Part 3 – Installing SRM 6

Now that we have an idea on how to set up lab for the SRM, let’s get going with the installation of SRM in this post. SRM has to be installed at both Protected and Recovery Site. I am using Windows 2008 R2 machines for the SRM installation. Before installing SRM, we need to have the PSC and vCenter server and Database DSN details handy in case of an external DB. Since this is for demo purposes, we will be using the Single Site topology with shared PSC as our SRM deployment model.

Part 2 – SRM 6.1 Home Lab Setup

Hey there! In this post i want to put something about lab setup that i use for my SRM Hands-On. I am only going to show you how things are connected and how different software can be used to give a full-fledged experience of real world scenario; I would not comment on the server specifics like RAM and CPU configured but is recommended to have at least 32GB of RAM, you can always try to modify settings or power off unwanted virtual machines as per your physical hardware availability. This is just one way of doing it.

#homelab, #srm-6-lab, #workstation

Part 1 – Introduction to SRM 6.1

Hey there! With new versions coming up, it’s always a good practice to test the new features and get some hands on with them. I wanted to get some more insight into the VMware SRM and so i thought it would be a good thing to also blog my experience with lab. I am going to build a home lab for this and probably i may dedicate a separate blog post for the lab alone. So let’s get started with the SRM series.

#deployment-models, #protection-groups, #recovery-plan, #srm-6-1

Lockdown Mode – vSphere 6

Lockdown Mode in ESXi host is around the corner since version 4. There were no ‘major’ changes to it untill version 6. VMware has come up with a more effective way of hardening the ESXi hosts in the vSphere 6 as there were ways to bypass lockdown mode in earlier versions. vSphere with version 6 introduced Strict Lockdown Mode and Exception Users to accomplish this. So without any delay, let’s get started with our discussion.

#dcui-access, #exception-users, #lockdown-mode, #strict-lockdown-mode, #vsphere-6

Using vSphere On-Disk MetaData Analyzer (VOMA)

What do you do when you have problems accessing some files on a VMFS datastore or you cannot delete files on datastore? Well, all such problems related to VMFS datastore can now be detected and also can be fixed sometimes. VMware has introduced a new utility called vSphere On-Disk Metadata Analyzer(VOMA) in version 5.1 which can check the VMFS partition for any corrupted metadata, however, from version 6, a new option to fix the errors has also been introduced. This utility can be compared to CHKDSK utility in windows.

#check-and-fix, #device, #metadata-analyzer, #on-disk, #partition, #vmfs, #voma

iSCSI LUN masking in ESXi 6 – Step by Step

Today, while setting up things for SRM home lab, i was using the same iSCSI Storage server for the Protected and Recovery Site, i know this is a bad design but for a home lab it should be fine and obviously the ESXi hosts at both protected and recovery sites see the LUNs presented at each site. To avoid this, LUN masking has to be done on all ESXi hosts, so i thought i would also blog about it with step by step procedure. Although this task is mostly done from the storage end, it is a good thing to know how to do it from ESXi.

#claimrule, #esxi-6, #lun-masking, #mask_path, #nmp, #storage-core, #vmfs

Sysprep fails to Run with Fatal Error

Hello all! Many of you might have come across this situation atleast once in your lifetime if you are a Windows admin dealing with system imaging often. Sysprep is a wonderful tool that we all love to use when it comes to erase system specific info like SID leaving all the application related stuff intact. This is also very helpful for those who does a lot of template builds. So, in this post we are going to know about how we get around with a Sysprep issue.

#fatal-error, #generalizationstate, #panther, #skip-rearm, #sysprep

Update Windows vCenter Server 6 to 6.2 – Step by Step

Hey there! In our previous post we have seen how vCenter can be installed in Enhanced Linked Mode. Today i am going to show you how to upgrade Windows vCenter Server to version 6.2. I have a vCenter with external PSC deployment, and as you have guessed it already, we must first upgrade our PSC and then proceed to the vCenter upgrade. Downlod the latest ISO from the vmware downloads.

#psc, #vcenter, #windows-vcenter-update-6-2