All posts by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild)

I’m sure you’ve been in that situation… sitting there, using vCOPS day in and day out, only to get annoyed as all get out every time you go to refresh or do something and it’s all like HEY WHY DON’T YOU AUTHENTICATE AGAIN!    Well, look no further than here (and this respective KB Article) to cut it out!

Changing or disabling the UI session timeout for vCenter Operations Manager vApp (2015135)

To change the session timeout period for Standard and Advanced versions, set the <session-timeout> parameter to the required value in minutes for the desired timeout.

To disable the session timeout, set the <session-timeout> parameter to -1.
To change or disable the session timeout:

1. Log in to the vCenter Operations Manager vApp UI VM.
2. Open this file using a text editor:
   • For the Standard UI – /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat/webapps/vcops-vsphere/WEB-INF/web.xml
   • For the Enterprise Custom UI – /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-enterprise/webapps/vcops-custom/WEB-INF/web.xml
3. Locate the <session-config> parameter and change this to:
   <session-config>
   <session-timeout>value</session-timeout>
   </session-config>
   Where value is any value in minutes after which you want the session to timeout.
   For example:
   • To set the session to time out after 60 minutes, change this parameter to:
     <session-config>
     <session-timeout>60</session-timeout>
     </session-config>
   • To disable session timeout, change this parameter to:
     <session-config>
     <session-timeout>-1</session-timeout>
     </session-config>
4. Restart the web services:

   • /etc/init.d/vcopswebenterprise restart

   • /etc/init.d/vcopsweb restart

You may notice that it might ALSO be set to default at 30, I’ve noticed that to occur as I’ve upgraded versions of VCOPS over time.

Also, important to note is, even if you’re running the Enterprise or Advanced versions, you’ll still want to modify the “Standard UI” configuration so that the initial vcops-vsphere is modified in addition to modifying the vcops-custom as listed above in the Enterprise Custom UI.

One last comment is, when you update your version of vCOPS you will NEED to go and change this setting each and every time.  So if you’re loading in the latest .PAK file to upgrade, reset you shall or else get annoyed again by timeouts!

You knew it was coming, No seriously you did. … Probably. :)

But yea, Veeam the maker of various Virtualization supportive technologies has released the Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE) certification!

A few interesting things I noticed with this announcement; First of all the Certification exam itself will not be available for a few months so keep that in mind if you were looking at pursuing it today (as I had… :))

Secondly, they take their certification and respective recertification pretty serious with this clause;

How long is a Veeam certification valid?

In order to ensure that Veeam certification is a valuable indicator of a candidate’s knowledge, Veeam will require re-certificating on all major releases of Veeam solutions. To upgrade your certification level as a VMCE, you will have 120 days after the release to take the upgrade course and pass the corresponding exam.

If a VMCE fails the exam, there will be another 90 days to re-take the course (full) and pass the exam (full).

If after this time a VMCE didn’t confirm the certification, it will expire.

At this time, the training is only available in the US, and the online videos haven’t been recorded yet (Hey, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little bit!) but lo and look forward to the future as I can see this start to explode in the near term.

If you haven’t heard of or about EMC Elect by now, let this be a reminder!  For those unaware, EMC Elect is the EMC Equivalent to the Microsoft MVP Program, or the VMware vExpert Program.    It is with great honor I accept this reward two years in a row since its inception.

Look for more continued and contributions to the community this coming year involving Virtualization and EMC as well.  I’ve included some links below from various other members of the EMC Community and with more details on EMC Elect!   Good luck all and have an awesome 2014!!!

The EMC Elect of 2014 – Official List

How were the EMC Elect of 2014 chosen?

EMC Elect 2014 Honorees Announced

Welcoming the EMC Elect of 2014

EMC Elect for 2014 Announced

I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I login to vCOPS only to find that ALL of my vCenters show my health status as 0 and red, removing any real chance of actually seeing if there are any real PROBLEMS going on. It’s annoying as all hell and really removes the chance to actually see what may be going on.   I know what you’re saying though, I can go in to the alerts and clear that Health error.  Yea, I can do a lot of things, but if all I’m going to be doing is removing the alert and effectively ignoring it, then the error itself serves no meaning and should be removed!  

So, here’s how you go about actually disabling this Alert from showing up in vCenter.  Disclaimer; Even with this enabled it will OCCASIONALLY still show up in vCOPS. I don’t know why yet, and when I solve as to WTF that means I’ll publish said results.   Though in the meantime here are the steps!

OMG VCENTER IS ALERTING ME OF PROBLEMS!!!!

Yea you’ve seen this error! The sky is falling, and all that.  Now if you find this error to be pointless and stupid, here are two ways to go about clearing it up!

Firstly, you can pop yourself into the Alarm settings tab, simply uncheck the box to “Enable this Alarm” and bam, the error will no longer ‘alert’ you and appear in your alarms section.  This is awesome. But if you have more than one vCenter like me, I mean not that my 100 vCenters really affords me the need to script this… But sometimes we want to disable alerts everywhere!  

You can run this script and it’ll show you what the status of particular Alarm settings are.  As you can see here, this is configured as “True”

Get-AlarmDefinition -Entity (Get-Folder -NoRecursion) -Name "Health Status Monitoring"

Get-AlarmDefinition -Entity (Get-Folder -NoRecursion) -Name "Health Status Monitoring" | Set-AlarmDefinition -Enabled:$False

By using the Set-AlarmDefinition function of PowerCLI we can very easily change the status of this alarm from True to False, effectively disabling the alarm and setting us up for “teh win”.   What is even more awesome, is if you have other Alarms you’d like to disable, like License Logging Monitor and various other alarms you can simply run the same syntax changing the –Name and disable away!  Awesome, right?!

This personally saves me loads of time and not having to login to every vCenter to clear the stupid Alarm from appearing in the list.   Hope this helps you!

Maybe you’ve heard all the rage about the new Certification Exams from VMware at the Associate Level called the VCA! (VMware Certified Associate) and maybe you haven’t! Well, guess what, You’s gonna hear about it now! :)  So a few things regarding these new Associate level certifications…

THEY’RE FREE TO TAKE AND INCLUDE FREE TRAINING!!!

And the test is delivered via the Web – Online from where you are!

###UPDATE!### – Inline in the comments Phil Wiffen points out what I had forgotten… The code is valid until at LEAST Nov 15th, so act SOON! Also you must take the exam within 48 hours of booking it (hence it expiring in 2 days).

Yea you heard me right.  Now this won’t be free forever, but right now if you use the right formulae of success criteria (detailed inline here) you can get this for free. I’ve heard rumor this expires at the end of this year so get it done STAT! I also heard rumor it expires at the end of November, again knock it out!

You can start out by visiting the VMware Pearson Vue site located at http://www.pearsonvue.com/vmware/ which gives you a handy dandy screen like this..



Below this little list here includes a whole bunch of links you can use to go and register for Authorization and Register for Exams.  If you read a previous blog post A Must-Read before taking your next #VMware VCP or VCAP Exam!!! it included the steps of how to go about requesting authorization to take an exam.   But I’ll mention it here, you’ll need to request authorization to take the exam before you can even register for the exam, and thus schedule the exam respectively!

• Free Online Training Resources:
  • VMware Certified Associate – Data Center Virtualization
    • VMware Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals
  • VMware Certified Associate – Cloud
    • VMware Cloud Fundamentals
  • VMware Certified Associate – Workforce Mobility
    • VMware Workforce Mobility Fundamentals

This little list here not only includes a link to take you directly to the FREE training videos, but the grouping below also takes you to the individual sites for each track to Request Authorization and Register for the exams!

Simply click "Request Authorization" for an exam – and then choose the "Register for the Exam" option!





Then click "Schedule an Exam" after which you select the “Associate and Professional Level Exams” and you’ll need to login then!





If you’ve never done an Online Pearson Vue exam you should create a web account. The process whereby you requested authorization will supply you with the Candidate ID which is required to make this setup complete! I ran into the problem whereby my account was sort of messed up and tied to another account which did not let me login. As I know that VMware Education is so good at cleaning up and merging accounts…. I opt’d to create a new account on a different email alias of mine which also created ANOTHER Candidate ID, but at least it let me register then! :)

After logging in you should have the option to Register for a Pre-Approved exam!





WARNING! Unless you’re rocking your Chinese … Change it from the DEFAULT!



OMG ITS $120 YOU LIED TO ME! YOU SAID IT WAS FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! whoa, hold on there!



MORE LIES! YOU SAID ITS FREE NOW ITS ONLY HALF PRICE!@#!@#$@#!@#  Don’t fret yet… wait until you get to the Payment Screen..



Enter this handy dandy code “VCA13ICS” which I’ve borrowed from my dear friend Rasmus Hedlund from his blog post VMware VCA exam experience plus FREE exam voucher

Additional discount / voucher codes available at Free VMware VCA Certification Voucher! thanks to @FrankBrix ! Look below as well.

Coupon Codes:

• VCA13ICS (Expires November 15th)
• VCA13BCN (Expires end of November)
• VCA13GKN (Supposed to be good until Jan 31 2014)
• VMRT6B404C7B (Expires January 31st)



OMG OMG OMG ITS FREE FREE FREE! Yea. Get it while you can! For some reason mine said mine is only able to taken over the next 2 days which scares me into thinking OMG this won’t last… So get out there and register!