Yes, time to update my vSphere 5.5 Toolkit with a few more features and bug fixes. For those of you that need to replace your vSphere 5.5 SSL certificates, the process can be somewhat cumbersome and time consuming. While VMware has a tool to help you replace the certificates once...
The previous 14 installments have all been leading up to this, installing vCenter. Yes, we are finally here. In this post we install vCenter, the windows vSphere client, fix profile driven storage, and configure vCenter to support a clustered SQL database. This post is not the end of the road,...
The vCenter inventory service has two primary purposes in life. First, it's a cache of objects which the web client accesses. This cache enables the offloading of retrieving objects from the vCenter core service (vpxd). This can also lessen the load on your back-end database if the vCenter service isn't...
Now that you understand what type of SSL certificates you need and how many vCenter 5.5 requires, we need to create a Certificate Authority template that will mint proper certificates. You may very well be able to get away with the Microsoft "Web server" template, but it is missing a few...
In this installment of the vSphere 5.5 installation how-to series we cover upgrading ESXi hosts, VMs, and VMFS. As stated in my vCenter 5.5 upgrade post, I'm not going to do a step-by-step screenshot filled posts for upgrades. Why? Too many different deployment types for that to be widely useful. But you do need...
Upgrades can be scary times with any enterprise product. The more your critical infrastructure relies on a particular solution, or set of solutions, the more imperative it is you fully understand and test the new product. vSphere 5.1 taught us that thorough testing cannot be skipped and you should not rush a new product...
Imagine having this dream: You are in the VMware company grocery store where each isle displays a VMware product, shelves fully and neatly stocked with product. You wonder over to the isle labeled 'SSO 5.1'. To your horror you see a huge mess: SSL certs lying all over the floor, incorrectly configured...
At VMworld 2013 in San Francisco VMware unveiled vSphere 5.5, the successor to vSphere 5.1. Customers are now chomping at the bit for vSphere 5.5 upgrade information. Of great anticipation was what VMware did to the vSphere 5.1 SSO service to address common complaints. If you've been living under a rock,...
Twitter:#VSVC4605 This session was a fire hose of the top vSphere 5.5 features. There's a lot that's new in this release, and they've addressed many of the vSphere 5.1 SSO headaches. So if you skipped vSphere 5.1 (like I did) for production environments, then get ready for the vSphere 5.5...