In case my blog post a couple days ago did not give it away, I am happy to announce after four months, I am back and I have a lot to blog about! When I initially started blogging back in January of last year, it was a long time in the making and I had a goal to publish two blog posts a week. This became exceeding difficult as my job began requiring me to travel for weeks at a time. As such, I had to stop blogging for awhile and unfortunately did not even have the time to put up a post stating my second hiatus. Toward the middle of December I finally began to get some free time, but then had to work on a server migration for my site (more on this in a future post), which made it such that I could not post on my blog. The good news is that everything is back in order and I have found some time to begin blogging again. The other good news is even though I have not been blogging for the last several months, I have been taking notes on things I think would make good blog posts. This means I have plenty of material for the next few months. So for those who regularly follow me thank you and to everyone reading this stay tuned as I have a lot of interesting material that will be going up soon!

As you all know by now, ESXi comes with SSH, which VMware now refers to as Tech Support Mode, disabled. The reasons behind this include security and the removal of the service console. While the service console has been removed, a shell called BusyBox remains. According to VMware best practice, SSH should not be enabled as it should not be needed. Of course, customers require this kind of access to install agents and to troubleshoot problems. VMware's response was to enable remote access to the systems via vCenter Server, vMA, or an API and to recommend reinstalling ESXi should troubleshooting become necessary. If you want to read more about this, I would recommend seeing Duncan's post over at yellow-bricks: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2010/03/01/disable-tech-support-on-esxi/.

Recently, I ran into an issue where several potential ESXi bugs were discovered, which required SSH access to the ESXi host as the logs were lacking information (one of the reported bugs) and the commands that needed to be executed could not be done remotely (e.g. df -h). As such, I was asked to enable SSH on 64 ESXi hosts. Performing this task manually was not an option so I turned to PowerCLI to automate the task.

This raises the question, how do you enable SSH on ESXi via PowerCLI?

It is with mixed emotions that I bid farewell to my beloved PmWiki website. At this point, the transition to Joomla is complete and I have made the decision to remove the link to my old wiki-based website. While I will continue to use PmWiki for small projects in the future, Joomla will become my platform of choice for larger website design going forward.

I have made the transition from my old Dell shoulder strap laptop case to the VMworld 2010 backpack. I have to admit that the backpack really is great. With that said, I would like to point out a couple things that I feel need improvement for VMworld 2011:

• The laptop pouch does not have padding on the bottom. While the pouch is raised from the bottom of the backpack, it is possible to damage your laptop if not careful. I ended up taking one of the side paddings out of the Dell laptop case and putting it into the bottom of the backpack laptop pouch for protection.
• The middle pocket has a decorative/protective flap over the zipper. Unfortunately, this flap is flimsy and does not always stay in place.
• The small front pocket on the backpack, which says VMware, is extremely difficult to zipper. In addition, the pocket does not provide much room and I am not entirely sure what to use it for. I tried to put my power supply in the pocket, but became frustrated by the zipper.
• The removable keyring in the VMworld 2010 pouch is often difficult to disconnect.
• If the backpack is really full, the water bottle often falls out. Since I do not use it, it is not a problem for me. It would be nice if the water bottle could be clipped on the bag seeing how the lid is shaped to support a carabiner.

Here are my final thoughts on my first VMworld conference:

• If going to the conference, try not to work. While this may not be easy, I found I missed a lot because of working related stuff
• If you are new to VMware technology and want to learn a lot, attend sessions and do as many labs as you can
• If you would consider yourself an advanced VMware administrator, only attend the advanced sessions and do labs that you have no experience with
• VMworld is also about networking. Be sure to find and schedule time with experts as well as introduce yourself to peers in the field
• Night activities are another great way to network. I would recommend checking out:
  • VMunderground - happens the Sunday before VMworld starts; be sure to register in advance though you can get tickets at the venue
  • vGeekFest - great EMC partners event by invitation; be sure to get tickets early as this event always sells out
  • Altor - a small, private party by invitation only
  • CA Associates - by far the best party at VMworld; be sure to get a wrist band at the solutions exchange
  • VMworld Party - largest party with plenty of fun events and games
• Listen to others around you as you can learn a lot. I overheard someone asking VMware personnel why certifications are being added, but training is not. They also suggested making the labs globally available for free training purposes.