vExpert experience

The first 3 months in the life of a vExpert

I’ve been blogging about virtualization and VMware for almost 8 years now. It started simple as a digital reminder, or as I like to call it: “a swap partition for my brain”. This blog was meant to be a central location to store all these tips and tricks, procedures and workarounds. I didn’t expect anyone to read my content and in fact in the beginning there was no reaction. After two years of blogging, first responses reached me (someone actually read that stuff). So I’ve started to design my posts in a more comprehensive and educational way. More and more people wrote comments or sent emails – all of them very encouraging and positive.

Thank you all for pushing me forward.

In May 2017 I’ve visited VeeamON in New Orleans. After more than a decade in virtualization this was my first international convention and also a game changer. I met there some well-known bloggers, vExperts and Vanguards. While chatting about their blogs I found out that some of them actually knew my site, which honestly surprised me.

Until then my personal definition of vExperts were people whose blogs I used to read frequently. Excellent resources like Yellow-Bricks by Duncan, ESXvirtualization by Vladan, frankdenneman.nl by Frank, CormacHogan by himself and a dozen others. In mid 2017 some colleagues convinced me to apply for vExpert 2017 (2nd half). Honestly, I did not expect to have the slightest chance of success – but on the other hand I had nothing to lose. OK, let’s press submit.

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Runecast Analyzer – Getting started Guide part 3

First steps

In the first two section of this article-series I’ve shown how to deploy and setup Runecast Analyzer and how to update the appliance with latest patches. In this section I’ll show you some first steps to get familiar with the dashboard.

First login into the appliance (default login is rcuser / Runecast!).

Once you’re logged in you’ll see the dashboard where a brief overview of your infrastructure and possible issues are displayed in a condensed way. Don’t be scared, there will be issues. 😉

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VM performance data invisible for users with restricted permissions

How to grant a user permissions to view performance charts

Recently I’ve granted a user permissions to manage his VM in vCenter. I’ve created a custom role with extended VM permissions in vCenter and named it “VM-Admin”.

I also permitted to view performance data of that VM.

Unfortunately that didn’t work. All he could see was a blank screen with no ability to switch views.

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vSphere Web Client vs. vSphere Client

Ein Argument, das viele Kunden vom Upgrade auf vSphere 6.5 abhält, ist der Verlust des vSphere-Clients (C# Client). Der auf Adobe Flash basierende Web-Client wurde nie richtig angenommen. Auch wenn einige Funktionen nur im Web-Client verfügbar sind, erledigen vSphere-Admins 95% ihrer Tätigkeiten im klassischen C#-Client. (Ich muss gestehen, ich gehöre auch dazu).

Dabei wird oft das beste Argument zum Upgrade übersehen: Der HTML5 vSphere-Client. Ursprünglich als Fling gestartet, ist er nun auch fest in vSphere 6.5 integriert. Er benötigt kein Flash mehr und überzeugt auch optisch durch die klaren Linien der Project-Clarity UI.

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