vSphere U1, 1 down, 1 to go.
Good news first - in my previous blog post I had mentioned that there was a serious bug with updating to ESX 4 U1 and HP SIM agents. This has been resolved, U1 has been re-released and people should not have this issue any more (I have not tested this myself). That KB article has been updated and is available here.
The bad news is that there is now a bug with U1 and vCenter if it manages ESXi hosts.
It does not seem nearly as drastic as the previous issue I blogged about, but you should be aware of it. For now, it seems that you can avoid running into it by not adding, removing and then readding an ESXi host to vCenter.
Stay tuned for my next post (possibly a series?) about backups.
vSphere Update 1 and HP SIM agents
Phew - I'm glad I waited a little bit before installing vSphere update 1!
Turns out there's a nasty bug that will PSOD (purple screen of death) your vSphere hosts when updating if you are running HP SIM agents.
You can find the information here.
The document says that you should stop the HP agents on your host before updating. I can verify that this worked for me. I can also verify that not doing this will cause a PSOD - a colleague of mine had it happen.
This is exactly why I always wait at least a week after any major update... to see if it made the news.
vSphere Update 1 is out!
Apparently as I lay in bed in dreamland last night VMWare released vSphere update 1 - took long enough!
Update 1 brings several notable improvements:
• vSphere client works in Windows 7 - without a hack!
• You can run Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as guest operating systems.
• View 4.0 support.
• Improved MSCS support.
• PVSCSI for 2003 and 2008.
• Improved dvswitch performance.
• 25 vCPU's per core!
• Support for Intel Xeon 3400 Series.
• And a whole lot of bug fixes.
No USB pass-through fix, and it seems like there are more known issues than fixed. To be fair, one of my VMWare colleagues mentioned that there were more known issues when 4 released than now, and most of these have existed since then.
For those of you with ESXi free, it's not available yet. No word on when it will be released - sorry!
Reports are already coming in of successful deployments, and I will probably update myself during next week’s rather large maintenance window (read: Thanksgiving).
VCP – VMWare Certified Professional
Recently, I had the opportunity to complete a VMWare-run week long "bootcamp" style class in San Francisco. For those of you that are familiar with VMWare training, the class was the brand new FastTrack for vSphere.
The class ran from 8AM until 6PM - with lunch usually consumed sitting at a computer working on a lab.
The two instructors were fantastic and the course was chock full of information. I'd recommend it for any level of knowledge, though you may want to stick to a slower paced Install, Configure, and Manage (ICM) course if you are totally green.
At almost $5000 the class is expensive, but you have to attend an official VMWare training in order to qualify to take the VCP (VMWare Certified Professional) exam. Obtaining the VCP was my primary goal of the class, but I won't lie to you and say I didn't learn anything.
After the week long class was over, I spent the weekend studying and reviewing with a friend of mine and then on Monday I took the exam.
I passed!
I'm still waiting for my certificate and the rights to use the VCP logo, so that will need to wait for awhile, but I am an official VCP 4!