William Lam

Quick Tip - vCenter Server advanced settings for vSphere 5.5 & 6.0

04.01.2015 by William Lam // 2 Comments

This was a question that was recently asked in an internal thread regarding the list of available advanced settings in vCenter Server. You can find these settings under the "Advanced Settings" section of all places 😉 and this is available both in the vSphere Web/C# Client.

I wrote a script awhile back that allows you to modify these advanced settings and with a slight modification to the existing script, I was able to produce the complete list of available settings (available via the vSphere API) that are user configurable, as not all settings are configurable. Below, is a table of all vCenter Server 5.5 advanced settings and I also have a table for newly added advanced settings for vCenter Server 6.0.

Disclaimer: Most of these settings should be left at their default and if you do need to make a change, make it is through a recommendation by either VMware's documentation or from GSS Support as modifying some of these changes can negatively impact your environment.

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Sponsorship slots available for the Top vBlog 2015

03.31.2015 by William Lam // 2 Comments

The results for the Top vBlog of 2015 was just announced today and you can find the complete details on Eric's blog post here. First off, I would like to thank Eric for all of his hard work and dedication that he has put into the annual voting and tallying Top vBlogger results. I know how much work he puts into it and I just wanted to say thank you and thanks for all the awesome content you aggregate for the Virtualization community over on vsphere-land. That is a must have resource for every one!

Secondly, I would like to thank all of my readers and supporters for voting for virtuallyGhetto. I am very honored to have retained my #2 spot on the Top vBlogger in 2015 (2nd year in row) and as well as the #1 scripting blog (3rd year in row). This was a pleasant surprise on my first day returning from paternity leave. I think I speak for all my fellow bloggers, it is really the passion that we all have in sharing our knowledge and experiences with the community that keeps us all going, so thank you for your continued engagement and I look forward to sharing more awesome content on virtuallyGhetto!

Lastly, I know there are many vendors like Veeam who have been very supportive of the Virtualization Community and Bloggers and provide ad sponsorships via BuySellAds which is a self-service Advertise/Publisher platform. I figure that I would put together a list of the Top 25 vBloggers of 2015 and their respective BSA Links for any advertisers looking large reach of audience. I know if I was looking to advertise, this is the list I would start with 🙂

Rank	Blogger	BSA Link
1	Duncan Epping	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/160490/zone/1280563?src=bundle
2	William Lam	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/167534/zone/1282588?src=bundle
3	Cormac Hogan	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/261356/zone/1301445?src=bundle
4	Frank Denneman	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/162705/zone/1281230?src=bundle
5	Scott Lowe	N/A
6	Chris Wahl	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/165747/zone/1281834?src=bundle
7	Derek Seaman	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/212634/zone/1290804?src=bundle
8	Chad Sakac	N/A
9	Eric Sloof	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/164648/zone/1281545?src=bundle
10	Alan Renouf	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/170962/zone/1283525?src=bundle
11	Michael Webster	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/164639/zone/1281731?src=bundle
12	Eric Siebert	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/260991/zone/1301252?src=bundle
13	Vladan Seget	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/34813/zone/1299934?src=bundle
14	Andrew Leibovici	N/A
15	Josh Odgers	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/171583/zone/1290267?src=bundle
16	Mike Laverick	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/225654
17	Magnus Andersson	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/260380
18	Rawlinson Rivera	N/A
19	Vaughn Stewart	N/A
20	Justin IT Blog	N/A
21	Andrew Mauro	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/171249/zone/1283806?src=bundle
22	Nick Howell	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/167285
23	Luc Dekens	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/232807
24	Tommy Trogden	N/A
25	VMGuru	https://buysellads.com/buy/detail/259273/zone/1300457?src=bundle

BSA also has a Virtualization Bundle which includes many other fellow bloggers which you can view here for more details.

How to deploy VCSA 6.0 using the HTML UI Installer on Mac OS X?

03.31.2015 by William Lam // 6 Comments

I know some of you were disappointed like I was that the new VCSA 6.0 HTML UI Installer is only currently supported on Windows and does not work on Mac OS X. I have been told by Product Management that this is temporary and that Mac OS X support will be coming in a future update. In the meantime, if you do not wish to spin up a Windows VM just to deploy the new VCSA from the HTML UI Installer, you can check out this tiny hack that allows you to deploy the new VCSA 6.0

Note: This trick will only allow you to deploy either an Embedded VCSA or Platform Service Controller. It does not work when trying to deploy an vCenter Server Management Node which is why I suspect Mac OS X support was not in this initial release of vSphere 6.0.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, please use at your own risk.

Step 1 - You will need to download and install the vSphere Client Integration Package (CIP) 6.0 package for Mac OS X by visiting the following URL: http://vsphereclient.vmware.com/vsphereclient/VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.mac64.dmg

Step 2 - You will need to extract the VCSA ISO to your local filesystem

Step 3 - Open up a terminal and change into the root directory of the extract VCSA ISO and we will need to modify the vcsa-setup.html file.

Step 4 - Run the following sed command which will replace the check for the OS platform from Windows to Mac OS X:

sed -i .bak 's/Win32/MacIntel/g' vcsa-setup.html

Note: You might also be able to use this trick for Linux desktop by properly replacing the navigator.platform property with the correct OS type.

Step 5 - Open the vcsa-setup.html using either Firefox or Chrome and give it a few seconds for the CIP to be loaded and you should be able to launch the VCSA HTML UI Installer as seen in the screenshot below

I have found sometimes the HTML UI is stuck at the "Starting VMware vSphere Web Client" screen but when you look at the VM Console of the deployed VCSA, it is completely done. I recommend that if the VM Console looks done, you can just close this screen and just open a browser connecting to the hostname/IP Address of your new VCSA and everything should be working as expected.

If you prefer to deploy the VCSA 6.0 on Mac OS X through an officially supported method, there is also a new VCSA CLI Installer that is supported on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux which you can find more details in this whitepaper here. In addition to this trick, you can also deploy the new VCSA 6.0 directly to vCenter Server or onto VMware Workstation/Fusion, for those alternative approaches be sure to check out my Ultimate automation guide to deploying the VCSA 6.0.