TheSaffaGeek

My ramblings about all things technical

Tag Archives: VCP


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How to ease the management and monitoring of VMware Snapshots

 

Recently I have been doing some cleaning up of old snapshots that users have created and forgotten to delete and have therefore been around for too long and are in danger of either using up all the space on the datastore they are on or corrupting once the snapshot is ”deleted”/applied to the vm. I came across an additional way I can make my management and monitoring snapshot tasks easier and so I though I would write up a quick post of all the tools I use that save me having to manually go through a crazy amount of machines. I have used a few of my fellow virtualisation friends scripts and tools to help me do this.

  • First and the one i use the most is the SnapReminder script by scripting guru Alan Renouf. Alan’s script is a fairly straight forward one (his words not mine as I’m not at the level yet to be able to write this). The script is simple yet so very effective as it automatically finds the snapshot that meets your time criteria,finds out who created it ,retrieves their mail address from AD and mails them reminding them that they have this snapshot and it is older than a number of days. It’s really great when you get a mail back from a user replying to one of these mails and saying they don’t need it anymore as you know it’s going to make your environment better while you barely had to do anything to remind and alert them to it.
  • Next is part of the vCheck daily report ,one I have spoken of before which is also created by Alan. The vCheck tool is a brilliant reporter for gathering all the information you need to know to make sure your environment isn’t having any problems and enables you to be proactive so as to stop problems before the arise. The snapshot part of this report is always helpful so i know if people have removed their snapshots after being pestered by the SnapReminder e-mails and gives me a good idea of my progress in minimising the amount of snapshots over the limit.
  • Last one is one I stumbled across this morning while researching some other things and is one i didn’t think of creating but is one that is a brilliant idea especially for automated monitoring. Sadly i can’t seem to find the name of the guy who wrote up the article and did the video as i like to give credit where i can but good work to them for doing a video of it. The article shows and details how to configure VMware vCenter Server to send alerts when virtual machines are running from snapshots and reach a certain size. I’ve always used the alerts for memory,cpu and hosts errors which are pretty much the standard ones you get with vSphere with the additional and tweaking of a few to customise it for our environment but I’ve never thought of it for alerting me about snapshots. 

 Hopefully these tips and tricks will help save you some time and heartache with the management and monitoring of your companies snapshots.

Gregg Robertson

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***UPDATE****

As is my luck ,on the heels of me posting this Alan brings out his latest instalment of vCheck, version 5. This new one has some brilliant features and really is an improvement over the last one. I’ve already given it a run over a few of the environments I support and the webpage view it now allows you to view the report in is actually a bit overwhelming with all the data and reporting you get back and has flared up some warnings i didn’t even know were there which is brilliant!

Also a quick congrats to Alan who has now become the latest member of Chad Sakac’s vSpecialists. A brilliant hire there if I do say so myself and very exciting for an EMC employee like myself that someone like him is now part of the team.


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All Things Virtual II

Seeing as so many people read my previous blog posting I thought I would continue with my keeping people up to date with all the things virtual and linked to virtual that i have been doing/working with/learning/reading up on this week so far.

I think the first one should definitely be about the release of esx(i)4 Update 1 a. Duncan Epping(@duncanyb) was the first person I saw talk about it and has done a very detailed blog posting about the update

Recently I had to explain to some people what Distributed V switches were and how they worked. Not wanting to make a fool of myself I went back to an article I used to strengthen my knowledge on the topic before my VCP4 exam and clarified what I was telling the people was correct (which it was thankfully) .It’s a great posting from Barry Coombs(@virtualisedreal) for anyone unsure or confused on what distributed switches are and what they do/are used for.

When I started in IT I always dreamed of working for a big company that was on the forefront of technology. This dream was one of the reasons I moved over to the UK and recently this dream was partly clarified by EMC being in the Fortune 500 list of companies. It’s a small thing in reality as you don’t have to be in the fortune 500 to be at the forefront of technology but 19 year old Gregg would have been impressed I think if I could tell him where he would be working 7 years later

As I’ve said in previous blog postings, I’m trying to grow my knowledge in powershell scripting as I feel this will only help make my daily job easier but it will also enable me to do it better in the future. Jonathan Medd directed me to a great podcast covering the topic called Get Scripting Podcast. I’ve unfortunately only been able to listen to a few of them but my aim is to get through them all before January next year. They are great for anyone wanting to learn ways of making their daily jobs easier and also to learn all the latest going’s on.

EMC recently announced their new storage technology called FAST. I’ve heard it called the DRS of storage technologies and was obviously interested to see what it was(as my knowledge on storage technologies has only started to grow in the past few months so is quite minimal at the moment) and how it worked. Two great pieces of information that came out this week that cleared some it up was Chad Sakac’s blog on the topic in which he goes into amazing detail on the topic and a great YouTube video Steve Chambers(@Stevie_chambers) tweeted a few days back showing Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) on a Symmetrix V-Max

If you’ve read my blog postings on my preparing for the vcp4 exam you would know I used Scott Lowe’s (@scott_lowe) mastering VMware vSphere book. Now he has a new reference guide out called: VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference. It looks like another great reference guide for anybody in the VMware field and is another book I have added to my ever increasing Amazon wish list.

Last but not least a big congratulations to Jonathan Medd(@jonatanmedd) ,Matt Roblin(@mattroblin) , and Maish Saidel-Keesing(@maishsk) on the passing of their vcp4 exams this past week .

Gregg Robertson

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VMware Certified Professional vSphere passed

Below is my posting about my passing of the VMware Certified Professional vSphere exam that i passed almost a month ago now on  my company blog site http://consultingblogs.emc.com/greggrobertson/.

For anyone that has read my previous blog postings or is a follower of my random ramblings on twitter you would know i have been preparing for my VCP4 exam for the past couple of weeks/months. I wrote it last Friday being filled with an unbelievable amount of nerves due to a lot of people saying this exam was much harder than the vcp3 exam which i found very challenging.

Obviously by the title of this post i passed the exam and with an unexpectedly high score of 444 with the required pass mark being 300 (I’m more shocked by this score than anyone else as for a couple of the really hard three answer questions i had to make educated guesses ,which obviously i seem to have got right ) . I didn’t feel the exam was harder than the vcp3 exam but i did study a large amount more for this exam, had a much stronger base of knowledge this time due to my working with the technology for quite a while now, having built almost a dozen vSphere esx servers, several large environments ,having studied for and done my vcp3 recently as well as having attended the “what’s new” course for vSphere .  So the exam may be much harder for people.

As I’ve detailed in my past two blogs on the VCP subject I used and tried to cover a very large amount of resources in my studying which definitely kept me very busy in trying to get it all done/covered and understood before the exam.The reasons I took on such a large amount is firstly I obviously wanted to pass the exam but also I wanted to make sure of my knowledge so that I can do my job effectively, really make sure I understand everything I was learning and got experience in the certain things I haven’t had to use before which therefore I didn’t fully understand how they worked.

Many people have spoken and detailed the layout etc of the exam so i don’t see any point in repeating what they have said already in that respect.

I do agree though with the people saying this exam definitely tests you more on things you only really know about/how to do if you have worked with/played around with all the technologies in the vSphere suite of products which i think is a much better thing as i think it proves you haven’t just regurgitated information and also keep the accreditations status quite high.

A massive thank you has to go out to all the people i follow and chat with on twitter. They were more than happy to answer any questions i might have on things i couldn’t get my head around and also were a great help in giving examples from their real world experience of using the products. I would definitely recommend following the list created by @ericsiebert of the top 100 virtualisation people to follow on twitter. Sadly I’m not on it , but my aim is to keep working and learning so as to prove my inclusion on the list soon.

Good luck to anyone writing the exam, hopefully if you have to make educated guesses for some questions ,they will work out as well for you as they did for me.

Gregg Robertson

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VCP4 Learning resources Part 2

As i stated in my last posting I am busy preparing for my sitting of the VCP4 exam and now that my studying is pretty much into full speed I thought I should add the additional resources I have found that I am busy getting through. For this one though I thought I would point also put up links to some of the blogs and webpage’s I have been using that are proving highly helpful and will hopefully prepare me for the exam.

  • First is a brilliant list of Top 10 things you must read about VMware vSphere compiled by Eric Siebert(@ericsiebert). I am busy getting through the resources he details as from all the blog postings and community chats on the vcp4 exam there seems to be a fair amount of version comparison and feature understanding needed for the exam. His VMware “Cheat Sheet” is helping me greatly with my retaining of what version has what features.
  • A brilliant blog for VMware training that I read and a person I follow on twitter is Scott Vessey (@vmtraining) who has written a great blog posting about what he feels you need to know and understand to pass the exam.
  • Another great webpage i have come across is the Professional VMware blog VCP page where they are currently making their way through the vcp4 objectives which is something you definitely need to do to pass the exam I am told.
  • Simon Long has also compiled a brilliant list of all the resources he has found for the vcp4 exam which has proven great help to me in finding resources and is part of reason I wanted to write this as hopefully I can help someone like his has helped me.
  • Lastly(as i don’t want to repeat the links in the lists i have pointed to above) is one that not many people might try but I would recommend not just for the vcp4 exam but virtualisation in general is following the top people in the industry on twitter. The ability to have some of the top and the top people in the industry at your finger tips who are more than happy to discuss any problems or queries you might have and also is a brilliant way of staying on the cusp of new developments in the industry. Eric Siebert has complied a list of the top 100 people to follow for virtualisation and should get you right in there. Unfortunately I didn’t make the cut but it’s definitely my goal to be there.
  • *UPDATE* Scott Vessey has posted all about the Changes to VCP exam due to the vSphere 4.1 release.A number of people have been talking about if there are any changes to the vcp4 exams since the release of vSphere4.1 and Scott has answered it perfectly.

Good luck if you’re writing and if you wish to follow me on twitter, my name is @greggrobertson5.

Gregg Robertson

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VCP4 Learning resources

For the past few weeks I have been ramping up my studying for my VCP4 exam and therefore have been collecting (what i believe is) all the best resources and links that hopefully will help me pass my exam in the coming weeks. I will definitely write a detailed blog of what really helped me etc and how the exam went but I thought I would write up a quick list of all the resources i have found/will be using as to maybe help someone who is also planning on writing soon.

  • Simon Longs practice tests are becoming a globally recommended resource by VMware instructors to their students for being a great resource to test your VMware knowledge. I used his questions for my VI3 exam and have started testing myself with his next vcp4 questions now due to them being so good last timehttp://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/vcp-vsphere-4-practice-exam/
  • The exam blueprint is a definite must read when preparing as it was for the VI3 exam alsohttp://mylearn.vmware.com/lcms/mL_faq/2726/VMware%20Certified%20Professional%20on%20vSphere%204%20Blueprint%208.13.09.pdf *UPDATE*The new version of the blueprint is now available here
  • A new resource I found via twitter was Forbes Guthrie’s v reference cards which are a great resource of all the information you will need to be certain of/be confident in your understanding of before the exam http://www.vreference.com/public/vReference-vSphere4card1.0.pdf
  • One of the resources I plan to spend a large amount of time using is the mock exam off the VMware website which is brilliant in making sure of your knowledge and also getting used to the exam timings and layout http://mylearn.vmware.com/quiz.cfm?item=15211
  • A set of new study materials I am currently learning from is train signals vsphere videos.http://www.trainsignal.com/VMware-vSphere-Training-P76.aspx These are great if your a beginner and need to learn from a very low level up or even a pro and just need to clarify some concepts you may be rusty on. I went through the videos this past weekend and they have been a great help in clarifying a lot of things I wasn’t sure of and showing me how to do things that i haven’t had the experience in doing in my environment.
  • Last but not least is Scott Lowes mastering VMware vSphere book. I am busy making my way through it and would firmly recommend it to anyone studying for the exam as the explanations,examples and amount of detail and resources laid out in the book means this book is one of the best books on the market if the the best for not even just studying for the exam but a great resource guide for administrators.

Hope these help someone.

Feel free to follow or even message me on twitter  on @greggrobertson5 and good luck for your exam if your writing soon hope both you and I do well in it =0)

Gregg Robertson

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Disclaimer: Train signal didn’t pay me or give me the study material for free for me to recommend them , my opinion on their study notes is from my own personal experience.