Deploying vCenter Operations Management Suite start vAPP error

My company decided that we should give vCenter Operations Management Suite a go as we needed a tool which gives us the capacity planning. It used to be capacity IQ but now it is bundled as part of this suite. https://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/features.html

The product comes as a vAPP ( 2 VMs) which makes life easier to deploy but as I try to power on the vAPP I get this error "Cannot initialize property 'vami.netmask0.VM_1', since network 'PPE-Servers-1' has no associated IP pool configuration.". If this comes up for you then you will need to redeploy the vAPP following the steps below

The error does give a hint that you need "IP pool" so my first point of call was to go to vCenter and look under "networking" but there are no tabs or options to create IP Pool. In the end I found it under "Home > Inventory > Datastores and Datastore Clusters"

Highlight your datacenter and you will see the tab "IP Pools" Click on "Add"



Give the IP Pool a name, If you are using IPv4 fill in the details of the subnet and gateway address for it. Tick box "Enable IP Pool", no need add address range unless you wish the appliance to get an address from here.

 

Select "DNS" tab and fill in any information about your sites DNS settings

Select "Associations" tab and tick box which network the IP pool belongs to.

Now you are all ready to deploy the vAPP again and this time it should just work.

Database Size, WhiteSpace and Users in Exchange 2010

While with Exchange 2007 it wasn’t straightforward or easy to get the size and the available whitespace of your Exchange databases, with 2010 is much easier! Now, the Get-MailboxDatabase cmdlet includes the DatabaseSize parameter and the AvailableNewMailboxSpace parameter which shows the whitespace available.

So, all we have to do is run a script like this:

$DBs = Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | ? {$_.Mounted -eq $True} | Sort Name
ForEach ($db in $DBs)
{
  $DBsize = $db.DatabaseSize.ToMB()
  $DBusers = ($db | Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Measure).Count
  $DBWhiteSpace = $db.AvailableNewMailboxSpace.ToMB()

  Write-Host "$($db.Name), $DBusers, $DBsize, $DBWhiteSpace"
}

VMware Hands On Labs (HOL) beta is now open

VMware has started to roll out their Hands On Labs (HOL) so that people like myself can try new product features without needing to build a complete lab. Hopefully I will receive an email soon with username/password test drive. I will give a review of HOL once I get to log in !!

Follow the HOL blog :
http://blogs.vmware.com/hol/2012/11/the-vmware-hands-on-labs-online-public-beta-is-now-open.html

Community resource :
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/resources/how

Sent/Deleted Items Behavior in Shared Mailbox

If you ever get users complaining about any of the following cases, please note that to resolve it all you have to do is add/update a registry key:

• when I delete an e-mail from the shared mailbox I manage, the e-mail goes into my Deleted Items folder instead of the folder in the shared mailbox;
• when I send an e-mail as (SendAs) the shared mailbox I manage, the e-mail goes into my Sent Items folder instead of the folder in the shared mailbox.

 

The following applies to Outlook 2007:

Change the Sent Behaviour
1. Open the Registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences\
2. Look for the DelegateSentItemsStyle DWORD (if it doesn’t exist, create it)
3. Set the value to 1
4. Restart Outlook

Now any e-mails sent from that shared mailbox (again, when using SendAs permissions) will go into the Sent Items folder of the shared mailbox.

 

IMPORTANT: After you set the DelegateSentItemsStyle registry value to 1, the functionality is only available when the Exchange account is set to Use Cached Exchange Mode. The DelegateSentItemsStyle registry value will not work consistently on an Exchange account that is configured in Online mode...

 

 

Change the Deleted Behaviour
1. Open the Registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\General2. Look for the DelegateWastebasketStyle DWORD (if it doesn’t exist, create it)
3. Change its value to
    a. 8 = Stores deleted items in your folder
    b. 4 = Stores deleted items in the shared mailbox folder
4. Restart Outlook

 

Now any e-mails deleted from that shared mailbox will go into the Deleted Items folder of the shared mailbox.

 

IMPORTANT: make sure that the delegate user has at least Author level rights for the Deleted Items folder of the owner's mailbox. If the delegate does not have these rights, and this registry option is set to 4, then either the item is deleted permanently or the user receives an error message.

Running Windows 2012 on ESX 5

Windows 2012 has been released officially and I decided it was time to give it a test drive on ESX 5 (Build 623860). I started to do the install and after the first reboot I got a Windows logo on a black screen with spinning dots.

On first look I thought it was drivers or the boot options was incorrectly selected. Upon checking at VMware's patch portal (http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal) there was a fix under patch "ESXi500-201207401-BG" :

Article Link For Patch ESXi500-201207401-BG

"PR 838946: During the installation of Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 64-bits virtual machine, the virtual machine displays a black screen with a loading icon and stops responding during the start-up process.

Note: If using Windows Consumer Preview version, after you promote a Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 64-bits virtual machine as a domain controller, rebooting the virtual machine causes the virtual machine to stop responding and display a black screen during the start-up process."

I did the patch update and it took the build to version 768111 and now all working like a treat without needing to do any tweaks. 

VMware learning video for free

VMware now has a  new learning site which has free instructional videos. They current have videos for the following VMware products:

• Site Recovery Manager 
• vCenter
• vCloud
• vFabric/Spring
• vSphere
• vSphere Storage Appliance

It is a great way to learn and get an overview of products

www.vmwarelearning.com

First Post

This is a quick post to introduction myself Kin Yung and Nuno Mota who will co-author this blog. It will be articles, reviews and tips and tricks