I’m not sure how supported this is, but this process can recover a vSphere 6 vCenter Server Appliance or Platform Services Controller when you’ve lost the root password. Download the OpenSUSE Rescue CD - http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/iso/ Mount the CD to the PSC Appliance Reboot the appliance and enter the BIOS setup using F2, configure the CD-ROM as first-boot device. Save and exit to reboot into the SUSE Live-CD. Once the Live-CD has booted to a desktop, you’ll see a 12GB volume at the top – that’s your PSC appliance root.

The recommendations for the vRealize Appliance have changed with 6.2, the published reference architecture now does not recommend using an external Postgres database (either vPostgres appliance, a 3rd party Postgres deployment or using a third vRealize Appliance as a stand-alone database installation). Instead the recommended layout is shown in the diagram below. One instance of postgres on the primary node becomes an active instance, replicating to the second node which is passive.

vSphere 6 HA SSO (PSC) with NetScaler VPX Load Balancer for vRealize Automation Deploying vRealize Automation 6.2 Appliance Cluster with Postgres Replication Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 1: Pre-requisites Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 2: Database, Web and Manager services Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation instance - Configuring NetScaler Monitors Providing a highly available single sign on for vRealize Automation is a fundamental part of ensuring the availability of the platform.

Having just welcomed VMTurbo on board as a blog sponsor, I thought I’d do a quick posting on how to deploy their free Virtual Health Monitor appliance. Sign up for a free license here and download the appropriate version Deploy the VMTurbo Appliance Deploying the appliance is simply a case of importing the OVA downloaded. There’s nothing really to configure and it took 61 seconds in my lab environment, so it’s pretty quick!

After deploying a new vSphere 6 vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and configuring the Platform Services Controller (PSC) to act as a subordinate Certificate Authority (CS), I was unable to register the NSX Manager to the Lookup Service. Try saying that fast after a pint or two!? Attempting to register NSX to the Lookup Service would result in the following error: NSX Management Service operation failed.( Initialization of Admin Registration Service Provider failed.

Yesterday, I received the dreaded email We regret to inform you that your attempt to achieve VCDX certification on June 09-11, 2015 in Frimley, UK was unsuccessful. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but somehow I still hoped my assessment of the defense was pessimistic and so it was nonetheless disappointing. It’s a big hit to not achieve something I have been focusing on for months and it is hard not to feel embarrassed that I didn’t make the grade.

Recently I have been looking at William Lam’s excellent post on automating the deployment of vROps. After having a play around with it, to suit my own needs, I made some modifications to the Powershell script so it would support distributed switches. # William Lam # Edited by Simon Eady to support vDS # www.virtuallyghetto.com # Deployment of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 (vROps) ### NOTE: SSH can not be enabled because hidden properties do not seem to be implemented in Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet ###

This is not my normal sort of post - don’t worry, normal service will resume shortly. I read Christian’s comments on the vCommunity - or lack of it - yesterday and although some things resonate with me, and a lot of other people, I don’t quite agree. I want to be clear this is a response to Christian and not an argument, I respect Christian as someone who does contribute to the vCommunity.

I tested vSphere 6 quite intensively when it was in beta, but I didn’t ever upgrade my lab – basically because I need a stable environment to work on and I wasn’t sure that I could maintain that with the beta. Now 6 has been GA a while and I have a little bit of time, I have begun the lab upgrade process. You can see a bit more about my lab hardware over on my lab page.

I tested vSphere 6 quite intensively when it was in beta, but I didn’t ever upgrade my lab – basically because I need a stable environment to work on and I wasn’t sure that I could maintain that with the beta. Now 6 has been GA a while and I have a little bit of time, I have begun the lab upgrade process. You can see a bit more about my lab hardware over on my lab page.