Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between
My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together
Category Archives: Xtravirt
vSphere RDP Client Plugin
Posted by on March 8, 2011
Another handy utility from Xtravirt – it adds a shortcut to the right-click context menu in the vSphere client to launch an RDP session to that particular VM.
Very useful, of course you’ll need to ensure your admin workstation can get to port 3389/TCP (RDP) on that particular VM, but I find this very useful.
You can download it here (basic registration required)
Download the Full VMware Documentation Set with one Script
Posted by on February 15, 2011
I was pointed at a handy utility by a colleague at VMware, Xtravirt have a small DOS batch script that will download all of the current VMware documentation in .PDF format from VMware.com
This is very handy if you are studying for your VCAP exams or doing some consulting with customers as you can take a copy all of the documents with you – I’m also syncing them onto my iPad via DropBox – and maybe my Kindle in future (more on this in a later post).
You can download it here (basic registration required)
Slow vMotion..
Posted by on June 2, 2008
Note to remember, don’t forget to check the duplex settings on NICs handling your vMotion traffic.
My updated clustered ESX test lab is progressing (more posts on that in the next week or so)… and I’m kind of limited in that I only have an old 24-port 100Mb Cisco hub for the networking at the moment.
vMotion warns about the switch speed as a possible issue.
I had my Service Console/ vMotion NICit forced to 100/full and when I 1st tried it vMotion took 2hrs to get to 10%, I changed it to auto-negotiate whilst the task was running and it completed without breaking the vMotion task ain a couple of seconds, dropped only 1 ping to the VM I moved.
Cool, it’s not production or doing a lot of workload but useful to know despite the warning it will work even if you’ve only got an old hub for your networking, and worth remembering that Duplex mis-matches can literally add hours and days onto network transfers.
Free SAN for your Home/Work ESX Lab
Posted by on May 25, 2008
VM/Etc have posted an excellent article about a free iSCSI SAN VM appliance that you can download from Xtravirt
it uses replication between 2 ESX hosts to allow you to configure DRS/HA etc.
Excellent, I’m going to procure another cheap ESX host in the next couple of weeks so will post back on my experiences with setting this up, my previous plan meant I’d have to get a 3rd box to run an iSCSI server like OpenFiler to enable this functionality, but I really like this approach.
Sidenote – Xtravirt also have some other useful downloads like Viso templates and an ESX deployment appliance available here
Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between 