Automate your Azure Bastion tunnels with a shell script
Azure Bastion service enables conectivity to Windows and Linux virtual mahciens running on Azure without the need of having RDP or SSH ports open to the publ...
Posts by Year
2023
2021
A look into CBL-Mariner, Microsoft’s internal Linux distribution
Mariner or more exactly CBL-Mariner where CBL stands for Common Base Linux, is a Linux distribution created by Microsoft’s Linux System Group which is the sa...
Running pi-hole as a podman container in Fedora
I run Pi-Hole at home to filter and block ad traffic, is a fantastic piece of of software that helps me to keep me and my son away from unwanted ads. It can ...
A first look into Azure VMware Solution
As I said in my previous post I moved last year to Microsoft Azure engineering in the Azure VMware Solution product group, so it makes total sense that my fi...
A new chapter in my life, a new era for the blog
It has been almost 13 months since my last publication in the blog, you could say it has a lost year for my small corner in the Internet and that would be tr...
2019
Deploying a Kubernetes cluster in Azure using kubeadm
The easiest way to have a Kubernetes cluster up and running in Azure in a short amount of time is by using AKS service, also if you want a more granular cont...
Getting started with Azure Red Hat OpenShift
Azure Red Hat OpenShift was announced during last year Red Hat Summit, since then the service has been first in private preview and then during this year Red...
AKS integration with Azure Container Registry
Since the beginning of the service AKS has been able to use Azure Container Registry, or ACR, to pull the container images used in a deployment initiated eit...
Scaling operations with AKS-Engine
After reviewing how to perform Kubernetes version upgrades with AKS-Engine in a previous post the next logical step is show how to scale our Kubernetes clust...
Understanding AKS built-in roles
Every Azure Kubernetes Service cluster comes with two built-in roles in Azure RBAC:
Using Azure CLI to get info about your AKS cluster
As Kubernetes admins or users using kubectl is the most common way we have to interact with our clusters, you can deploy workloads, get info from your cluste...
What is the relationship between AKS and AKS-Engine?
Every time I talk about AKS and AKS-Engine got the question about the relationship between both. It is very simple, AKS is backed up by AKS-Engine, plain and...
Kubernetes version upgrade with AKS-Engine
Performing a version upgrade in Kubernetes can be a challenging task. With AKS, and the likes, you have that resolved and solutions like Red Hat OpenShift al...
2018
ACS-Engine is now AKS-Engine
This is post is quick heads up for everybody our there using ACS Engine to spin up container clusters on Azure. Our containers engineering team is depracatin...
Running your private Kubernetes cluster on Azure with ACS Engine
The AKS team has released this week version v0.14.0 of ACS Engine. Amongst the many new features and fixed bugs the team has enabled the possibility of creat...
How to expose your Kubernetes workloads on Azure
In the article about Kubernetes on ACS I briefly touched the topic of Kubernetes Ingress, originally I was going to made a post about Ingress however I thoug...
2017
Howto enable RBAC on your existing ACS deployed Kubernetes cluster
On a my post about AAD integration with Kubernetes 1.8 I explained how to deploy a Kubernetes 1.8 cluster with RBAC enabled using ACS-Engine. However after t...
OpenShift Container Platform integration with Azure Active Directory
After my previous post about AAD integration with Kubernetes 1.8 I decided it would be interesting as well to write about the process to integrate OpenShift ...
Kubernetes 1.8 with RBAC enabled and Azure Active Directory integration
Role-based access control, or RBAC, has been around in Kubernetes for some time however it wasn’t until the recently released 1.8 version that finally reache...
AKS, the new Kubernetes managed service on Azure
AKS is a new Azure service that provides customers with the possibility of deploying a managed Kubernetes cluster on their Azure subscription. Similarly to G...
Experimenting with OpenShift and Azure Container Instances
These days I’ve been playing in my mind with the idea of combining OpenShift and Azure Container Instances. Along with the ACI announcement back in July Micr...
My quick take on Helm
Helm is one of those tools I’ve been watching from a safe distance for some time, always curious but never find the time to play with it. I decided to change...
Kubernetes on Azure with Azure Container Service
Have to admit that because months have passed since the DC/OS post I almost dropped this article, since then ACS documentation around Kubernetes got a huge i...
Managing you Docker images in the cloud with Azure Container Registry
Past April Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Container Regitry. Since I will be using ACR during my next posts about ACS and Kubernetes ...
Getting started with Azure Container Service
Azure Container Service, or ACS, is the container management service in Microsoft Azure cloud. The main idea behind ACS is to create an optimized container h...
Vagrant ssh in Windows 10 from WSL
Using Vagrant from WSL is perfectly possible as long as you use the Windows version and the Vagrantfile is hosted somewhere under /mnt/c. You can run vagrant...
My Docker workflow in Windows Subsystem for Linux
This will be the first of a small series of articles around my usage of WSL in Windows 10 as my main shell. This time I will explain how I use Docker from WS...
Migrating from OS X to Windows 10
When I joined Microsoft it was clear to me that I will have to switch to Windows as my main OS. Besides of using Windows 7 on Bootcamp during a couple of wee...
My first three months at Microsoft
When I joined Microsoft my friend, and former VMware colleague, Manfred Hofer asked me to write something about my journey from being a Unix hardcore geek to...
2016
The Atomic Series. Part 1 - Introduction to Atomic Host
Welcome to the Atomic Series! In this new series of articles I will discuss the different part of the Project Atomic ecosystem starting with the Atomic Host ...
Combining Heat with OpenStack Vagrant provider
After my first post about the OpenStack Vagrant provider I decided to play a bit more with the provider and I found it can be combined with an OpenStack Heat...
Playing with OpenStack Vagrant provider
Since Vagrant is so tightly integrated in my personal development and learning workflow and my job basically revolves around OpenStack it was about time for ...
Running OpenStack Rally tests from a Docker container
OpenStack Rally is a benchmarking and testing project for OpenStack, it provides a framework for performance, scalability and stress tests. Rally can simulat...
How to clean Ironic after a failed overcloud deployment
If your TripleO deployment fails is relatively easy to clean your failed overcloud environment, use heat stack-delete overcloud and Heat will take charge of ...
How to assign fixed IP addresses in Neutron
In OpenStack the most common way to provide connectivity to the instances is to rely on DHCP service provided by Neutron, is simple and clean. However there ...
Managing VIO with viocli
VIO 2.0 comes with several command line utilities, in a previous post I showed the usage of viopatch to perform patching of an existing VIO installation. In ...
How to enable Ceilometer in VIO 2.0
Ceilometer is the main telemetry and metering project within OpenStack Telemetry, the goal of Ceilometer is to collect all the data generated by the differen...
Quick tip - Troubleshooting networkd
To troubleshoot networkd in case of failure we can enable debug mode using the following procedure, this is applicable to Photon OS or any other linux system...
Network configuration in Photon OS
Photon instances are usually meant to be configured automatically with Cloud-config, this includes hostname, network settings, additional packages, etc. Howe...
Python script to reconfigure an ESXi for HA
If you have following my blog for some time you may remember a post from 2011 where I wrote about the procedure perform a Reconfigure for HA operation in an ...
You can run Cockpit in Photon OS
I have written in the past about using Cockpit with Fedora and CentOS 7 here and here. Today playing with one of my Lightwave instances I discovered that Coc...
Enable SSH access against VMware Lightwave
After my latest post about setting up a Lightwave multi-node domain in this post I’ll describe how to configure SSH authentication against Lightwave.
VMware Lightwave multi-node domain setup
VMware Lightwave is an identity and management access service for Cloud-Native apps. It was released to the community last year and the source code can be ac...
Blog migration done… Let the new era begin!
I have finally migrated the last post from my old site in Wordpress.com to the new one using Jekyll and hosted on Github Pages. The migration has taken more ...
2015
Upgrading VMware Integrated OpenStack
In a previous article I showed the process to patch an existing VIO 1.0 installation, which as you were able to see it is a clean and easy process. VMware an...
DNF, the new Fedora package manager
Fedora 22 was released a few months ago and amongst many new features it came with a replacement for yum as package manager called dnf, or DaNdiFied YUM, oh ...
First steps with Pivotal Lattice
Lattice is the latest addition from Pivotal to its portfolio of open source projects. Lattice leverages various components from Cloud Foundry, in order to ru...
How to configure a remote syslog server for NSX Controller
As with the rest of NSX for vSphere components any competent admin would like to configure a remote syslog server for the NSX Controllers, in my homelab I ha...
How to fix VIO Web Client Plugin after a failed deployment
It occurred to me recently that after recovering a VIO failed deployment, in my case an issue with one of the database nodes, in the Web Client Plugin the Op...
How to patch your VIO environment
VMware has released the first patch for VMware Integrated OpenStack. This patch release comes with improvements around the installer, Keystone service and fi...
FirewallD quickstart guide
FirewallD, or Dynamic Firewall Manager, is the replacement for the IPTables firewall in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The main improvement over IPTables is the c...
A first look into VMware Integrated #OpenStack (VIO)
VMware Integrated OpenStack, or VIO, was announced during last year VMworld in San Francisco and has been finally released today by VMware.
How to install Cockpit on CentOS 7
Being used to have Cockpit in my Fedora 21 Server VMs I decided that having it also on my CentOS machines would be awesome, unfortunately I quickly found tha...
Managing your Fedora Server with Cockpit
Cockpit is a new web based server manager to administer Linux server, it will provide the system administrators with a user friendly interface to manage thei...
2014
Open vSwitch and NSX vSwitch command equivalencies
A question I’ve heard a few times, what are the command equivalencies between a standard Open vSwitch, running inside a Linux box, and the NSX vSwitch runnin...
Monitoring NSX Multi-Hypervisor with vRealize Operations Manager
VMware has released a new vRealize Operations Manager management pack for NSX Multi-hypervisor. This new management pack will allow vROps to extend its manag...
How to setup ESXi for NSX
In the series of posts about OpenStack and KVM we saw how to add a KVM node to NSX for multi-hypervisor environments as a transport node. In this post we wil...
My DevStack local.conf file
One of the pillars of my personal OpenStack ecosystem is DevStack. For those of you new to the OpenStack world DevStack is a tool, basically is a shell scrip...
Deploying OpenStack with KVM and VMware NSX - Part 4: Deploy OpenStack RDO with Neutron integrated with NSX
Welcome to Part 4 for this series about OpenStack and VMware NSX. To do a quick review, in the first three parts we described the different VMware NSX compon...
Deploying OpenStack with KVM and VMware NSX - Part 3: KVM hypervisor and Gluster storage setup
Welcome to the third post of my series about OpenStack. In the [first]{(% post_url 2014-04-29-deploying-openstack-with-kvm-and-vmware-nsx-part-1-nsx-overview...
Deploying OpenStack with KVM and VMware NSX - Part 2: Configure NSX Transport and Logical network views
Welcome to Part 2 of this series about OpenStack and NSX. In the first part we defined the basic NSX concepts and components, installed and configured the NS...
Deploying OpenStack with KVM and VMware NSX - Part 1: NSX overview and initial setup
If you follow me on Twitter or Google+ probably have seen and increased number of tweets and posts about OpenStack, DevStack, KVM and other Linux related top...
Taking Chargeback API for a ride - Part 2
In the first post of the series we discussed Chargeback API basics and how to interact with it using Firefox REST Client. In this second and final post we wi...
Taking Chargeback API for a ride - Part 1
vCenter Chargeback provides a fully featured API that allows to automate many tasks like user and rights management, cost configuration or reporting.
Mobile Watchlist, a new app from VMware to monitor your vSphere virtual machines
VMware has released VMware vSphere Mobile Watchlist. It is available for Android and iOS, iPhone only for now, and will enable any system administrator to ke...
vCenter Chargeback Manager services and processes
Every customer usually asks about how to monitor their vCenter Chargeback installations, hence I finally decided to write a small post listing the services a...
2013
vCenter Chargeback Manager 2.6 now supports vCSA Postgres database
Today VMware has released the latest release of vCenter Chargeback Manager. Although this release is more an update than a completely new one that doesn’t me...
Infrastructure Navigator lose configured hostname after a reboot
I found this error last week during a deployment in a customer. The vCenter Infrastructure Navigator appliance does not maintain its configured hostname afte...
SQL script for vCenter Chargeback database creation
I thought it would be worthy to write a quick post to show the script I’ve been using to create CBM databases in customers installations. The original script...
Some vCenter Chargeback Manager tips
After the previous article about SSL certificate generation in Chargeback I decided that it was worth to write a couple more tips in a second blog post. This...
VMworld Europe 2013. For me it’s all about the Community
This year edition of VMworld Europe 2013 is gone. For second time it was held in Barcelona, one of most beautiful cities of Spain, and for the second time I ...
Regenerate Chargeback Manager SSL certificate
vCenter Chargeback Manager gives you the possibility during the installation process to generate an SSL certificate. But this certificate is generated with a...
That’s NOT all folks!
Well it’s been a while since my last post, near nine months. Too much time for any author that really wants to maintain its site more or less alive. I’m sur...
Linux Kernel 3.7 and VMware Tools issue
I got aware of this issue last week after installing a Fedora 18 virtual machine on Fusion 5. The installation of the Tools went as expected but when the ins...
2012
How to install the vCloud Adapter in vCenter Operations 5.6
Installing the vCloud Director adapter, or any vCenter Operations adapter, is a relatively easy task as we will explain in this post.
VMworld 2012 - Day -1
This year I finally manage to go to VMworld. It’s been held in the beautiful Barcelona, just a few hundred kilometers from Madrid, and now that the event is ...
VMworld 2012 Europe… I’ll be there
Yes, this year I managed to get myself to the European edition of VMworld. I’m really excited about it, and the best is that I’ll be lucky enough to have spa...
Power and maintenance operations in ESXi 5.1 with esxcli
ESXi 5.1 comes with many improvements and one of them is new namespaces and commands in esxcli.
VCSA 5.1– Deployment and upgrade
In the last post we discussed about the new features and changes that comes with version 5.1 of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance. In this new one I will e...
VCSA 5.1– A quick look
Yesterday was a very exciting day, VMware finally announced the new vCloud Suite 5.1. With new products and features announced, each one of them as great as ...
Change ESXi 5 iSCSI iqn with esxcli
After my previous post about getting the iqn of an ESXi using esxcli Andy Banta (@andybanta) commented on Twitter that you can also change the iqn of the hos...
How to get iSCSI iqn using esxcli in ESXi 5
Back in 2010 I wrote a post about how to get the iSCSI iqn of an ESXi 4.x server using vSphere CLI from the vMA or any other system with vCLI installed on it.
A bit of troubleshooting of the vCenter Server Appliance
If your vCSA is configured to use the embedded DB2 database and if it’s not properly shutdown, next you power it on may be you should not be able to power on...
VMworld 2012, it’s time to vote
I know that I owe you an apology, it’s been more than a month since my last post but you know how is to join a new company. I had some of the more amazing we...
New journey, new challenges.
The last four weeks I had a bit of a crazy life, but finally the process has come to an end and I can freely speak about it.
vExpert 2012, one more time :-)
When I got home after a morning playing airsoft with some friends I found on my twitter stream a very nice surprise. My friend Josep Ros (@josepros) was con...
How to upgrade the vMA 5
Last week vSphere 5 Update 1 was released by VMware, along with the main products some of the SDKs and automation tools were also updated, including the vMA ...
Win a free pass for VMworld 2012 or Microsoft TechEd 2012 thanks to Veeam
Yes, you have heard correctly. The people from Veeam are willing to kindly give a free full pass to VMworld or TechEd 2012, you choose the conference and the...
My first sponsor
I am very happy to announce that today I get the first sponsor for this blog. The people at Veeam Software has been kind enough to take my blog into consider...
More HP sauce on ESXi 5.0
On my first post about HP ESXi 5.0 customized image I discussed about the new esxcli namespaces added by HP. But those tools aren’t the only ones included.
Introducing HP iLO app for iOS
Quietly released by HP less than a week ago, the HP iLO Mobile Application for iOS allows you to control your ProLiant server through their iLO console from ...
vMotion error, virtual machine refuses to be migrated.
Last night during a patching job in a customer I found the following error for several VMs when I put a host in maintenance mode and DRS tried to evacuate th...
How to integrate SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 with Windows Active Directory
Getting SUSE Enterprise Linux integrated with Microsoft Active Directory is much easier than it sounds.
Voting time! The Top VMware & Virtualization election is open!
Once again my colleague at HP Eric Seabert (@ericsiebert) has opened up the polls to elect the Top VMware and Virtualization blogs.
New esxcli namespaces included on the HP ESXi image
If your VMware infrastructure runs on top of HP servers, rack or blade, you should be familiar with the HP customized ESXi images. Hewlett Packard has been r...
2011
I looked back at 2011 and I only saw awesomeness!
2011 is done and like any other human beings out there today I decided to look back.
vCenter Server Appliance. Part 3 - Managing the embedded DB2 database
In this last post about the vCenter Server Appliance we will see a glimpse on how to manage the embedded database that comes bundle with the VCSA.
vCenter Server Appliance. Part 2 - vCenter associated services
Welcome back to this three-part series of articles about the new vCenter Server Appliance. In this second post we will see how the additional vCenter service...
vCenter Server Appliance. Part 1 - Configuration and deployment
With vSphere 5 VMware has released the vCenter Server Appliance, or VCSA, a linux based alternative to the classic Windows vCenter. During the next three art...
Getting network card driver version in ESXi 5.0
This a quick follow-up post to the How to check the driver version of a network interface in ESX(i) one. That post covered ESX(i) 4.x so I decided to write a...
Change ESXi 5.0 hostname with esxcli
Yes another post about esxcli, what can I say I’m studying very hard for my VCP5 and from time to time this kind of unknown information, at least for me, ari...
Change ESXi 5.0 Shell keyboard layout with esxcli
If you have to login into the ESXi 5.0 Shell and the keyboard layout is not the one you are used to this post will show how to quickly change it.
Monitor ESX 4.x to ESXi 5.0 migration process
During the migration of an ESX 4.x to ESXi 5.0 the whole process can be monitored directly from the console of the server.
List packages installed in ESXi 4.1 and 5.0
Today a co-worker has asked me how to list the packages installed in an ESXi 4.1 Update 1 server, in the ESX COS we had the RedHat rpm command but in ESXi th...
vMA 5 rejects SSH connections
If you deploy vMA 5.0 within your virtual infrastructure will find the first time you try to access it by SSH that the appliance is continuously rejecting yo...
DNS configuration with esxcli
With release of ESXi 5.0 the esxcli command has been also vastly improved. One of this new capabilities is the possibility to manage the DNS configuration of...
How to upgrade the firmware of the HP Onboard Administrator
A post mostly for documentation sake on how to upgrade the firmware of the Onboard Administrator of an HP BladeSystem enclosure.
Can VMware Workstation 8 be a boost for Hyper-V adoption? And ESXi 5?
A very controversial title I know, but please hold your fire and let me explain.
A first look into the vMA 5
Like the rest of components of vSphere the vMA, vSphere Management Appliance, has been updated to the new version. In this post I will discuss the changes an...
List ARP table entries of an ESXi
Like we found before for netstat there is no arp command available from within ESXi Tech Support Mode, so how can you list the ARP table entries if you need ...
How to get ESXi network connections using PowerCLI
In a previous post I described how to get the network connections of an ESXi server using esxcli from Tech Support Mode and vSphere CLI. Following I’ll show ...
Put ESXi server in maintenance mode from Tech Support Mode using vim-cmd
If you need to put a host in maintenance mode and only have access through ESXi Tech Support Mode, either local from DCUI or remote with SSH, in the followin...
Arrakis, my not built on purpose ESXi whitebox
If you are willing to see a so great whitebox like Phil Jaenke’s (@RootWyrm) BabyDragon I’m sorry to say that you’ll be terribly disappointed because unlike ...
Running ESXi 5 on ESXi 4.1? Yes you can!
If you are wondering if you can run your vSphere 5 lab nested on ESXi 4.1, the answer is yes.
How to get the network connections of an ESXi
We are going to suppose that you are trying to troubleshoot your ESXi network problems and as an experienced sysadmin one of the first things to do is gettin...
Time is over… vSphere 5 is here and it comes with its own VSA
Today has been a great day for the people of VMware, they presented vSphere 5 in a huge online event and a lot of new interesting features have been finally ...
#vExpert 2011… Who?! Me?! Really?!
Yesterday I received an unexpected gift from the people of VMware. I’ve been awarded vExpert 2011.
Retrieving ESX(i) hardware info with PowerCLI
We all know how to look for the basic hardware info of an ESX(i) server, just open the vSphere Client go to Summary tab and you will presented with the famil...
Managing your vSphere cluster configuration with PowerCLI
Managing VMware vSphere cluster configuration with the vSphere Client can be, sometimes, a tedious task. In this post I’ll show you how to use PowerCLI to ma...
Time to vote for VMworld 2011 sessions! Vote for the HP ones!
Time to vote for VMworld 2011 sessions is here. Like every year VMware has opened the process to vote for those sessions that you want to make their way to t...
HP Technology@Work On Tour 2011 - Madrid
The HP Technology@Work On Tour arrived yesterday to Madrid. This event has been a great opportunity for everyone to see the proposals from HP for Converged I...
Generate a Show All report in HP c-Class Blade Enclosures
One nice feature of the HP Onboard Administrator used to manage the c-Class Blade Enclosures is the possibility to generate a report in plain text format tha...
Install ESXi from the Onboard Administrator
Installing an ESXi server, or any other operative system, using the c-Class Blade Enclosure Onboard Administrator and the server ILO is a very easy and strai...
How to create customized configurations for esxtop/resxtop
One of features I like the most of esxtop/resxtop is the ability to create customized configurations. This feature gives you the ability to have several pre-...
How to check the driver version of a network interface in ESX(i)
Here are two quick ways to check the driver version of a network interface card. The commands must be executed in the ESX COS or ESX(i) Tech Support Mode.
How to create a new file system in OpenBSD
Another self-reference short post that can be useful for any OpenBSD newbie and because I love to go through the basics from time to time just to don’t lose ...
iSCSI initiator configuration in RedHat Enterprise Linux 5
The following post will discuss about iSCSI initiator configuration in RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, this method is also applicable to all RHEL5 derivatives. Th...
Reconfigure an ESX(i) for HA using vSphere PowerCLI
Anyone with some experience and knowledge about VMware HA knows how to perform a Reconfigure for HA operation in a host from the vSphere client and I’m no ex...
HP ProLiant servers management with hpasmcli
hpasmcli, HP Management Command Line Interface, is a scriptable command line tool to manage and monitor the HP ProLiant servers through the hpasmd and hpasmx...
HPUX-admin mailing list closing. Is the end of an era.
Today I received a mail from the HP-UX Admin mailing list. The subject was “[HPADM] final message, list shutting down permanently” and the body contained th...
Moving hosts between datacenters with PowerCLI
Today while I was setting up a new vCloud lab at home I just noticed that by mistake I added one of the ESXi to the wrong cluster and in the wrong datacenter.
Virtual machines HDD format conversion with vSphere PowerCLI
What I like the most of PowerCLI is the power that gives you, instead of relaying on a GUI every second you just issue a couple of commands and everything ge...
Change vSphere PowerCLI proxy settings
Today I was performing a test in the vSphere cluster I have in my laptop and when I tried to connect to my vCenter Server with PowerCLI I got the following e...
Mapping VLAN to ports in HPVM
Long time since my last post about HP Integrity Virtual Machines, well you know I’ve been very occupied with vSphere and Linux but that doesn’t mean that I c...
HP Virtual Connect Domain Setup – Part 4: Server Profiles
This is the fourth and last part of this series of posts about Virtual Connect, the first three were:
HP Virtual Connect Domain Setup - Part 3: Storage setup
Welcome to the third post of the Virtual Connect series!
2010
Merry Christmas!
With this picture of our son Jaime and our lady Buffy, my wife and me wish to you and your families all the best for this Christmas and the New Year ahead.
HP Virtual Connect Domain Setup - Part 2: Network Setup
In the first postof the series I introduced to you HP Virtual Connect and showed how to use the Domain Wizard Setup to initially configure a VC domain. In th...
HP Virtual Connect Domain Setup - Part 1: Domain Setup Wizard
A friend asked me last week if I could produce a document for him explaining the initial basic setup of Virtual Connect, I decided that instead of that it w...
Get the iSCSI iqn of an ESX(i) using vSphere PowerCLI
In yesterday’s post I showed how to get the iSCSI iqn from an ESX(i) server using vSphere CLI from the vMA and from the root shell of ESX itself. Today it’s ...
Get the iSCSI iqn of an ESX(i) using vSphere CLI
When you are trying to configure iSCSI of and ESX(i) server from the command line is clear that at some point you are going to need the iqn. Of course you ca...
EMC Symmetrix Timefinder survival guide
During a previous project I had the opportunity to work very closely with the EMC people and Symmetrix arrays, in fact I got a couple of very good friends fr...
1 year…
I really can not believe it but a year has passed since my first “Hello World!” post.
HP P4000: Setup a two-node cluster
This post will outline the necessary steps to create a standard (no-multisite) HP P4000 cluster with two nodes. Creating a two-node cluster is a very similar...
Managing the multipathing configuration with vSphere PowerCLI
Getting the multipathing policy using PowerCLI is a very simple an straight-forward process that can be done with a few commands.
Remove an inactive NFS datastore using vSphere CLI from vMA
This post is mostly for self-reference but may be someone would find it useful. Last night I decided to change the IP address of one of the Openfiler instanc...
Add a new NFS datastore via PowerCLI and vSphere CLI from vMA
As a small follow-up to yesterday’s post about NFS shares with Openfiler in the following article I will show how to add a new datastore to an ESX server usi...
Configure NFS shares in Openfiler for your vSphere homelab
Even if you have access to the enterprise-class storage appliances, like the HP P4000 VSA or the EMC Celerra VSA, an Openfiler storage appliance can be a gre...
Understanding RAID management in Linux
The first thing you must learn about RAID technologies in Linux is that they have nothing in common with HP-UX, and I mean nothing! Yes there is LVM but that...
HP P4000: Generating the CLIQ key file
As I explained in my first post about the SAN/iQ command line, to remotely manage a P4000 storage array instead of providing the username/password credential...
How to rescan the SCSI bus in Linux
You are in front of a Linux box, a VM really, with a bunch of new disks that must be configured and suddenly you remember that there is no ioscan in Linux, y...
HP resources for VMware
The reason for this post is trying to be a single point of reference for HP related VMware resources.
HP Lefthand P4000 VSA verbose boot
If you are a user of the P4000 VSA you’ll be use to the quiet boot sequence of the SAN/iQ software. Just a couple of messages until you get the login prompt.
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, first impressions
Although I work at HP, a few of days ago I decided to try the Cisco UCS Platform Emulator. I’ve been using HP blades and Virtual Connect for years so I thoug...
HP Lefthand VSA minimum memory requirements
These week I’ve trying to stretch the virtualization resources of my homelab as much as possible. In my obsession to run as many VMs as possible I decided to...
Enabling vSphere Web Access
If you are in the virtualization business you’ll probably know that since the release of vSphere back in 2009 the web access the ESX servers has been disable...
LVM and file system basics in HP-UX & Linux
Now that my daily work is more focused on Linux I found myself performing the same basic administration tasks in Linux that I’m used to do in HP-UX. Because ...
Mirroring VxVM root disk group
Mirroring the root disk group of an HP-UX server is a very straightforward process that can be performed by simply use the vxrootmir command an use the new m...
OpenVMS 8.4 is here and it comes full of new features
This week HP has released OpenVMS 8.4 for Alpha and Integrity servers.
OpenBSD network interface trunking
Network interface trunking is the OpenBSD equivalent of HP-UX Auto-Port Aggregation feature. It allows to combine two or more physical interfaces into a virt...
Installing the HP Lefthand CMC in Linux
May be some of you are not aware of this but the HP Lefthand Central Management Console application is available not only for Windows but for Linux and HP-UX...
Howto set-up a VxVM boot disk from a LVM boot disk
Creating a Veritas Volume Manager boot disk using the LVM boot disks as its source probably looks to many as a very complicated process, nothing so far from ...
Time for a change
Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably know that I joined the HP Spain Linux Team a couple of weeks ago and since then my life has become very intere...
Configure AVIO Lan in HPVM Linux guests
The AVIO Lan drivers for Linux HPVM guests are supported since HPVM4.0 but as you will see enabling it is a little more complicated than in HP-UX guests.
Boot disk structure on Integrity servers
The boot disk/disks of every Integrity server are divided into three partitions:
Howto enable HP-UX 11iv3 agile naming mode in VxVM
By default Veritas Volume Manager uses HP-UX legacy naming scheme instead of the agile view one, of course for any HP-UX Sysadmin this is completely unaccept...
Basic volume tasks with the HP Lefthand CLIQ command-line
Following with the series of posts about the HP Lefthand SAN systems in this post I will explain the basic volume operations with CLIQ, the HP Lefthand SAN/i...
Identifying the HP EVA LUNs on HP-UX 11iv3
Yesterday’s post about CLARiiON reminded me a similar issue I observed when the storage array is an HP EVA. If you ask for the disk serial number with scsimg...
Howto identify the EMC LUN ID in HP-UX 11iv3 – CLARiiON arrays
In my previous post about EMC storage I showed a procedure to identify the ID of LUN presented to an 11iv3 host without Powerpath, which is not recommended t...
Strange NUMA errors on my virtualized ESX 4 hosts
The first time I installed an ESX 4 Update 1 on VMware Workstation an awful red message reporting some NUMA errors appeared on the main console screen.
Retrieving Veritas license information
If you need to get the licensing information from the Veritas products installed on an HP-UX just execute the vxlicrep command.
CLIQ – The HP Lefthand SAN/iQ command-line
It seems that a very popular post, if not the most popular one, is the one about my first experiences with the P4000 virtual storage appliance and because of...
HPVM memory management
Like other virtualization software, HP Integrity Virtual Machines comes with several memory management capabilities. In this new post about HPVM I will try t...
Patching a server using Dynamic Root Disk
Dynamic Root Disk, or DRD for short, is a nice and handy tool that every HP-UX Sysadmin should know how to use. In an HPVM related post I showed how to use D...
Howto get VxVM diskgroup version
If you need to determine the version of a Veritas diskgroup it can be done by two ways:
Mirror operations with VxVM and LVM
In today post I will show how to create and brake a mirrored volume in Veritas Volume Manager and Logical Volume Manager.
Howto identify the EMC LUN ID in HP-UX 11iv3 - Symmetrix arrays
DISCLAIMER NOTE: This method is based only on my personal experience working with HP-UX 11iv2, 11iv3 and EMC Symmetrix. I tested it with near a hundred LUNs ...
EMC PowerPath basic commands
PowerPath is a multipathing software for Unix operating systems from EMC. If you have ever worked or you are going to work in an environment that includes EM...
New Generation Integrity Servers
Last week was, without any doubt, one of the most exciting of the year. The new Integrity Servers have been finally unveiled.
I’m not dead or how much I hate to write documentation
Hi everybody! No you aren’t lucky, I’m not dead yet ;-). It’s only tha I’ve been very busy these weeks, my current project is almost finished and there is a ...
Add iSCSI volumes from HP P4000 VSA to VMware ESXi4
In today’s post I will try to explain step by step how to add an iSCSI volume from the HP Lefthand P4000 VSA to a VMware ESXi4 server.
First hands-on with the HP Lefthand P4000 VSA
The P400 Virtual Storage Appliance is a storage product from HP, its features include:
New HP-UX release, new HPVM, new features… same odd naming convention
Last month HP released the last update of HP-UX 11iv3, the Update 6 or the March 2010 Update or 11.36… I decided some time ago to do not try to understand wh...
OpenVZ in CentOS 5.4
First something I completely forgot in my first post. I discovered OpenVZ thanks to Vivek Gite’s great site nixCraft. This post and the previous one are insp...
Linux container-based virtualization with OpenVZ
Long time since my last post. I’ve been on holidays! :-D
Guest migration in HPVM 3.5
As I already said many times my current HPVM version is 3.5 so it doesn’t support guest online migration. But lacking the online migration feature doesn’t me...
HPVM clones first boot tasks
Welcome again to HPVM World! my dear readers :-D
Cloning HPVM guests
Our next step in the wonderful HPVM World is… cloning virtual machines.
Moving vNICs between vSwitches
Following with my re-learning HPVM process today I’ve been playing around with my virtual switches and a question had arise.
Coming back to the IVM world
Yes I have to admit it, it’s been a while since the last time I created an Integrity Virtual Machine. In my last job didn’t have HPVM and here the VMs were a...
Double check! Always!
Today I learned the hard way how important is to check everything at least twice.
Machinfo on PA-RISC systems
When the HP-UX Itanium version was released it came with a very handy tool named machinfo. This command prints number and type of CPUs, amount of memory, fi...
Linux LVM commands in HP-UX
Some of the features I always liked about the Linux LVM2 implementation are the lvs, vgs and pvs commands. With these simple commands a short list of the LVs...
Happy Birthday to me!
Today is my birthday, 34 years. All kind of gifts would be welcome, specially PA-RISC or Itanium servers, EVAs, ProLiant servers, .
Playing with lanadmin & lanscan
Current release of HP-UX, 11.31, has the handy nwmgr to handle networking tasks, but for years instead of nwmgr we’ve been playing with lanscan and lanadmin,...
SSH foolishness
Today it’s been one of those days that you wish to hide very deep under your desk.
Open Source software and HP-UX
HP-UX is a great OS and the default installation provides a plethora of tools for any Unix sysadmin but of course, like almost every operative system, it can...
HP-UX 10.20, still around :-)
Ten years or so ago the first HP-UX I worked with was a 10.20, it was an old D230 HP9000 server.
Tukwila, we are almost there
It seems that finally and after a myriad of delays Tukwila, the brand new quad-core Itanium processor from Intel, is going to be released. Yesterday through ...
OpenVMS Month!
February is the OpenVMS Month. The people of VMSblog have launched a “Call for Participation in the OpenVMS Month”, the event is sponsored by Connect and the...
UNIX95 and ps command
UNIX95 is a Unix standard defined in the Single UNIX Specification. HP-UX 11i is registered as UNIX95 compliant in its v1 and v2 versions and as UNIX03 (a mo...
vg00 mirroring
This is a small cookbook about mirroring the vg00 I’ve compiled throughout the years, well it’s really more like a list with the commands but I believe it ca...
BSD, don’t you love it?
Because a picture is worth a thousand words.
Console2, a Windows CMD replacement
May be you already know it or may be not, but Console2 is one of those pieces of software that when you discover it you ask yourself “How was my life before ...
HP-UX.. Is there a future for us?
Is there a future for HP-UX sysadmins? Is our beloved OS going to die like others did? For example True64 just to name one.
Configuring APA
Long time since my last post, Christmas you know ;-) BTW Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you.
2009
OpenBSD and VirtualBox
I’ve been using OpenBSD since the 3.0 version as desktop, in my home servers and even in production systems, some time ago I decided to virtualize my OpenBSD...
Hardening dilemma
When you have to secure a system you probably have come to the dilemma ‘Which method is the best? Bastille or manual hardening?’ at least I did it.
HP-UX security resources
Recently a friend asked me about HP-UX security and where to find useful information. We have to admit it, there are not many resources out there about HP-UX...
Installing a new client with Ignite
Along my career as HP-UX administrator one of the most useful tools has been Ignite-UX. This is, IMHO, the most powerful backup/recovery/deployment tool abov...
ioscan_fc2.sh
My first post is about one small, but great, piece of software I found some time ago in Olivier’s site mayoxide. This script is named ioscan_fc2.sh and you c...
Hello world!
OK, this it. Finally I manage to get some time to start my technical blog.