Why you should register for one of the last seats available at #vmugbe

by | Jun 4, 2019 | VMUG

What does the VMware User Group means to me?

Well it is already more than a decade ago since I visited my first VMUGBE. I have seen the event grow from 15 visitors to more than 200. The last couple of years it is hosted in the LAMOT event center in Mechelen which is a superb venue. Ever since the first time I only missed a couple due to other obligations but when I attended I took home a lot of info, knowledge and new visions. Going to VMUGBE throughout the years have made me grow due to the sessions and the peers available.

A couple of years ago I met @kim_bottu who engaged me in becoming a #vExpert. Now two years in a row I am awarded being part of this vExpert community and VMUGBE facilitated this in a way. A lot of the Belgian vExperts come year after year and are very open people ready to chat.

These are a couple of the vExperts that will be attending this year:

  • Erik Schils
  • Stijn Depril
  • Tom Vallons
  • Maarten Van Driessen
  • Frederiek Van Hoornick
  • Luc Dekens
  • Jose Cavalheri
  • Maarten Caus
  • Niels Engelen
  • Alain Geenrits
  • Jurgen Van de Perre
  • Wouter Kursten
  • Hans Kraaijeveld
  • Johan Van Amersfoort
  • Harold Preyers
  • and …

Why should you attend?

It is a FREE #vCommunity networking event with top speakers. There is top relevant content available from CNA to Horizon View and VMware Cloud on AWS to VMware Blockchain and IOT. It is all VMware related and there is some marketing stuff yes (which make the event FREE) but most is community driven and real world examples.

There are 16 sessions in total, 3 parallel tracks with 4 sessions in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. There will be a small breakfast, a free lunch, a free BBQ and a chance to win a smartphone.

What sessions am I looking forward to?

Maarten Van Driessen (@mvandriessen) will share his knowledge from the field about VVOLS. I have never worked with VVOLS so I’m curious. My lab has Synology based storage and sadly Synology does not support VVOLS. I’m personally looking forward to this session.

Maarten is blogging at brisk-it.net

https://www.vmug.be/sessions/unlocking-the-power-of-spbm-with-traditional-storage-arrays/

Our very own Luc Dekens (@lucd) will tell you about PowerCLI. If you have ever done anything with PowerCLI then you must have found his blog. Even if you know everything about PowerCLI this is a session to attend. I have been at several Luc his sessions at VMworld and the info provided gave me new insights about challenges I had.

Luc is blogging at lucd.info

https://www.vmug.be/sessions/powercli-the-power-of-code/

Johan van Amersfoort (@vhojan) is an easy to listen to speaker which has his session right after lunch. He will tell about a project where they used the VDI infrastructure to do a whole other thing during the nighttime. It is the only session in that timeframe and it is sponsored but you’ll not want to miss out on this session. Myself, I missed this session twice at NLVMUG and at VMware EMPOWER so I am glad I don’t have to choose between sessions now. Third time is a charm.

Johan is blogging at vhojan.nl

https://www.vmug.be/sessions/sponsor-itq-vdi-by-day-compete-by-night/

Last but not least the #vExpert Community session led by Stijn Depril (@sdepril). This sessions is one of the last sessions and will try to highlight why you should become a #vExpert. I will be on the #vExpert panel during this session so if you want to see me sweat (it is my first public speaking session) you should attend this session. We will share a lot of personal views and insights during this session.

Stijn is blogging at vmusketeers.com

https://www.vmug.be/sessions/vexpert-community-session/

I could go highlight a lot more sessions but that content is all available on https://www.vmug.be/

Key takeaways and tips:

Be there on time as the opening keynote speaker is Joe Baguley (@joebaguley) from VMware and last year it was a cool story to hear.

If you are attend, take the time to come to speak to me. I still am a shy guy.

Step out of your comfort zone, take your lunch to a table and start to chat.

Knowledge is about sharing.

Thanks:

I want to thank @erikschils for all his efforts in organising the VMUGBE all these years.

I also want to thank those who have attended the previous VMUGBE events and those who will be attending this year. You are the ones that make these events a success.

Registration:

Register now

Horizon Client Installer Failed

by | Feb 7, 2019 | Horizon, VMware

Adding the following symlinks made the failure message go away. I’m wondering though if the packages get updated in the repositories whether this will break the Multimedia Redirection (MMR). I guess I’ll notice some day.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstbase-1.0.so.0.1401.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstbase-0.10.so.0

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstreamer-1.0.so.0.1401.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstapp-1.0.so.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstapp-0.10.so.0

Through https://communities.vmware.com I found
https://www.werts.nl/vmware-view-horizon-client-for-linux-on-ubuntu-18-04-failed/

Reconfigure diagnostic partition using Get-EsxCli -V2

by | Nov 2, 2018 | ESXi, PowerCLI, VMware

The following powershell snippet is going to unconfigure the diagnostic coredump partition using the esxcli version 2 cmdlet. The second part will reconfigure the diagnostic partition with the ‘smart’ option so that an accessible partition is chosen.

If you want to configure a new diagnostic partition the you will find the necessary information in the following VMware knowledge base article: Configuring a diagnostic coredump partition on an ESXi 5.x/6.x host (2004299). There will be additional steps to supply the partition id.

The following powershell snippet is going to unconfigure the diagnostic coredump partition using the esxcli version 2 cmdlet. The second part will reconfigure the diagnostic partition with the ‘smart’ option so that an accessible partition is chosen.

If you want to configure a new diagnostic partition the you will find the necessary information in the following VMware knowledge base article: Configuring a diagnostic coredump partition on an ESXi 5.x/6.x host (2004299). There will be additional steps to supply the partition id.

$srv = Get-VMHost ESXiHost
$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost $srv -V2
$arg = $esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.CreateArgs()
$arg.unconfigure = "true"
$esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.Invoke($arg)
$arg = $esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.CreateArgs()
$arg.unconfigure = "false"
$arg.enable = "true"
$arg.smart = "true"
$esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.Invoke($arg)

First we connect to the esxi host directly and insert the connection details in the variable $srv:

$srv = Get-VMHost ESXiHost

Then we create a esxcli object $esxcli using the variable $srv we created previously:

$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -VMHost $srv -V2

Now we create a variable $arg to store the arguments we will provide later:

$arg = $esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.CreateArgs()

Setting the $arg property ‘unconfigure’ to true will deactivate the diagnostic partition:

$arg.unconfigure = "true

The invoke command will invoke the command remotely on the esxi host. After execution the diagnostic partition is deactivated:

$esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.Invoke($arg)

The second part starts with creating a new set of arguments:

$arg = $esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.CreateArgs()

Reactivate the coredump, because we deactivated it before:

$arg.unconfigure = "false"

Enable the coredump partition:

$arg.enable = "true"

The ‘smart’ property will try to use an accessible partition:

$arg.smart = "true"

The last argument will configure the diagnostic partition using the supplied parameters:

$esxcli.system.coredump.partition.set.Invoke($arg)

Configuring Tesla M60 cards for NVIDIA GRID vGPU

by | Sep 17, 2018 | ESXi, Horizon, NVIDIA GRID, VMware, vSphere

There are a couple of steps which need to be taken to configure the Tesla M60 cards with NVIDIA GRID VGPU in a vSphere / Horizon environment. I have listed them here quick and dirty. They are an extract of the NVIDIA Virtual GPU Software User Guide.

  • On the host(s):
    • Install the vib
      • esxcli software vib install -v directory/NVIDIA-vGPUVMware_ESXi_6.0_Host_Driver_390.72-1OEM.600.0.0.2159203.vib
    • Reboot the host(s)
    • Check if the module is loaded
      • vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia
    • Run the nvidia-smi command to verify the correct communictation with the device
    • Configuring Suspend and Resume for VMware vSphere
      • esxcli system module parameters set -m nvidia -p “NVreg_RegistryDwords=RMEnableVgpuMigration=1”
    • Reboot the host
    • Confirm that suspend and resume is configured
      • dmesg | grep NVRM
    • Check that the default graphics type is set to shared direct
    • If the graphics type were not set to shared direct, execute the following commands to stop and start the xorg and nv-hostengine services
      • /etc/init.d/xorg stop
      • nv-hostengine -t
      • nv-hostengine -d
      • /etc/init.d/xorg start
  • On the VM / Parent VM:
    • Configure the VM, beware that once the vGPU is configured that the console of the VM will not be visible/accessible through the vSphere Client. An alternate access method should already be foreseen
    • Edit the VM configuration to add a shared pci device, verify that NVIDIA GRID vGPU is selected
    • Choose the vGPU profile
      more info on the profiles can be found here under section ‘1.4.1 Virtual GPU Types’: https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/6.0/grid-vgpu-user-guide/index.html
    • Reserve all guest memory
  • On the Horizon pool
    • Configure the pool to use the NVIDIA GRID vGPU as 3D Renderer

Unsupported upgrade of VCSA 6.5 U2 to 6.7

by | Jun 28, 2018 | Upgrade, vCenter, VMware, vSphere

We will upgrade the vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 U2 to 6.7 though it is not supported. As this is not supported you will NOT want go ahead with this in a production environment. Maybe I will have regrets later on too … but this is my lab environment so the alternative is to redeploy a new VCSA.

I have applied the following knowledge base articles on the source VCSA

The first KB was applied because the installer is failing due to a lack of disk space on the source appliance. The installer gives the opportunity to supply a location on the source VCSA to export the necessary files that facilitate the upgrade.

The second KB was applied because the VMware Directory failed during the firstboot phase after the upgrade succeeded.

I downloaded the sources for VCSA 6.7.0 but had to go and download the sources for VCSA 6.7.0a. The VCSA 6.7.0 sources stalled at 5% on VMware Identity Management Service.

I also went to change the root password expiration to no and set the administrator@vsphere.local account password to only include alphabet characters.

The installer will also fail after the first phase if the VAMI port is not reachable, the first phase will finish succesfully though. I forgot to add an exception to my firewall. You can then continue the installer by going to the VAMI interface on port 5480.