was announced at the same time when vSphere 6.0 was announced and it is still in its early phase (version 1.0) and the download catalog is currently limited to the following Datacenter and Cloud infrastructure products:

  • VMware vCloud Suite 6.0, 5.8, and 5.5
  • VMware vSphere w/ Operations Management 6.0 and 5.5
  • VMware vSphere 6.0, 5.5, and 5.1

Advantage of using Software manager over general downloading method:

Easy to Use

Provides an easy to use interface to find, select & download the content needed to install or upgrade a VMware suite with the push of a button

File Integrity Check

Verifies the suite was downloaded without corruption

New Release Detection

Automatically detects the release of new VMware suites, products and versions

System Requirements

To be able to install and use Download Service, you must ensure that your system meets specific operating system and Web browser requirements.… Read More

VMware Project Fargo- A Technique for Rapid Cloning of Running VMS

Manish Jha

Today I was going through a blog and found one very interesting blogpost which I am going to share with you.

At VMworld 2014 VMware announced a very interesting new project called Project Fargo. This is another name for the Project VMFork.

What is this Project Fargo ?

Fargo/VMFork is a platform currently in technology preview which enables a rapid cloning of running VMs.

It lets you quickly spin up linked clones from a VM that’s already running instead of using disk images. Rather than having a master image stored on a virtual hard disk , the base desktop is an actual running VM. When you need to give a user that same desktop, you can just clone that VM instead of booting up a whole other one. The aim of Fargo is to provides a fast, scalable differential clone of a running VM.

fargo1

The key benefits of using this method is that it is instantaneous and can be done from a running VM,  so a new VM spawned would typically take less than 1 second and is in the same running state from where it is cloned.… Read More

Understanding Advanced Snapshot Management

Manish Jha

Deleting virtual machine snapshots without wasting disk space

Before using snapshots on your VM, analyzing free disk space on the VMFS volume is very important.  As a best practice or thumb rule you should have least 20% of the virtual machine’s total disk size as free disk space before using snapshots. But this amount can vary depending upon the type of server or how long you will keep the snapshots or if you are planning to use multiple snapshots.

If you are planning to use snapshots on servers like database servers or file servers the amount of free space that should be present on underlying datastore or VMFS volume will change drastically as comparison to using snapshots on servers like web servers or say DNS server because the amount of data written on disks in case of file or database server is much more than any other type of servers.

More importantly if you are planning to include the memory state of the VM’s with snapshots, you’ll also need to allow for extra disk space equal to amount of RAM assigned to the VM.… Read More

How Snapshots work in VMware

Manish Jha

What is a Snapshot

We have heard this term time and again during our journey with working on VMware and many of us are aware of what it is. Still I am including the formal definition of snapshot as below:

Disk Snapshot in VMware refers to a copy of the virtual machine disk file at a certain point in time. It preserves the disk file system and system memory of your virtual machine by enabling you to revert to the snapshot in case something goes wrong.

Snapshots are very helpful in the cases when you are planning to upgrade or patch your mission critical applications and servers.

When a snapshot is taken on a VM then a new disk file by the name *–delta.vmdk is created in the same folder where VM disks are residing (Unless and until you are not using WorkingDir parameter)

All the write operations are freeze on the original vmdk disk present in your VM and the new write operations will be performed on the newly created delta disk.… Read More

Certificate Manager for vCenter Server Appliance 5.5

Manish Jha

This Fling is a GUI application to replace digital certificates on the vCenter Server Appliance.  Easily deploy by selecting the components that need digital certificates replaced. This Fling works with vCenter Server Appliance 5.5.

The GUI wizard-based tool helps you by:

  • Replacing certificates for vCenter Server, Inventory Service, Log Browzer, and Auto Deploy
  • Providing Single-Sign On (SSO) that uses the same certificate as the vCenter Server certificate
  • Collecting backups of previously deployed certificates and associated files
  • Providing tool level logging

This fling can be downloaded from Here

tool_ui

System Requirements

  • vCenter Server Appliance 5.5
  • Windows OS with Java SE Runtime Environment 8

Instructions for Installing the fling

  • Make sure sshd service is running on vCSA
  • Run this command on vCSA to get the lookup URL: cat /etc/vmware-sso/ls_url.txt
  • On a Windows machine, make sure the  JRE_HOME system variable is set to the Java SE Runtime Environment 8
  • Do NOT place the certificate chain file, key and pfx of various component, on the same directory in file system

Previously deployed certificate files are copied with the old_rui prefix.… Read More