Another Set of Miscellaneous internet links of interest

Yeah! I know i'm boring you with all those links, but believe me these links will come very handy when your are looking for career advices from your friends and colleagues and another advantage is that they are easy to digest.

1)Strategize your Income as per your age group:-
Good read for people who just now started their career or are in the middle of their career.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-strategize-for-a-better-salary-in-your-20s-30s-1504980374

2)Another set of interview tips:-
Don't ignore this one, trust me this one is generic and fits-all.
http://www.dsninc.com/careeradvice/interview

3)Troubleshooting NAS/NFS in vSphere infrastructure:-
Good read for guys preping for VCAP exams
http://www.vladan.fr/esxi-5-x-managing-and-troubleshooting-nasnfs-datastores-via-cli

4)Mock Exam for VCP 5, test your knowledge:-
Great collection of VCP Mock Questions from @MWPreston blog
http://blog.mwpreston.net/vcp-5/practice-quiz/vcp-5-practice-exam-all-sections/

5)Networking Guide/workbook for free:-
Yeah i know, what you guys thinking, Yes! this is a virtualization blog, but you must understand Networking and Storage Technologies to get a better grasp at tackling virtual infrastructure and everyone can utilize this free stuff.
http://www.fryguy.net/published-workbooks/

6)VMware Walkthrough:-
Recently VMWare came up with brilliant idea of creating screenshot walkthroughs of newly released softwares for professionals.
http://vmwarewalkthroughs.com/

That's all for today and the reason i keep boring you guys for past two days (including today) is, i'm going for a week long vacation and feeling awesome about it..hurray..

Be Social and share this stuff..

Miscellaneous Interesting Links over the Internet

Hi Guys/Gals,

Today, want to share some interesting links, i got acquainted with:-

1)Building Lab for VCAP-XXX study-
Awesome post with details about building study lab for vmware advanced certifications-
http://sostechblog.com/2014/01/14/building-a-vcap-live-exam-test-environment/

2)Complete Review of Latest Haswell based Intel NUC from non-other-than Anandtech
Detailed H/W review of Intel NUC
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7566/intels-haswell-nuc-d54250wyk-ucff-pc-review

3)Hacking LLDP config on vSwitch
Although this is very high-level networking post, but good for brain-washing
http://blog.shanonolsson.com/blog/2014/01/03/lldp-and-standard-virtual-switches/

4)Interview questions-you can expect for VMware Arch./Adm. Jobs
Detailed interview questions keeping both Arch./Adm. profile in mind
http://non-descript.com/?p=18

5)Mind Hacks from Lifehacker blog
Simple yet powerful mind hacks for hacking your life, a good read
http://lifehacker.com/top-10-ways-to-trick-your-brain-into-doing-what-you-wan-1502990312

6)Digital inspiration blog owner covered on lifehacker
Recently lifehacker (one of my favorite) did a blog post on Amit Agarwal, owner of labnol.org
http://lifehacker.com/im-amit-agarwal-and-this-is-how-i-work-1506511234

7)Managing CPU and Memory using Bash:-
Excellent article about managing CPU and Memory using bash scripting.
http://www.sandervanvugt.com/index.php?menu=3&site=sub_pagina&id=4

8)Awesome site to Decrypt complex linux One-Liners:-
http://explainshell.com/

Be Social..have a Good Day

Sharing progress on Python Learning & Tweaking vSphere Shortcut

Learning Python course from http://www.codecademy.com/, 58% completed till date. Hopes are high on this one. I think if i practice Python regularly, i will soon advance to intermediate level. great job to me.

Another progress i'm making on learning Hadoop (it's kind a side project), completed the "CBT Nuggets for Hadoop" course and built my single node hadoop install for revision and testing hadoop commands. however installing hadoop for single node is pretty straight forward (if you got the right guide), don't worry i will document the steps for the same in future blog post.

one cool trick that i want to share with you guys is how to automate login into vSphere Client with tweaking vsphere client shortcut.

For logging in with your Windows session credentials:

-s vcenter.yourdomain.com -passthroughAuth

For logging in with any other credentials:

-s vcenter.yourdomain.com-u username -p password 

So, if you're like me and manage 5-6 vCenter servers, this will really help you out.

TGIF...

Thinking out loud-vCenter server on Hyper-V

Today i was thinking about a scenario, where i was thinking to put vSphere infra components (Like vCenter server, syslog, AD, DNS, DHCP etc.)above Hyper-V Cluster.

i know what you're thinking, what absurd thing i'm talking about, what is the need of separate management cluster, Hyper-V is not mature enough to host vSphere Management infra., VMWare and Hyper-V don't go Hand-in-Hand etc. and i accept that, because before conceiving this concept i had same thoughts but later i cross questioned myself i.e. what is pros/cons about this design and how this is going to help the customers. So, i'm sharing the pros/cons about this design with you, if you any comments whether good or bad, i'm all ears.

Pros or advantages:-
1)Dual Hypervisor strategy with a twist.
2)Most of the vSphere infra components require windows OS (yeah,i know about VCSA).
3)Utilize "Virtualization-Safe" feature introduced in win2012 (VM-GenerationID, avail. with Hyper-V v3), make SSO robust.
4)License cost reduced (at least for management cluster and OS license).
5)Utilize existing hardware and windows OS license.
6)vCenter server supported on virtual platform (kb10087), nothing mentioned about Hyper-V

Cons or disadvantages:-
1)Requires multi-talented engineers to manage.
2)Support-issues from both vendors (support engineer love this sport, Volley-ball).
3)Some Third-party software issues (i don't know which, but included it).
4)Hard to convince CIO/CTO's (biggest threat to such designs)

If you have something in your mind about the above conceptual design, please share your thoughts.

thanks

Sharing Progress for Upcoming Exam (74-409)

I'm very happy today to share my progress about my exam (74-409) preparation. I utilized my holidays efficiently and finished the tedious task of watching all the recording of "Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center"- MVA Course. Watching these videos are really worthy to me, course presenter "Sean perriman" and "Corey hynes" shared some exam tips and insights about exam questions, one can face. this task alone took almost two days. then on makar sankranti leave, i worked on building my home lab for Hyper-V and System center. One of the tip that they shared during system center module is that, Microsoft has a very cool system center powershell deployment toolkit  aka PDT, bloggers already blogged about it and now i'm going to test it soon and share my experience with it. however, as per them, PDT really eases out all the pain out of system center install. it automatically downloads the setup (almost 6+ GB) files for you from microsoft site and install each and every components for you. PDT is comprised of three powershell scripts (Downloader, VMcreator and installer) and one XML file (variable). although it is not limited to system center install, you can utilize this tool for automating other MS softwares (do some googling..i'm mean to say research).

that's all for today..

VMware Web Client & VCSA: Caveats resolved and Myths debunked

With a beginning of new year, here comes post about debunking some caveats and myths about using and deploying VMware's new WebClient 5.5 (replacing VMware vSphere Client) and VCSA 5.5 (vCenter Server Appliance). However, both of these offering's from VMware are not at all completely new, and as per it's more frequent announcements these two softwares are going to replace the age-old windows client and later vCenter server (most people prefer appliance for license cost cutting and better agility). 

And if you're like me (i love troubles), then you also implemented this in your respective production or home environments. And, if you're not like me then i want to warn you before, else you run into troubles, read these links for resolving those caveats and debunking those myths, which will definitely come into your mind or you'll face while implementing or deploying.

1)Password lockout in VCSA-This one is the excellent walkthrough for resolving first caveat you face.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2069041

2)Another Excellent post about VCSA Security settings-it's a four part series

a)https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/01/have-you-checked-the-root-password-expiration-on-your-5-5-vcva-today.html

b)https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/09/virtual-appliances-getting-more-secure-with-vsphere-5-5-part-2.html

c)http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/09/virtual-appliances-getting-more-secure-with-vsphere-5-5-part-3.html

d)http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/09/virtual-appliances-getting-more-secure-with-vsphere-5-5-part-4.html

3)Debunking myths about VCSA-

http://www.virtualizationteam.com/server-virtualization/vcenter-server-appliance-5-5-limitations.html

4)Utilising Tags in VCSA-

http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/time-to-switch-your-vcenter-attributes-to-tags/

I think all the above mentioned links will definitely help you out in your endeavour of implementing/deploying both solutions.

Another Excellent link that i want share today is a book from blogger vminstall.com 'Joe Sanchez'

http://www.amazon.com/VCP-Hire-Virtualization-Engineers-Administrators-ebook/dp/B008C9Q6MM

This book helped me alot, preparing for my virtualization interviews and i hope this will help you guys.

Happy Lohri and Happy Makar Sankranti..

Another Quick post about Python resources for VMware

Day before yesterday, i told you about python-verse, that it is expanding at fast pace and even virtualization vendors took shelter under it's Umbrella. VMware is no different than other virtualization software and promotes python very aggressively, ESXi is mostly written on python, VMware recently released pyvmomi, which is a vsphere SDK for python. however, there are so many resources available for learning Python SDK and API for VMware platform.

1)PySphere- Python API for interaction with the vSphere Web Services SDK.
https://code.google.com/p/pysphere/

2)vCloud API for Python
https://svn.apache.org/viewvc/libcloud/trunk/libcloud/compute/drivers/vcloud.py?view=markup

3)Blog about Python Library Comparison
http://dunniganp.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/comparison-of-python-vmware-vsphere-client-libraries/

4)Hacking Python Library for VMware
http://www.doublecloud.org/2013/11/hacking-vmware-private-python-api-for-vsphere-with-a-quick-sample/

5)Python code Excerpt
https://github.com/arrfab/python-scripts/blob/master/vmware/getVMware.py

That's enough for todays appetite, TGIF njoy.
Credit-Credit where credit's due.