VMware 4.0+ warns admins with VM hosts that have violated ‘optimum’ security practices, displaying the following messages, accopanied by the yellow warning symbol on your hosts in the VI client:

The Local Tech Support Mode for host xxx has been enabled
Remote Tech Support Mode (SSH) for host xxx has been enabled

Assuming you understand the implications of having local and remote (ssh) modes enabled, and are comfortable with that, here is how you remove the annoying warning:

1. Go to the host and the Configuration tab
2. Under the Software frame, choose Advanced Settings
3. In the dialog that pops up, choose UserVars on the left
4. Scroll to the bottom…the 4th box from the bottom is “UserVars.SupressShellWarning“. Change this value from 0 to 1.
5. Click ok and the message and symbol go away

Let me know your thoughts on this process and if you had any issues.

Windows Server 2008 (R2) is awesome. Almost everything about it is better than it’s predecessor. One issue I’ve run into as a VMware Engineer is that even with VMware tools installed and up to date, the mouse still moves around like a server without VMTools. This experience can test your patience if you’re doing enough of it. It’s shaky, jerky and because you actually have VMTools installed, your mouse if flying off the window with each drag. Especially if you’re working remotely on a server half way across the world with 300ms latency!

Well fortunately there is a way to improve this experience. Although I haven’t scripted a solution yet, here is how to do via the Windows GUI:

1. . Open the Device Manager and expand your Display adapters. Right click and select Properties
2. The second tab labeled Driver allows you to update your driver for the video adapter by selecting the Update Driver… button seen below
   
3. Now select the driver shown in the image below. It is copied to that location upon installation of VMware tools, so they must be present. For best results ensure you are using the latest version of VMTools.
   
4. Finally, Windows will find and update the video adapters driver with the WDDM version as seen below. You will need to restart your server as is noted in the dialog box
   

It often happens in the life of an engineer or systems administrator. Someone hands you a list of machines….may be physical, virtual or a mix of both. And they want to know “X” about these machines. Or maybe, you have a list of servers that are going to being P2Vd and you want to verify the networking information of the servers before and after. Here’s a quick script I spun up that will pull the active IP address, Gateway, Mask and both primary/secondary DNS entries.

$servers =  Get-Content c:\Scripts\ListOfServers.txt

Get-WmiObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration -ComputerName $servers `
| where {$_.IPEnabled -eq 'True'} `
| Select dnshostname,{$_.ipaddress},{$_.defaultIPgateway},{$_.dnsserversearchorder[0]},{$_.dnsserversearchorder[1]},description `
| Export-Csv C:\Scripts\output\ListOfServers.csv

So what exactly is going on up there?

1. Create and populate “C:\Scripts\ListOfServers.txt” with a list of Windows servers, 1 per line.
2. We’re using WMI so we can pull information from both physical and virtual machines
3. Where IP Traffic has been enabled (IPEnabled)
4. Select ‘these’ columns (Server Name, IP Address, Gateway, and 1st and 2nd DNS entries, and the adapter description.

I found this great to have before doing some P2Vs as just a check to ensure each server had the correct basic IP information with only 1 script.

You’ll need a specific set of servers for this query, but it can be easily modified to search with a Get-VM cmdlet to retrieve a list of VMs (or even physical servers).

So as you’ve seen here and other wonderful web sites that feature any type of code, we put our code into ‘code blocks’ using Synatx Highlighter made famous by Alex Gorbachev.

# Here is an example of how you can put code into WordPress
# blogs using Syntax Highlighter Evolved with my PowerCLI Syntax Highlighter Brush

Get-VMHost | Get-VM | Get-VMGuest | select name,numcpu,memorymb

Name         NumCpu  MemoryMB
----         ------  --------
WindowsPDC1       1      1024
LinuxServer1      1      1024
WindowsPDC2       1      2048
LinuxServer3      1      4096

Given that he’s already developed a wonderful PowerShell brush, I added all the cmdlets provided by VMware PowerCLI version 4.0 Update 1.

Download Now:
PowerCLI Syantax Highlighter Brush
PowerCLI & Powershell Syntax Highlighter Evolved Brush
- Powershell 4.0 Update 1

Here is the link for Syntax Highlighter Evolved, which i’m using in this blog:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/

Get many more excellent brushes in multiple languages from Abel here:
http://www.undermyhat.org/blog/2009/09/list-of-brushes-syntaxhighligher/

Hello,

As our first post we’d like to keep things simple, say hello, and hopefully provide a little value though our a simple PowerCLI command

Basic Get-VM Powershell Command

The Get-VM command for a few select fields generates a simple table of your Virtual Machines on the host (if you’re connected to an ESX host) or you’re entire environment if connected to Virtual Center.

#Get-VM – Select certain properties and format as table

[vSphere PowerCLI] C:\> get-vm | select name,numcpu,memorymb
Name NumCpu MemoryMB
—- —— ——–
WindowsPDC1 1 1024
LinuxServer1 1 1024
WindowsPDC2 1 2048
LinuxServer3 1 4096