Articles by Kim Bottu

VMworld 2017 Barcelona – Are you going?

June 12, 2017 Kim Bottu 0

A couple of weeks ago I received some very pleasant news in my inbox:  “VMworld Blogger Pass, Barcelona – YOU’RE GOING!” This is the second year VMware bestows this honor on me and I am feeling as happy and honored as I felt last year. Just like last year, I had to read the email a couple of time before I was able to believe the subject of the email. *grin* Of course a free conference ticket only takes you that far. I have to extend my gratitude also to my managers who recognize the value of all the technical sessions at VMworld and who sponsor all my other costs. You guys rock! So what is this VMworld I am writing about? I have always seen VMworld […]

Very persistent NTP issues on VCSA and PSC appliances

May 11, 2017 Kim Bottu 3

For the 2 weeks I had been having very annoying NTP sync issues on some of my VCSA and PSC appliances in one of the datacenters. While my SSO domain and vCenter enhanced linked mode were for the most part working properly, it still bugged me that the NTP clocks on my PSC and VCSA in datacenter 1 were properly syncing with the NTP source (windows NTP source), but the NTP time on my PSC and VCSA in datacenter 2 were always off with somewhere between 3 to 7 minutes with the clocks of all my other appliances and Windows VM’s.  They did how ever sync properly with each other.  (For trouble shooting purposes, I pointed all appliances to a single NTP source in a single […]

A different take on the SRM upgrade order

March 3, 2017 Kim Bottu 0

Upgrading a vSphere environment with SRM can be tricky. If you follow the official best practice on how to upgrade vSphere and SRM you might find yourself in a position where SRM is out of commission because the last part of the upgrade process,  the part where you upgrade the DR site, fails. The official recommended way to upgrade SRM The official recommended way to upgrade SRM connected sites is to upgrade all components in the Primary sites first and then upgrade the components in the DR site. This means that you upgrade vCenter components followed by the SRM components in Primary Site A first, followed by vCenter components and the SRM components in Primary Site B and then by the vCenter components […]

ERROR vCenter 5.5U2 upgrade to vCenter 6.0U2a: 1603, A change must be made to this systems time and many others

March 3, 2017 Kim Bottu 0

Recently I had several problems upgrading vCenter server 5.5U2 to vCenter server 6.0U2a. Luckily all has been solved now and I owe a huge thank you to  Ciaran McE from VMware Support who has stood by me and helped me to solve this vCenter upgrade problem. Below I am listing a handful of the errors we have seen, how you can spot them and how you can solve them. Error 1: Error 1603. Because SSO appeared to be somehow corrupt [As a test to check if SSO was intact I deleted of a local SSO group resulted in the unavailability of SSO as a whole], I had to install a new external SSO server,  remove and reinstall vCenter server and re-point […]

Manny Sidhu joins our merry band of vMusketeers

December 27, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

We are delighted to announce that Manny Sidhu is joining vMusketeers! Manny currently works from Melbourne Australia, has been a vEXPERT for the last 3 years and has been announced as a vEXPERT NSX for 2016.  Like the rest of us he is a huge fan of VMware , virtualization and a certification junkie. Thanks for joining our merry band of vMusketeers Manny!

Testing vSphere 6.5 DRS – CPU Over Commitment Ratio

November 17, 2016 Kim Bottu 2

The CPU over-commitment ratio also known as the vCPU to pCPU ratio. In this post I will test this new feature of vSphere 6.5 and how it impacts a vSphere 6.5 datacenter design. I am testing this because some of the information about this setting is kind of vague and I want to be sure that I understand how it works and what its impact is on production environments and how it will affect vSphere designs. To be able to test the above mentioned features I have setup a small test environment using 2 nested ESXi hosts, a nested VCSA 6.5 server and a handful of VM’s. The Cluster: 2 hosts HA is disabled DRS is enabled ( because this is a DRS feature!) The hosts: Both hosts have the […]

Emad Younis & Adam Eckerle – The vCenter server and Platform Services Controller Guide to the Galaxy

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

If you have questions about the deployment of or migration to the VCSA no matter what version, Emad and Adam are probably the guys you want to have a conversation with and the session called ‘The vCenter server and Platform Services Controller Guide to the Galaxy’ should be the first session you should check out at VMworld Barcelona. The right question to ask yourself here is: why would you want to stay with the Windows Server  hosted vCenter server? Because you are used to it and everyone in your department can support it? Because the database administrators know perfectly well how to support Oracle or MSSQL databases but no Postgres? Because the Windows vCenter server historically has supported more features and has […]

Guido Appenzeller – NSX the network bridge to the Multi-Cloud future

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

This presentation was actually co-hosted by Guido Appenzeller, the CTO for the NSBU and Scott Lowe who hardly needs any introduction anymore. In this session they elaborated further on how NSX will bridge clouds together and gave live demonstrations on how it all works! Note: I scheduled this session without actually knowing what to expect. Often these kind of sessions tend to be loaded with marketing talk which doesn’t interest me in the least. However this session in reality was a true gem. The guiding principles The guiding principles for a multi cloud network are that software really has to be independent from the hardware, the software had to evolve to a new model and some form of cloud networking is needed of course. Let’s […]