Data on K8s, Containers and more
Want to change the Service Console IP address from the command line real quick like?
esxcfg-vswif -i [new IP] -n [netmask] [vswif]
example (as root)
esxcfg-vswif -i 172.25.100.92 -n 255.255.255.0 vswif0
Q: How do I know what is my vswif?
A: esxcfg-vswif -l
output
you can also use esxcfg-vswif -l to verify the ip of your service console.
A good reference is also available here.
As are the times, my employer has decided to move their focus in another direction. It was never firmly on the Virtualization industry, so I guess I could see it coming when things were getting tight.
So I write today to inform the world I am considering all offers. I have a passport so I am not against going international. I enjoyed my trips to the UK and Dubai, I have lived in Southern California and “The South” (Memphis). So I can fit in just about anywhere.
Now I don’t think having a VCP uniquely qualifies me for any job. I just thought it would be a clever title, and it does mean something, I guess. I have almost 13 years experience in the IT field. Started as a help desk associate at USC in September 1996. I had the fun time of supporting PC’s, Apples, and Unix for the entire University user community. I then moved to Memphis and started on the help desk for an investment firm here in town. Worked my way up to a Citrix Administrator role then left to become the Network Administrator for another company here in town. All of my experience led me to a position with my last company doing pre-sales, Design, implementation and management of VMware, Cisco and SAN products. I don’t know everything, but I can immediately help any organization.
I am looking now for a position Promoting, Designing, Implementing VMware in Enterprise environments. I would love to live near family in Southern California or Memphis Tennessee, but that is not a requirement.
The other idea is to take 2Vcps to it full potential. I just need some support until it gets off the ground.
So for the time being I am sending this to let the word get out. Thanks to everyone for their kind words. I know this is going to become a greater opportunity then I can imagine.
Contact me at jowings@2vcps.com if you want more information.
UPDATE: Eric Siebert wrote an almost identical article here for techtarget. Since I don’t want people to think I just lift ideas from other blogs I would like to credit this article at the top. Although I have been using this procedure for nearly 2 years for snapshots. I would like to say I didn’t see his article before I posted mine. Next time I will do more googling. I try to keep this blog from regurgitating ideas that can be found elsewhere.
Do you ever have to commit gigantic snapshots that the vCenter client times out before it is finished. After the initial panic a while ago I learned the snapshots continue to delete even if the client times out. So how do you know what they are finished?
Answer ssh in the service console and look.
A ‘ls’ of a normal virtual machine:
A ‘ls’ of the vm with a snapshot:
Now a try – watch -n 30 ‘ls -alh’
This will re-run the ls -alh command every 30 seconds.
In action:
Now if you VI Client times out you can leave this window running so you will know the snapshots are gone when the vmdk with the “delta” in the filename are gone.
Notice the additional delta files that appear. When deleting snapshots the vCenter will create a new delta file for changes that occur during the delete of the original delta. Then it deletes this new delta. I know I know an awesome video. I really like playing with Jing though.
The watch command can be used with an linux command you want to repeat over and over and over.
When I first started out in College I needed a work study job. Since I liked to help people with their computer problems I applied and was hired for a position doing phone and in person support for the University. One of the best things about starting out at a school they don’t mind teaching. Our trainer said that in previous years new employees would be slotted into being Windows or Mac or UNIX support. He said we would be Wunder-Cons (our title was consultant instead of help desk dude). We had the privilege of having to support all of it. This thrust me into the world IT no matter what the piece of paper from USC said I was a Bachelor of.
I believe a new kind of Wunder-Consultant/Engineer is being made. With the announcement of the Nexus 1000v last fall the line between Network Engineer and Datacenter/Server Engineer is getting blurred. The SAN and Server Engineers have had this tension for a while now. Virtualization is a fun technology to learn but who gets the responsibility? I have seen where the SAN team owns the ESX’s and the Server team operates the VM’s like they are physical. The Network team not trusting or understanding why they want a bunch of 1GigE trunk ports. Across larger organizations it would look different but the struggle may be just the same. Who is in control of the VM’s? Are they secure? Who gets called at 1am when something dies? This is internal to the IT department and does not consider that Sales doesn’t want to share memory with accounting.
I can see these technologies pushing engineers into being jacks of all trades. To be a truly Architect level in VMware today you must be awesome with storage and servers. You have to be able to SSH into an ESX, choose the right storage for an application, and setup templates of Windows 2003. That is an easy day. You already will have to troubleshoot IO (because all problems get blamed on the virtualization first).
With the Nexus 1000v I picture the Virtualization Admins learning the skills to configure and troubleshoot route/switch inside and outside the Virtual Infrastructure. Add to that Cisco’s push this year with 10GigE and FCoE and their own embedded virtualization products. The lines between job duties are getting blown away.
Who is poised to become the experts in this realm? The network, server or storage admins? In this economy it may be good to know how to do all three jobs. I am sure corporations would love to pay just one salary to perform these tasks.
Randomly I though how would this relate to SOX? Could it pose any problems with compliance? I will save that for next time.
Do not forget (mostly a note to myself) the Virtualization Security Roundtable.
The release of this article at You had me at EHLO (aka Exchange blog team) and the previous links from VMware’s Virtualized Exchange discussions. Seems to be almost too coincidental that Microsoft’s Exchange blog published an article about virtualizing Exchange on Hyper-V a few days after VMware mades posts and hosted a discussion concerning Exchange. Microsoft’s conclusion is also completely contradictory from VMware’s findings. One says only do this in small environments, the other says we just virtualized 16,000 mailboxes and it is great. First thought is someone is misleading the reading public.
Then my profound (at least in my own mind) thought was no this makes total sense. Microsoft admits that Hyper-V is unable to run Exchange 2007 at an Enterprise level, but it is fine for small offices. VMware (and many storage partners) has proven Exchange can run just fine for large environments in ESX.
So the conclusion for today is this:
1. Hyper-V is not ready. (I am not the first person to say this.) Not just because they can not live migrate a VM. Hyper-V will have to live in the lab for a while longer.
2. VMware ESX is able to live in production environments for the big and small. It would seem VMware is still years ahead of the big guns at MS. So 2009 might not be the year for VMware to watch out for Microsoft. Maybe 2011.
I know, about 9 other people already posted Alan Renouf’s list of virtualization people to follow in twitter. The really cool thing is the powershell script to add everyone. I promise I was going to mention it even before I was added to the list. Now that @2vcps made the list it just seems like shameless self promotion. Oh well.
Great work Alan with help from MindofRoot and thanks for making the list.
*Alan, thanks for pointing out my error…
The VMware vExpert program was announced today. I could think of many people in the vCommunity (you know the name is coming) that would easily get this award (at least in my opinion). I will admit I do not know everything and from this website it is easy to discern that very fact.
When I have a problem with anything virtual, it is very rare to not find an answer in the forums or one the many blogs. So much good information out there. So I would like to say thank you and keep being awesome.
Photo from BeAwesomeInstead