Alliances & Partnership Advising
VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA) was released recently.
VIMA allows administrators and developers to run scripts and agents to manage ESX and ESXi systems. VIMA is a VM that includes prepackaged software, a logging component, and an authentication component that supports non-interactive login. VIMA can be used to perform most of the tasks commonly performed in the ESX service console.
VIMA 1.0 is available for downloaded immediately on the VMware website.
While visiting a customer today, I learned about a technical gotcha that he recently ran across that I thought was worth sharing (especially since it doesn’t appear to be documented yet). While building out and testing his VI3 Environment, he came across a strange behavior where Update Manager wasn’t working as expected. He is running his environment on a closed lab there is no DNS and most of the ESX hosts were configured with IP addresses. Update Manager somehow was configured with a name as well. When Update Manager sent out requests to the ESX Hosts to fetch a file, it was placing the name in the URL not the IP Address.
My client indicated that the Update Manager documentation didn’t indidcate it requred host name resolution (unconfirmed), but they were eventually able to figure this out from the log files. By adding an entry in the hosts file, teh problem was quickly resolved.
So keep in mind that for Update Manager you want to make sure that you either have DNS capability with all your systems setup in DNS, or have a common hosts file that is shared across all your hosts.
This weekend I was able to watch the PBS Frontline special The Choice 2008. Without getting into a political party debate, I feel that this is an important enought documentary that every one who plans on voting this November should watch. Rather than being rehetoric filled in an attempt to influcence or radically energize the viewer one way or anther, this documentary does a great job in evenly describing both McCain’s and Obama’s pesonal and political history up to the point of their party nominations. Invest 2 hours of your time to learn about both sides before casting your vote.