I have made a foray into Jenkins to deploy VMware Photon within my vSphere environment. This foray has the end goal of using Jenkins, VMware Photon, and Docker to deploy applications within my hybrid cloud. I have an increased need to deploy web properties as well as to automatically apply in-depth testing to those properties. Quite frankly, the amount of time it takes me to do these things by hand is just getting to be too much of a time sink, so now it is time to use modern tools to augment my existing scripts. Here is my journey into the new world. Continue reading “Foray into Jenkins, Puppet, Docker, and Photon”

There are a number of interesting attacks out there, and one of them is related to Genericons, which are used by the Twenty Fourteen theme. There are also serious performance issues with Genericons, so dumping them is a good idea. Here is how I did that without using a child theme. My whole goal for using Twenty Fourteen was to modify it without using a child theme. Not that hard to do, but it does take some forethought. Here is how I achieved this bit of magic and boosted performance at the same time!

Continue reading “Removing Genericons from Twenty Fourteen Theme”

Having upgraded all the management tools that make up vCloud Suite 6.0, it became time to upgrade vSphere itself to 6.0. My upgrade did not go as smoothly as I had expected. Following are the steps I took for the upgrade, plus an account of the one major problem I had and its solution. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: vSphere 6.0”

There are many steps to the upgrade of vSphere, as outlined by KB Article 2109760, with the steps for my environment starting at step 4 (vCNS). However, before I could start my upgrade, I had to upgrade any third-party systems first, as well as to upgrade any Microsoft Windows Servers. Everything went fine for vCNS, View Composer, and View Connection Server. However, problem creep started with the View security server (not really on the list, but if you update the Connection Server, you have to upgrade any security servers at the same time). Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: 6.0 Upgrade through SRM”

In vSphere Upgrade Saga: Planning for vSphere 6.0, I discussed the need to plan your upgrade as well as the need to delay your upgrade until your third-party software has caught up with VMware’s latest release. I now have all the bits for my critical third-party components, and it is time to first upgrade them. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: vSphere 6.0, Third-Party”

In my June 2014 RHEV Upgrade Saga article, I discussed how to build a KVM client for your own use. The method used the Q35 (2009) chipset features that were dropped from RHEL 7 KVM as of version 7.1. This has caused quite a few issues with my deployment of a KVM client system. However, since I have Ivy Bridge (maybe Haswell) chips in my SuperMicro 3U KVM server, I also have access to Intel VT-d, as well as to VT-x, AES-NI, and many other useful chipset features. The most important for a KVM client is Intel VT-d, as it allows you to map USB and PCI devices directly to a VM. Continue reading “RHEV Upgrade Saga: KVM Client Take II”