Author Archives: Jeremy Gillow
Baffled by extra port group on VM
This week while working on a VM migration project I was initially confounded by an extra port group showing up on VMs that only had a single NIC listed in their configuration. We had been migrating VMs from ESX 4.0 hosts to new ESXi 5.0 hosts, upgrading VMware Tools and VM hardware, and migrating the [...]
Posted in VMware Comments closed
UCS maintenance policy – warning
A warning to those who are running a Cisco UCS blade system and using a maintenance policy that requires user acknowledgement: Normally the maintenance policy will prompt for user confirmation before any configuration change is applied that requires a blade power cycle. Like changing BIOS or boot policies, adding vNICs or vHBAs, etc. This is [...]
Posted in cisco Comments closed
vSphere 5 Upgrade Tips
This week I did an upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.0 and encountered a few issues that were fortunately quite easy to fix, but wanted to mention them here in case anyone else runs into the same situation. There’s a component of the vCenter installation media that has to be installed for License Reporting [...]
Posted in VMware Comments closed
vSphere 5.0 Auto Deploy
I worked in the lab today trying out the new auto-deploy feature of vSphere 5. I used the official VMware documentation as a reference and also followed a couple great blog posts that walk through the setup process. Gabe’s has screen shots as well which was excellent. http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/vsphere-5-how-to-run-esxi-stateless-with-vsphere-auto-deploy/ http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/08/25/using-vsphere-5-auto-deploy-in-your-home-lab/ The lab equipment I was working [...]
Posted in VMware Comments closed
Serial terminal in OS X
I have one of those USB to serial adapters with the (very common) Prolific PL-2303 chip inside, and it has worked great in Windows 7 for serial connections to Cisco devices. I’ve used it for MDS, Catalyst, and UCS equipment. However, while working on a Nexus 7010 switch today I was having some problems with [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
New Macbook Air
So I came home from the Apple store today with one of those new 13″ Macbook Air laptops that was released last week. I bought the highest available configuration, with the 1.8 Ghz Core i7 processor and a 256GB SSD. Go large or go home, especially on a system that has zero upgradable components (including [...]
Posted in Devices Comments closed
Fabric Manager and UCS
This week I was on-site at a customer that uses Cisco Fabric Manager quite extensively for monitoring their SAN environment. We were adding a new UCS cluster to the SAN and they wanted to be able to use Fabric Manager to monitor the status of the UCS equipment. Since Fabric Manager uses SNMP to communicate [...]
Posted in cisco Comments closed
The Khan Academy
One of my previous Computer Science professors at NCSSM recently posted on Facebook about this web site: www.khanacademy.org. It is an amazing resource; when I visited their site a few days ago I ended up watching a dozen videos in a row. Salman Khan is the educator behind the voice in the videos, several years ago [...]
Posted in Web Comments closed
New UCS firmware 1.4(3i)
I was browsing the Cisco download site today and noticed that they have posted a new firmware release for Cisco UCS Manager, B-series servers, and C-series servers (that are under UCS Manager control). The release notes have been merged into the general UCS 1.4 release notes. This version adds support for the B440 M2 and [...]
Posted in cisco Comments closed
Just another reason…
to watch movies at home. This article I read today in the Boston Globe made me cringe. I have not been going to the movie theater as often as I used to in college, but I still check out some of the more notable big-screen flicks. I wouldn’t go so far as to consider myself [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Week in Vegas