Wow, so here we are… 500 days, it feels like just yesterday I was getting here. Okay, I’m only kidding, every day feels like every day before it, and every day after it.   So let’s take a moment to roll back the clock and see what kinds of things have happened and perhaps some various accomplishments out here! (Like how I rocked that title like a branding whore? ;))

Personal Accomplishments

• Published two books
  • VMware vSphere Performance [Wiley] (ISBN: 1118008197)
  • vSphere Design Best Practices [Packt] (ISBN: 1782176268)
• Completed a massive slew of Certifications including (But not limited to)
  • Cisco
    • CCNA (Routing and Switching, Security and Data Center)
    • CCNP Data Center
    • CCIE Data Center (Written… Can’t exactly take the lab out here can I :))
  • Brocade
    • Brocade Certified Professional (FICON, Data Center, Internetworking)
    • Brocade Distinguished Architect (Only 14 exams!)
  • VMware
    • VCP 5.0
    • VCP 5.5 (Beta and then the “Pass”)
    • Yet, due to the ‘class’ requirement I’m technically still NOT a VCP, yay right? :)
• Finished 92 credit hours in a Bachelors of IT Security degree program (in a month) before I had to take time away to tackle other matters
• EMC Elect for 2013 and 2014
• VMware vExpert for 2013 and 2014
• Avoided death by mortar, rocket, small arms fire, IED and any number of other VERY real threats for 500 days! (Woohoo!)

As you can tell that is quite a slew of personal things to accomplish (And I’m only scratching the surface), there are more things on the horizon some of which I honestly am not sure what else I want to pursue and other things which I’m always actively working on whether publicly or in secret to share later!

Professional Accomplishments

When it comes to what I do professionally I have to be a little obfuscated or in some cases I cannot even share any details due to the sensitive nature of the mission but there are some things which I can disclose and albeit a small list I’ll try to here (Essentially taken from my resume as it’s pre-scrubbed)

• Afghanistan Senior Technical Director responsible for Operations, Management, Engineering, Implementation and Support of the US Operational Forces in CJOA-A mission command
• Provide leadership and direction for team of 100+ engineers and architects geographically distributed across 30 Forward Operating Bases throughout Afghanistan
• Subject Matter Expert for Virtualization, Storage, Data Center and Networking, lead coordinating efforts for the Dec 2014 US Troop draw down and architect of the sustaining architecture for post 2014 mission
• Direct oversight and operations of enterprise infrastructure supporting over 100,000 users
• Define policy, procedure and operational requirements to sustain OEF mission

This is equally a pretty awesome set of accomplishments, something I didn’t include in the bulleted list but I am particularly proud of, the fact that we have maintained 100% uptime. Yea you heard it, 100%, not five 9’s or three 9’s or one 8 and three 2’s, but 100%.  I do not include as part of that as scheduled outages where we were intentionally taking something down for maintenance nor do I include when we have a catastrophic site failure which is out of my control (Let’s say a generator gets hit with a rocket, or HVAC goes offline because its 140 degrees out, or someone decides to sever the network link) Yea, those aren’t included as a cause of downtime because there’s nothing we can functionally do about it, but operationally, configurationally, all of that, we’re talking about 100% baby! I’m sure if we owned the Network and Data center layers we’d keep their numbers higher, but logistically out of my control!

What is next on the horizon

Well, the question of what is next can be a difficult one to exactly predict, I mean there are certain levels of uncertainty and unknown but there are some things which are absolutely certain.

• I’ll be attending VMworld in San Francisco this coming August
  • Will I be throwing a #CXIParty? A question I get asked often… well, … Maybe. You tell me, the logistical effort can be a pain to do from afar…
• I will be going on R&R to spend time with my awesome family who will be living in (after having moved) to Nashville!
• I will be spending (another) Birthday here in Bagram, Afghanistan. Oh the greatest place on earth to spend your birthday. Seriously. Not. :)
• I will be talking to folks at VMworld (and as I currently am) plotting and planning for the next stage of my adventure when I am done with my mission here and ready to invest my time elsewhere.   I keep getting solicited and unsolicited offers from folks, keep it coming… I’ll find the right place to land my feet and make an epic impact like I have here (and everywhere else I’ve been)
• Will I continue to be here in Afghanistan following November to see the final stage of the draw-down through and beyond into the Resolute Support Mission? That is really answered by the viability of finding where the ‘next stage of my adventure’ will take me. So that’s an unknown.
• Will I keep being awesome? Definitely. You should too. :)

So there you go, a look back and a brief look forward.  See ya’ll at VMworld! <3

The other day I was looking at one of my SRM sites and noticed that a CRAP load of VMs were complaining about a CD-Rom mounted, and I was all like, “deh, what is going on!” Well, there was a mass-installation of the VMware tools in place, or at least the tools were mounted.

This is awesome and all, but I didn’t want these VMs to have the tools installer active any more and instead wanted to CANCEL ALL OF THEM!  Sure I could right click on each VM and deactivate the tools installer, but this was for hundreds of VMs, and that sounds annoying.

So, for your benefit and very simply…

Get-VM * | Dismount-Tools

Yes, it is literally that easy. :)  Poof and you’re done! You can call out specific VMs if you’d like, but I think you have that under control by now!

You ever been in that situation of “Oh no, I need to modify a VM to increase/decrease the number of vCPUs and Memory, but I can’t do it during normal business hours” Or whatever the situation may be?  Well, fellow #vExpert @BoBolander and I were discussing this recently, and worked together to create this!  This also will apply if you’re doing this to multiple virtual machines!

Well, look no further. :) You can script this, as in to execute it as a script to happen while you’re at home asleep during your maintenance window, but also even if you’re modifying a simple VM and want the LEAST amount of time and effort possible, minimizing the downtime of the VM this will work also!

Shutting down your Virtual Machine via PowerCLI

This will seem simple, that is because it frankly is.  For the purpose of these descriptions I’m going to use a long VM name so you know this works if a VM has a name with quotes or spaces in it.  So for these purposes, the VM in question will be named, “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4”

Shutdown-VMGuest –VM “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4” –Confirm:$False

Wow, that was simple! So I run that and my virtual machine is shut down? Yes. Yes it is.

Changing your Virtual Machines vCPU and Memory

There you are, your VM is currently rocking out at 4GB of Memory and 1vCPU and you’re all “I really want this to be 8GB of memory and 2vCPUs! You know, because I did the analysis and notice that it’ll perform better, no I’m not just blindly following some vendors ‘best practices’” Ok, if you’re serious about this, here you go!

Set-VM “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4” –MemoryGB 8 –NumCPU 2 –Confirm:$False

Whoa, that was it? My VM now has its resources resized just like that? Yes. Just like that. You’re done!

Please Power my VM Back on! I have work to do!

Alright alright, you want to power your VM back on, you’ve made your change and you’re set! Well, here you go just as simply…

Start-VM –VM “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4”

And poof your VM will start back up and you’ll be set!

You can combine The Set-VM and Start-VM ya know!

Yea, that’s correct! You can instead run the last two components as a single one-liner command like;

Get-VM “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4” | Set-VM –MemoryGB 8 –NumCPU 2 –Confirm:$False | Start-VM

Unfortunately I’ve yet to find a way to combine the VM Shutdown component and the Set-VM Component without it breaking, thus…

Hey but wait, I thought you said this was scriptable

You’re all like, “I can’t just copy and paste these in sequence because my VM hasn’t shut down in time and I get an error trying to use CPU hot plug, and I can’t power the VM back on because it’s still shutting down!!!”    Yep, you got it, you’re absolutely correct! The initial steps were more to provide the steps of how you can go about modifying all of this from the PowerCLI command line, now if we’re really serious about this, here’s a multi-liner which will perform all of these tasks in sequence! Will this work if you don’t have VMware Tools installed? No. No it will not. Get your tools installed, ya’here! :)

• $vm_name = Get-VM “VMware vCenter Log Insight 1.0.4”
• ForEach ($vm in $vm_name){
• $vm_name | Shutdown-VMGuest –Confirm:$False
• Sleep 60
• $vm_name | Set-VM –MemoryGB 8 –NumCpu 2 –Confirm:$False
• $vm_name | Start-VM
• }

A few things… I had to do this in a bulleted list because otherwise the spacing between it was ridiculous, and secondly, am I proud of the utter lack of elegance of this code? No. Not in the least. I think this is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Does it work? Yes. It works QUITE well.  I can equally execute this as an Import-CSV to perform this against a whole series of Virtual Machines but that is outside the scope of this particular blog post. :)

If you happen to have a more elegant want to execute a VMGuest Shutdown while ALSO executing a Set-VM within the same command-set, preferably within one line, feel free to include it in the comments, otherwise this will work and can be scripted whether you’re performing against one virtual machine or more.   I personally will use this to script/execute easy modification of resources when I need to grow or shrink a virtual machines allocations without having to go through and ‘right click – wait’ over and over again, and especially so when I’m performing this against more than one virtual machine.

Good luck, I look forward to your comments, thoughts, and any improvements you may have! Hopefully this helps improve your own management!

I’ve been meaning to post this blog for a few months now, but hey here it is now!

This little gem was posted some time ago Free eBook: vCenter Log Insight sweet post right?! I mean, I’m sure you’ve played with vCenter Log Insight at this point like VMware Log Insight EXPOSED! Splitting your Syslog with an axe! …

But even if you haven’t check it out and get a dive into this cool technology to advance your datacenter!

Click here to get your free copy of Understanding Real-time Log Analytics. You’ll need to fill out a little form but beyond that you’re set! Check it out! <3

On the one hand it is that time of the year again. On the other hand OMG the changes to the #vExpert Program this year are well worth mentioning!!!

All of the scoop and the details can be found here at the official VMware Blog; vExpert 2014 applications are open

And not only is the program proceeding as it had in the past, with the various details I’ve shared in a previous blog post; The Non-definitive guide to the VMware vExpert Program, Tips, Tricks, How to become a vExpert!   But also taking a page out of the Microsoft MVP Programs book, the vExpert program has changed to support quarterly nominations instead of yearly!

The second change is quarterly nominations into the 2014 vExpert program. We will leave the application open year round and at the end of each quarter we will begin the voting process for new vExperts from the previous quarter. So even if you are not picked to become a vExpert 2014 right away, we will allow for quarterly voting and nominations.

Pretty awesome, right?!?

So what does this mean?!? The first question you have to ask yourself is; Are you vExpert material.  Also along the same token you have to ask “Do I know someone who is vExpert material and I’d like to nominate”   The vExpert Program is still broken down into paths of Evangelist, Customer and Partner so the options are multiple and valuable.   When it comes to providing feedback and being supportive of the community refer to my guide mentioned above for ways to contribute and just continue being awesome!

For those of you applying to be a vExpert this year, good luck and best to you!