Some time ago I wrote about GitLab Continuous Integration and explained how code changes can be catched up to create or update software packages on remote systems. In order to communicate with the development systems, GitLab utilizes agents that are availble for plenty of platforms - including Microsoft Windows, we …

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In 2008 I started working as VMware administrator and thus also began using vSphere at home. You might know this - as an IT person you want to have a lab at home that can be compared with the infrastructure at work. 🙂 The hardware half-life is quite short and especially when virtualizing workloads you can reach memory …

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A couple of days ago, VMware developers announced a new fling called vSphere HTML5 Web Client. Basically, this is a virtual appliance based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 serving a completely rewritten Web Client. In comparison with the well known Web Client, this client only uses HTML5 and JavaScript - beelzebub …

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2016 seems to be the year of hardware upgrades for me. After replacing my ESXi host with a VSAN cluster recently, I also had to replace the D.I.Y. router after upgrading my internet connection. At maximum data throughput, CPU load and temperatur are increasing so heavily that other network traffic is slowing down …

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Especially when playing around with multiple vCenter and VSAN versions in a lab, it might be necessary to rebuild a VSAN cluster. In this scenario, it is sometimes also necessary to also reset the SSD and HDD drives used by VSAN. In my lab I'm often resetting the whole VSAN cluster to have a clear starting point - …

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As preparation for a restore test, I removed the master boot record (MBR) of a Linux system recently: 1# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 This command fills the first 512 bytes (containing the partition table and bootloader) of the first hard drive (/dev/sda) with zeroes (/dev/zero). The problem is when you …

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If a host has multiple physical network adapters, it is a common procedure to combine the particular links. Mostly, this configuration is chosen to enhance the maximal throughput. Another reason for this is to make network connections more reliable by defining alternative network paths. LACP (Link Aggregation Control …

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Loosing the SSO administrator password of vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) is really bad. Anyhow, this password can be reset, as far as you still have access to the appliance console - this requires the root password. If you also forgot this one, this is really, really, really bad - but also this happens sometimes in …

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Sometimes it happens that you lock out yourself from your Linux system. In the worst case, additional security concepts or conditions might hamper access to the system, for example: No root access System cannot be rebooted to reset the password in a chroot session No colleague with system access available Recently I …

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During the installation of kernel updates I stumbled upon a cramped /boot partition recently. Solving this issue is quite easy - e.g. it is possible to manually dig through the RPM database, exclude the running kernel and remove all other packages. Anyhow, this is neither comfortable nor elegant: 1# yum remove `rpm …

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