Monthly Archives: March 2015

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Password Reset on Cisco MDS 9100 Series Fibre Channel Switch

My most recent customer engagement, was to re-use some older hardware as vSphere disaster recovery. The kit includes a EMC Clariion SAN, and two Cisco MDS 9124 switches.

The customer didn’t setup these FC switches, and required a password reset. Which I was happy to do for him, until I realised the Cisco article online is slightly wrong. So below are the steps I took to get the job done.

Password Reset/Recovery Steps

First off stick your console cable into the switch,

1. Power Cycle the Switch and keep pressing Ctrl + C until you see;

loader>

2. You then need to find the boot filename, using the “dir” command

loader> dir bootflash:
bootflash:

 12288 lost+found/
 18678784 m9100-s2ek9-kickstart-mz.4.1.3a.bin
 51055100 m9100-s2ek9-mz.4.1.3a.bin
 4798 mts.log

Continue reading Password Reset on Cisco MDS 9100 Series Fibre Channel Switch

VMware Update Manager

Using VMware Update Manager to automatically download Dell Drivers to ESXi

Last year I wrote about how to use VMware Update Manager to download HP Drivers for ESXi,

Since then I’ve also found out you can add the following Dell repository into VMware Update manager;

  • http://vmwaredepot.dell.com/index.xml

2015-03-16_10-01-18

 

Regards

<a href=”https://twitter.com/saintdle”>Dean</a> (<a href=”http://lnkd.in/bUUrNkB”>Linkedin</a>)

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Upgrade VCSA to VMware vCenter 6

So I jumped right in and upgraded my VCSA 5.5 to VCSA 6, you can find the official documentation and upgrade steps here.

Pre-Reqs from VMware

  •  Verify that the clocks of all machines on the vSphere network are synchronized. See Synchronizing Clocks on the vSphere Network.
  • Verify that the ESXi host on which you deploy the vCenter Server Appliance is not in lockdown or maintenance mode.
  • Verify that the vCenter Server SSL certificate for your existing vCenter Server Appliance is configured correctly. See VMware Knowledge Base article 2057223.
  • If you use an external database, back up the vCenter Server Appliance database.
  • Create a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance.

What you need before you start

Continue reading Upgrade VCSA to VMware vCenter 6

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VMware Software Manager – a quick guide

Downloading a VMware Suite with the Push of a Button using VMware Software Manager

One of VMware’s announcements today alongside the release of VMware vSphere 6 and additional products to support vSphere 6, was VMware Software Manager.

Here’s the official blurb of the product, which I can’t really rewrite better myself;

VMware Software Manager - Download Service is a tool for managing downloads of VMware suite products. The tool allows you to browse and download software, monitor the progress of downloads, and locate your downloaded software in an organized folder structure.

At the time of release, Download Service makes available only a portion of VMware suite releases. Currently available releases include:

VMware vCloud Suite® 5.8 and 5.5
VMware vSphere® with Operations Management™ 5.5
VMware vSphere® 5.5 and 5.1

Additional suites and suite versions will be released in the future and will dynamically show up in Download Service.

The official release notes can be found here.

Installing the Product

Continue reading VMware Software Manager – a quick guide