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Accepted for Cisco Champion Program 2015

Cisco, General, ,

So tonight was a saved by the bell moment, brought with a little joy.

I’ve been selected for the Cisco Champion Program 2015.

So it means I have something to blog about, =D.

The program was brought about last year for its first year, bringing together members of the community who work with Cisco products and services. Heres the official line;

The purpose of the Cisco Champions Program is to create and nurture a network of people who are passionate about Cisco and enjoy sharing their knowledge, expertise, and thoughts across the social web and with Cisco.

The Cisco Champions program encompasses different areas of interest and geographical areas within the company, providing a variety of opportunities for Champions to participate in the program.

The full information set can be found in this FAQ.

What it means to me

I guess it shows I am passionate about an area of technology, for me I was on the Enterprise Networks last year, which looked at Datacenter and Security technologies. Which meant I was given insider exposure to Cisco UCS, which is an area I am looking at developing into, creating designs around the platform, and deploying the solutions, even having a chat with one of the Cisco UCS team members to see how the Mini fitted in with a customer design I was underway with.

I’ve also met other peers from around the world of various different job roles and experience, and shared deep dive insights and jokes with them. Which is a great way of networking further, aside from writing in community based blogs.

What I’m looking forward to
  • Blogging for Cisco’s website as a community member, who could pass up that chance, I’m hoping to talk about the Cisco CCNP Certification.
  • Development oftheUK based Cisco Champions
    • A lot of the stuff done for the Cisco Champions is based around USA time, which is a pain for me personally, however speaking with the guys who run things, this is something they are looking at developing out further, after all 2014 was its first year!
  • Enhancement of Cisco Product range, and getting the insider track on whats coming.
  • Enhancing the Cisco Community in any way possible.
  • vBacon 😉

CiscoChampion200PX

So thanks to all of those who reviewed my application and accepted it!

Regards

 

Dean


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VMware Horizon View – Connection Server Services dont load with Public SSL Cert

VMware, , , , , , ,

So my colleague rang me the other week with a bit of weird issue. After installing the VMware Horizon View Connection Server, the services do not start after installing Public SSL, and replacing the self-signed SSL.

The environment
  • Server 2012 R2 fully patched
  • Installing Connection Server, services fine
  • Install Public Cert (Following VMware guidelines for creation)
    • Used Cert Req tool
    • Connection Server Service fails to start.

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Continue reading VMware Horizon View – Connection Server Services dont load with Public SSL Cert →

dvs

vCenter lost DVS configuration – Fixing the hosts

Networking, VMware, , , , ,

So I hit an interesting issue whilst performing a VMware upgrade from 4.0 to 5.5. There was a legacy issue left where vCenter had lost its knowledge/configuration of the DVS Setup.

Im not entirely sure what happened or when, as it was an existing environment, I only know I had to fix it. (Many thanks to the help from my good friend over at www.vmtechy.com for refreshing me on the ESX 4.0 command line to fix this).

The Symptoms

Within the vCenter Client, on the host summary tabs.

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When looking at the Virtual Machine settings.

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Continue reading vCenter lost DVS configuration – Fixing the hosts →

disk vol

Extending your Server 2003 Disk Partitions using Dell Extpart

Storage, Windows, , ,

So we all know that we should be migrating away from Server 2003 as its end of life June 2015. But until then we still need to manage it.

So lets look at how to extend your hard drives into unpartitioned space using the Dell Extpart tool.

Note: This is probably not supported by VMware, so use at your own risk

So create your unpartitioned space, i.e in VMware, extend the hard drive.

Rescan your disk in Computer Management so the unpartitioned space appears. Right clicking on the drive, you will see there is no extend option, as found in Server 2008 and up.

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Continue reading Extending your Server 2003 Disk Partitions using Dell Extpart →

VMwareHorizonView

Installing VMware Horizon View Composer fails with Error 1920

VMware, , , , , ,
The issue

So today I was installing VMware Horizon View Composer on my Server 2012 R2 vCenter machine, where the SQL database is also local to this machine.

And I came across the below error,

"Error 1920, Service VMware Horizon View Composer (svid) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start the system service"

Which I something I’ve dealt with before, but I must admit I forgot the fix, and was looking into the following area’s;

  • Check account is Administrator and has “Log on as a Service” right
  • Check there is no pending restarts
  • Check ODBC is set up correctly and gives a successful message when testing

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The fix

Continue reading Installing VMware Horizon View Composer fails with Error 1920 →