Experts Exchange featured an Expert Spotlight on me, you can read it here Expert Spotlight: Andy Hancock
Expert Spotlight - Andy Hancock
Archive for the ‘Virtualisation’ Category
Expert Spotlight: Andy Hancock
Wednesday, November 5th, 2014New Eaton 12kVA UPS Arrives for the Datacenter!
Monday, October 13th, 2014
Eaton UPS Delivery
Comments, received, what have you ordered now!!!
It’s been in the plan and design for many months, and today the new Eaton 12kVA UPS arrived for the Datacenter, 10 days early, and un-announced!
This will replace ALL our ageing APC UPS, which have battery failures, and difficult to manage when you have eight independent UPS!
This new Eaton 12kVA UPS, can be configured as 12kVA or 2 x 6kVA in parallel, it will be configured in our datacenter as 2 x 6kVA in parallel.
It weighs in at approx 288kg, and is approx 15u or 90 inches high, it’s 2 UPS, with 2 external battery packs, and a Eaton PowerEasy Module. [I’ll upload so more pictures when it’s racked and hared wired!]
This will provide power, when we have brownouts, for approx 45 minutes for all the VMware vSphere Hosts, Storage Area Networks (NetApp and Equallogic), and Storage Area Network switches, it also has a feature called “Load Shedding” where we can specify Critical Virtual Machines, e.g. Microsoft Active Directory Domain Controllers and Microsoft Sharepoint Servers, and in the event of a power outage, will shutdown all non-essential virtual machines and hosts, to extend runtime, during the power outage.
“[19:01:12] Melly from Experts Exchange commented : you seem super stoked!!”
Andy sits on the Eaton UPS!
super stoked!! – is that Surf Dude speak for too much Red Bull!
Mircosoft and Me!
Wednesday, August 20th, 2014and most of you that know me, are probably saying, I thought he was a fan of VMware!
so one of my Article’s ends up on Microsoft Technet UK Blog, as I’m now a member of the Microsoft Technical Community Council.
Here’s the article on Microsoft Technet UK Blog
Migrating 2008 R2 Hyper-V VMs to 2012
(oh, and there’s a recent photograph of me as well, proudly wearing the Microsoft Technical Community Council shirt!)
Invited to join the Microsoft Technical Community Council (MTCC)
Friday, August 8th, 2014After my visit to Lotus F1, I was asked my Microsoft Technet UK if I wanted to join the Microsoft Technical Community Council (MTCC). The MTCC is described as “a group of external IT professionals influential in the IT Pro world, who are engaged and interested in sharing their opinions and meet once a month via a Lync call”.
Microsoft Technical Community Council (MTCC)
Today, I received the MTCC shirt…
So after signing the NDA, I’m now a member of the MTCC. All of the members feedback to Microsoft with real world experience of implementing Microsoft Technologies, and we get to understand the Microsoft road ahead.
VMware Festive Journey starts on 2nd December 2013
Wednesday, November 27th, 2013The VMware Elves are pleased to announce that the VMware Festive Journey is back!
Thanks to SimpliVity for the Raspberry Pi!
Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
I’ve arrived home from work yesterday evening late, after changing yet another wheel on my car after a puncture! A nice treat after spending an hour changing a wheel/tyre!
To find this delivery from the US via FedEx!
A Raspberry Pi
A Raspberry Pi
Thanks to SimpliVity for the Raspberry Pi, a gift from them for being a VMware vExpert 2013!
A little bit about SimpliVity
SimpliVity was established in late 2009 with the humble mission of simplifying IT, and we are well on our way. OmniStack™–our novel technology that includes 10 patent-pending innovations– powers a new assimilated, IT infrastructure platform. SimpliVity’s OmniCube™ platform provides enterprise computing, storage services and network functionality, inclusive of WAN optimization, Unified Global Management, Seamless Cloud Integration, Primary Storage Deduplication, Backup deduplication, Caching, and Global Scale Out— all at a fraction of the acquisition cost of standard infrastructure, a fraction of today’s traditional operating costs, and with a game-changing reduction in complexity. When deployed, OmniCube systems create an OmniCube Global Federation, creating a massively scalable pool of shared resources, and enabling efficient data movement, scalability, and enterprise class system availability – all managed from a single pane of glass, by a single admin.
HOW TO: P2V, V2V for FREE – VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5
Sunday, October 27th, 2013HOW TO: P2V, V2V for FREE – VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5
If you need to complete a Physical to Virtual (P2V), Virtual to Virtual (V2V) conversion to a VMware product (VMware Workstation, Player or vSphere) for FREE, then there is some good news…
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 was released on 22 October 2013, and this latest version has new support for the following:-
- Support for virtual machine hardware version 10
- 62TB disks, virtual SATA controllers, etc.
- Support for RedHat KVM virtual machines as a source
- A new option for selecting the network adapter for the target virtual machine
- Support for additional guest operating systems
- Parallel disk conversions
- Virtual SAN support
Also fixes numerous issues with crashing and conversion issues, when converting physical or virtual computers to VMware vSphere vCenter Server 5.5 and VMware Hypervisor ESXi 5.5.
While I would recommend and use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5, there are other commercial products that do exist, and I have used.
If you have a large estate of physical machines to migrate, these products have a scheduler and can perform automated workflows, but these are commercial products and not FREE like VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5
Symantec System Recovery Server Edition
If the operating system is Windows 2003, Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0, select and earlier version of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone version 3.0.3 or 4.0, support for early operating systems has been removed now from v5.5.
if you have recently upgraded to vSphere vCenter Server 5.5, and are looking for the Convert/Import vCenter plugin which existed with 4.x, it’s now longer available, and has been removed, and you will need to use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 for your conversions.
and if you do use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5, and you want to make your transfers 60% faster checkout my EE article here
Download VMware vCenter Converter 5.5 here
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 Documentation
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 User Guide
If you have issues, you may want to consult the following articles and guides
Read fellow Expert Bestway’s article.
Best Practice Video Guide here
Some Videos I’ve developed for Experts Exchange members to show the VMware vCenter Converter process.
A Tutorial video by me:- VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Process at work
Virtualisation Snapshot Hell!
Monday, September 9th, 2013Whatever you call them in VMware circles, they are known as “Snapshots”, in Microsoft circles, Hyper-V they are known as “Checkpoints”.
Snapshots are evil things, I wrote an Article last year on Experts Exchange called – HOW TO: VMware Snapshots :- Be Patient,
the following two clients, clearly had not read my article, but they have now!
VMware vSphere Exchange Virtual Machine with two snapshots, one snapshot size of 250GB, with a parent disk of 500GB. Exchange performance would have been poor, this snapshot has been present for many months, and eventually took 33 hours to delete, ,merge and commit the snapshot, with 33 hours of Exchange downtime!
Microsoft Hyper-V Virtual Machine, with 9 nested snapshots, totally 170GB, more of an issue, performance is poor, and deleting these snapshots will cause issues, and delay!
The one thing you need to know about Snapshots, is if you use them, or find a virtual machine using one is Be Patient, if you decide to delete them!!!
It can take a very long time, for the process to complete and merge the child (delta) disk into the parent disk.
“The man. The crown jewel of EE. An immovable pillar of patience.” @ExpertsExchange
Monday, August 19th, 2013
An article written about me, which has been posted on the Experts Exchange Company Blog, it starts…
“The man. The crown jewel of EE. An immovable pillar of patience. These are just a few of the names that Experts Exchange community members have bestowed upon Andrew Hancock (known on the site as hanccocka). While Andrew joined …..
You can read the full article here – EE’s Top Expert Pens Series of VMware for Beginners Articles
Apple OS X Mavericks (OSX 10.9) Developer Preview 3 on VMware vSphere 5.1 (ESXi 5.1)
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013Yesterday, I managed to get Apple OS X Mavericks (OSX 10.9) Developer Preview 3 installed and working on VMware vSphere 5.1 (ESXi 5.1).
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