Here’s a quick post on installing VMware Tools inside Windows Server 8 Core Beta (Note the Tools version this was tested against is the version that is available via ESXi 5 Build 515841): Mount the VMware Tools installer for the VM and switch to the CD-Rom drive. (Note: the screenshots below show a session where I was already running PowerShell, not cmd.exe) Run setup. Work through the wizard, selecting the appropriate options: Alternatively, you could use some of the command line options for installing VMware Tools, e.

Reminder: this post is based around a beta version of a product and obviously subject to changes before RTM. The release of Windows Server 8 Beta coincided with the need to build out a new homelab environment. I decided it would be a good opportunity to see how far I could use the Server Core deployment option (which is now the preferred choice in the install) and what issues I would come up against.

If you’re running your vSphere deployment on HP kit then there’s a pretty good chance you use the HP Customized ISO Image for installation, for example this one for ESXi 4.1 U1. These customised images typically contain HP management tools and drivers and are great for saving time during the installation process. Naturally you will be upgrading ESXi at some point, but it’s important that you also keep the HP part up-to-date too.

I remember back to a London VMUG long ago a presentation about differences to watch out for between ESX and ESXi during the version 3.5 days. The one that got most people looking around at each other saying “oops, I don’t think we knew that” was configuring a Syslog server for your ESXi servers. vCenter 5 now includes it’s own built in Syslog server so there’s no excuse. Alternatives, such as Kiwi Syslog Server, are available if you don’t want to use the vCenter 5 syslog server.

OK, bit of an obscure one this, but if you have the issue then hopefully this will help you. While attemping to install KB2638806 on Windows Server 2003 Clusters I consistently received the below error: “Unable to find a volume for file extraction. Please verify you have the proper permissions.” The cluster node had been cleared of resources and rebooted prior to patching, however the patch would not install. After some troubleshooting it turned out that an additional step of stopping the Cluster service on the affected node allowed the patch to be installed.

During last week’s VMware PEX event the vCloud Client for the iPad was released. I have access to a few VMs hosted in a public vCloud Directory deployment thanks to the guys at Stratogen, which I use from time to time. Up till now, while I can access these VMs on my iPad via RDP with something like the PocketCloud App from Wyse, the web browser interface for the management of these VMs through vCloud Director was not supported through the Safari browser.

VMUG, vBeers, vLunch….whatever the occasion, there are always some great conversations and I particularly enjoy finding out what other people are up to in their environments. During vLunch last week, I was talking with Ed Grigson and he asked whether it was possible to use PowerCLI to remove vCenter Plugins that have got into an orphaned state, i.e. the uninstall process did not remove the vCenter plugin. VMware KB article 1025360 details a process whereby you can clean these up by navigating to the vCenter Server with a web browser.

The WMI Class Win32_OperatingSystem Caption property returns the particular version of Windows, e.g.: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise or Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003, Enterprise Edition I had a requirement when querying this via PowerShell to take different actions based on whether the OS was some flavour of 2003 or 2008 and was using the following switch statement : switch ($OperatingSystem.Caption) { "Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise" {$OSBuild = "2008"; break} "Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003, Enterprise Edition" {$OSBuild = "2003"; break} "Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server 2003, Standard Edition" {$OSBuild = "2003"; break} default {$OSBuild = "Unknown"} } However, when querying a 2008 R2 server $OperatingSystem.

The vCheck PowerCLI script from Alan Renouf is one of the most popular scripts for managing vSphere with PowerCLI. Its an amazing piece of work and I think has in its own small way helped the success of PowerCLI itself, by showing the kind of information it is possible to retrieve from vSphere and present in a great format. The number of people I talk to who use it and the large scale organisations that you would think spend thousands of pounds on expensive monitoring tools that have it as part of the daily monitoring checks never ceases to surprise me.

I started attending technical user groups around about four years ago, intially with the UK PowerShell User Group and swiftly after the London VMware User Group. These are the main two groups I have stuck with in that time, but have also sampled others such as Windows Server, AD and Exchange user group events among others. The amount of real world experience I have picked up, great discussions had and excellent contacts made, has made them an invaluable resource for improving yourself and your career.