One of the most useful scripts for ESX in my opinion is health_check.sh. This scripts generates an html file which contains a enormous amount of useful info on how the ESX host was installed. Besides that it contains 30 lines of the most important log files and for instance if there are snapshots and much much more. I just tested the script on ESX 3.5 and it still works great. The script is created by two guys of the Danish VMUG one of them is A. Mikkelsen, check his blog for more scripts! Be sure to check out this script, it’s worth it! By the way, you can schedule it and have the html emailed to you via the use of smtp_send.pl.
This week I implemented a couple of Dell 2950 Servers which contained an Intel quad-port nic. The physical switch ports were setup as a trunk so I used VST(Virtual Switch Tagging). I combined the onboard Broadcom ports with the Intel quad-port nics to have the most redundant setup. When I started testing the HA and DRS functionality I noticed that not everything worked like expected. After some basic troubleshooting it seemed that about half of the packets going via the Intel quad-port nics got dropped. [Read more…] about Intel quad-port nic and VST
My colleague Edwin had some spare time on his hands and decided to Thinstall the VirtualCenter client. I just tested the client and it works great. Starting the client is as fast, and maybe even faster, as a normal install. Check his article on Thinstallguru.com. Let’s hope VMware will also provide a Thinstalled version soon of the client, fully supported and compatible with Wine for the Linux users. I also heard that Thinstall is busy including Wine code into the Thinstall kernel for compatibility reasons. Hope they will fix this soon.