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From Zero to 132

When I applied for Top vBlog elections in November 2018 it was more or less a joke. Yesterday the final results of the Top 25 vBlogs have been streamed live. A recording can be found on YouTube. Amongst the Top 25 there are some of my personal favorites like
Vladan Seget (#2), William Lam (#1), Cormac Hogan (#3) and Melissa Palmer (#6). Congratulations!

Today all the remaining results have been published and I am really (!) surprised, that ElasticSky.de made it from zero to rank #132 of the general category.

Besides the votes there were election criteria like number of posts in 2017 and Google pageload index. Here my blog optimization paid off and I’ve achieved 95% in speed index. With some simple efforts I was able to significantly reduce pageload time.

Other categories

Besides the overall placement there are special categories. I’ve ranked #22 in “Favorite Independent Blogger” and #6 in “Favorite Non-English Blog”. In 2017 I’ve begun to publish in English too.

Thanks and outlook

Thank you so much for voting for my blog. It’s an encouragement to keep putting a lot of work into my blog. I’ll try to keep up the quality, although it’s not easy among everyday business. I’ve got a lot of topics to write about, but there are only 24 hours in a day. I’m not a professional blogger, I’m a consultant who spends most of the time at customer sites. Nevertheless I enjoy writing about IT subjects and surprises like these push me forward and motivate me to go on with blogging.

Thank you very much !

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Runecast (beta) with Hardware Compatibility Checks

Fully automated VMware HCL checks in Runecast Analyzer

Runecast opened a beta testing program for early adopters to try their latest feature. In a future release of Runecast Analyzer users will not only be able to scan their environment against VMware KB issues, but also to check their hardware against VMware hardware compatibility list (HCL).

I’ve been talking a lot with the Runecast team about this ‘missing’ feature. Now I’m lucky to be one of the beta testers and can get a glimpse to the future. 🙂

The challenge

Getting information about software and configuration issues in your vSphere cluster is priceless. But what about hardware?

Look how a future release of Runecast Analyzer can help. It will check your current hardware configuration against VMware HCL. Continue reading “Runecast (beta) with Hardware Compatibility Checks”

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Veeam Backup support for Server 2008 will end with next major release

Next major release of Veeam Backup & Replication will no longer support several Windows versions. That was announced by Anton Gostev in his weekly forum digest on Feb. 25th 2019.

Veeam Backup & Replication components will no longer support being installed on Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 8.0 and Windows 10 1507/1511. However, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (1607 or later) will continue to be supported. Also, Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 continues to be supported as before.

Server 2003 und XP guest OS affected

Application-aware processing and guest file system indexing will no longer support Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP virtual machines. However, crash-consistent backup of such VMs will of course still be supported – as generally speaking, we don’t care what’s inside those images we’re backing up (and whether there is any OS at all).

Curtains für vSphere 5.0 und 5.1

VMware vSphere 5.0 and 5.1 will no longer be supported. However, vSphere 5.5 will continue to be supported. Importantly, the new VeeamCDP functionality specifically will require vSphere 6.5 or later due to its platform dependencies.

VeeamCDP only for vSphere 6.5 and later

The long announced and postponed feature VeeamCDP will require vSphere 6.5 and later versions.

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ESXi host restore with obstacles

Unable to re-join EVC cluster after restore of ESXi system

Changing boot media of ESXi hosts (unfortunately) has become a routine job. It is based on the fact, that many flash media have a limited lifespan. To be fair, I need to point out that many customers use (cheap and dirty) USB flash sticks as boot media. But what is good in a homelab, turns out to be a bad idea in enterprise environments.

The usual procedure for media replacement is fairly simple:

  • export host configuration
  • evacuate and shut down host
  • prepare fresh boot medium with installation ISO that has the same or lower patchlevel as the old installation
  • boot freshly installed host
  • apply (intermediate) IP address if no DHCP available
  • restore host configuration
  • re-connect to cluster
  • apply patches if neccessary

So far so good. But last week I had a nasty experience with a recovered ESXi host. Continue reading “ESXi host restore with obstacles”