Citrix has XenClient, but there is no equivalent for Hyper-V, vSphere, or KVM. Here are the steps to build a KVM client for your own use. Granted, this could be faked by using a graphical console on your KVM server as well as Hyper-V, but that defeats the purpose of keeping the console of the virtualization hosts unavailable to direct use; in fact, this would violate best security practices. A KVM client approach would allow you to use a local graphics adapter for a single VM and, if you had the proper hardware, even more VMs with graphical capabilities. Continue reading “RHEV Upgrade Saga: KVM Client”

Recently I added some hardware, and once I did, my vSphere hosts were no longer within the profile; neither were they at the latest patch level. I would have expected little to change within the host profile, but once you add hardware, things change in the host. The same thing happens during every update in which either new features are added or bug fixes are made to the subsystems a host profile cares about. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Maintaining Host Profiles After Hardware and Software Upgrades”

I use VMware Horizon View as an outside-in approach to VDI. That being said, once I upgraded to vCenter 5.5, I broke my Horizon View integration. This showed up about a month after the upgrade as a failure to log in to a desktop. But before I could find a solution, I had to look at all the changes I made, because this error showed up only after I updated my VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) to a 5.5 VDS. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: vCenter 5.5 w/Horizon View”

I have had HP StoreVirtual (LeftHand) licenses for some time now, but the previous versions were nearly impossible to install. At least, I could not discover the magic incantation to make them work, so I decided to put that upgrade on hold. Now that 11.0 has come out, as have a host of installers for various hypervisors, I will be giving it another shot. Assuming it installs, it will allow an additional 4TBs to be available to my infrastructure. I am running pretty close to the limits on my current datastores. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Installing HP StoreVirtual 11.0”

Before upgrading to vSphere 5.5, I ensured that my host profile was up-to-date and on all nodes. After upgrading, it is important to continue update the host profiles immediately after upgrading. However, the normal way to update profiles, using the vSphere .NET Client, may not work. When I tried it, no matter which host or profile, and whether new or old, the profile would not update. I received a range error. A quick search found nothing but did hint at a few things. Many days later, I restarted the .NET client and noticed once more the message at the top that says:

“The traditional vSphere Client will continue to operate, supporting the same feature set as vSphere 5.0, but not exposing any of the new features in vSphere 5.5.”

Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: vSphere 5.5 Host Profiles”

In my past upgrade sagas, I had upgraded vCenter and then fixed a few niggling problems (or attempted to). Now it is time to actually upgrade the vSphere servers. I previously staged the vSphere 5.5 ISO into the VMware Upgrade Manager (VUM). Since all nodes need to be rebooted to do the upgrades, it is also a good time to update firmware. Otherwise, the upgrade is pretty straightforward. Hopefully, it will fix my remaining issues. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Upgrading Blades to vSphere 5.5”