Vmware System Center Configuration Manager. Recently we did a customer private cloud project where we used all the system center tooling http www. VMware. One of the scenarios that the customer had in mind, was to provision all there virtual servers with SCCM and we had to use Opalis to become the glue between VMware BMC Remedy and System Center. In the first step of the project we didnt use the Change request mechanism from BMC Remedy yet. Special thanks to my colleague Gunther Dewit for helping me out on this one. Disclaimer This is a very basic workflow we will post improvements as we go along it is for helping people moving forward Disclaimer The workflow itself. The first step in creating a workflow is doing a custom start where we could input some necessary variables. The Custom Start Activity is used to create a generic starting point for Workflows. By adding parameters to the Custom Start Activity it can consume external data which can be passed to downstream Workflow Activities. These are the parameters the workflow needs in further steps. All the rest of the information that is residing in the data bus of Opalis . MDT-Offline-Deployment-Media-7.gif' alt='Drivers Winpe Vmware Esx' title='Drivers Winpe Vmware Esx' />No more missed important software updates UpdateStar 11 lets you stay up to date and secure with the software on your computer. This input is required, without it, the workflow wont start. A popup will be presented when starting the workflow. Now that we have all the necessary input required, we can continue with the creation of the virtual machine. In order to create a virtual machine, we need to provide some parameters, some of them will come from the Custom start step, others will have to be adapted per workflow. These are the required parameters. Name This is the name that will be given to the virtual machine, we will get it from the Custom Start  where we filled in a name. Datastore This is the datastore that will host the virtual machine disk, we will get it from the Custom Start  where we filled in the datastore. Disk. MB Since it was decided to have a fixed disk with a size of 1. GB, we filled it in directly instead of asking it in the first step. Disk. Storage. Format This is the thick or thin format, thin was decided as the default format. Memory. MB This is the amount of memory that will be given to the virtual machine, we will get it from the Custom Start where we filled in an amount of memory. Num. CPU This is the number of CPUs that will be given to the virtual machine, we will get it from the Custom Start where we filled in the number of CPUs we need. CD It was decided that all VMs will have a cd drive so we set this to true. VMSwap. File. Policy This will set the swapfile policy the states where the swapfile will be saved, it was decided to do this in the VM itself. T00ipiICU7U/V0txzmnc0RI/AAAAAAAAD8U/PkW9blpWqiw2UbSL8sNDk_syR0kjTQNgwCLcB/s1600/2.png' alt='Drivers Winpe Vmware Esx' title='Drivers Winpe Vmware Esx' />VMHost This is the physical host where the VM will be hosted, this integration pack cannot provision on cluster yet so you need to choose a physical host. Guest. ID This is the OS version that will be installed on the VM. Folder This is the foldername where the VM will be installed as shown in the ESX console. After you add the drivers in MDT and update the Deployment Share, the LiteTouchPE. An ISO image is also created in the same. We did a lot of work to make our uanttended installation CDDVD to work wihich VMware ESX and its works now for us. We added the mass storage drivers to it. Though VMware Tools does not support the WAIK or ADKs WINPE 3. VMware Tools drivers, such as vmxnet3, and pvscsi. This post will discuss What Is VMware Mirage. It is not only a backup and recovery solution for Windows endpoints also application management. The Nutanix Bible A detailed narrative of the Nutanix architecture, how the software and features work and how to leverage it for maximum performance. Hello, I mounted couple of SAN LUNs to an ESXi host with 2 Emulex HBA cards and created VMFS filesystem out of it, and mounted on a Linux Guest OS with. View and Download Mellanox Technologies ConnectX3 user manual online. Gigabit Ethernet Adapters for Dell PowerEdge Servers. ConnectX3 Adapter pdf manual download. You can add more details trough the optional properties button. If all goes well, the workflow has created the virtual machine now. Now we need to change some things on the virtual machine. First we need to change the network settings. The VM name, we get from the Custom Start, since this is a read action, no further settings are needed. Alternatively, you can specify some filters to narrow the data that you receive back. Alternatively, you can specify some filters to narrow the data that you receive back. Now we will delete all the network connection that VMware made by default because they are useless to us. The Network Adapter name is data that we got back from the read action above and the VM name is still the name entered at the Custom Start. This will remove all network adapters from the VM, alternatively, you can specify filters if you only want to delete a specific adapter. Now we need to add a network adapter to the VM. The VM name is still the name we entered at the Custom Start. The Network. Name is the name of the network that you want your network adapter connecting to. The Start. Connected specifies if it will be connected to the network or only added without being connected. The Type is e. 10. VMware adapter SCCM can work with. Now we do another step to get the properties from the newly created adapter so we can use the information to input the computer into SCCM. Now that we collected the necessary information for SCCM, we can import the computer into SCCM. This is done by a powershell script that needs to input parameters, the name and the MAC address. Now that the computer is known is SCCM, we need to add it to the collection that has the OSD advertised to it. The is done by the following step. In the collection field, you can enter 2 things, either the name of the collection or the ID of the collection. What you enter must match the collection value type. If you enter an ID as shown here, the value type must be ID as well. The same is true for the computer where we use the name from the Custom Start step so the value type is name in this case. Now that the VM is created and provisioned in SCCM, we are ready to deploy the operating system on it. So lets power on the VM. The only thing you need to power on a VM is the name and we still get the from the first step. Now that the VM is booting up, SCCM can start the task sequence to deploy an operating system on the VM. Meanwhile, we will check the progress in Opalis. The advertisement ID is the ID as it is known in SCCM and the computer name is still the name as we specified in the first step. Now since the OSD deployment takes some time to complete, we will let the step loop until it gets a result back from SCCM. It will recheck every 3. SCCM that the deployment was successful in order not keep the loop while the deployment was finished faster then in 8 loops. Now we need to output the result to any medium you want logfile, mail, I do an output to a text file as an example. Now how does Opalis know when to write to which log file This can be regulated by double clicking on the arrows. This is the arrow toward the success file. As you can see, it will only follow this arrow when SCCM outputs a succeeded message for the advertisement. If not, it will take the other path towards the failed log file. So, It is not so easy to get it all together, but if I may give a great tip Write down all steps of your manual flow  and then try to translate them into an opalis workflow Hope it Helps ,Kenny Buntinx. Recommended Practices For Hyper V Aidan Finn, IT Pro. Fellow MVP, Carsten Rachfahl, just retweeted an interesting article on the Ask PFE Microsoft Premier Field Engineering a consulting support service offered to customers with lots of money that discusses best practices for Windows Server 2. Hyper V.   A friend of mine is a PFE and I know how deep into weeds they can get in their jobs. That means this could be a very interesting article. Ive read it.   Most of it I 1. A small bit of it I dont agree with. Some of it Id like to expand a bit on. On Server Core. PFEs work for Microsoft so I expected and got the company line. As you probably know, I prefer a full install because a its easier to troubleshoot when things go wrong and b third party management and configuration software such as that from your hw vendor often relies on not just a GUI but also the presence of IE on the local machine. The ability to switch between full, Core, and Minimal UI is not there yet, in my opinion, because it requires a reboot. I dont care about numbers of patches, I care about numbers of reboots, which is still going to be around once per month. And thanks to Live Migration clusters and SMB 3. I even dont care about the reboots because Ill patch during the workday with no service downtime. As for memory youll save a few MB with Core. When your hosts have 4. GB all the way up to 4 TB RAM then a few MB is meanlingless. You might save 4 GB of disk space. When the smallest LUN I can put in a host for the management OS is 3. GB thats the smallest disk you can get delivered from HP these days then I really couldnt give a flying monkey about a 6 GB Windows install versus a 1. GB one On BIOSFirmwareDrivers. Some hw vendors, such as IBM, will screw around with you to delay shipment of a replacement dead disk firmwares, gathering logs, analysis of said logs by support, etc so minimise the risks. Didier Van Hoye MVP has done some blogging and presenting on how to use Cluster Aware Updating to install firmwaredrivers on clustered Dell servers. On selection of hw, Im not alone in recommending that you find a mix of components that you like and are happy with, and stick to them as much as possible. Not all hw, drivers, and firmwares are made equal, even by the same manufacturer  Youll have a lot of eggs in these baskets and you want these baskets to be well made. Use of GPOI like and use this. I put my hosts, even in the lab, in their own OU and have a GPO just for these hosts. Some of it is for overrides e. I like the power plan setting idea by PFE. You could also use this GPO to push out your firewall settings, AV configs, manage services, etc. Store VM Files On Non System Drive. This is important for non HA VMs typically not on a cluster. This is to avoid Dynamic VHDs, snapshots AVHDAVHDX, Hyper V replica logs HRL growing to the point of filling the system drive and rendering the host dead while pausing the VMs. Do you really want to have to boot the host up off a Win. PE USB disk to resolve this issue  The most common offenders here will be small businesses, especially uneducated field engineers who are deploying their first hosts. Place the VMs on a dedicated LUN I dont care how small the company or host is. We advise this for a very valid reason  I dont care about nor value your virtualisation experience on your laptopThe BIN File. Theres a good reminder there that VMs with the save state automatic host shutdown action will maintain a BIN file. This used to be all VMs. Now, only those VMs maintain this placeholder file to write the memory to disk. This file matches the amount of RAM currently assigned to the VM. VMs with Dynamic Memory enabled will see this file grow and shrink, and you need to account for how big this file can get. TIP a host with 9. GB RAM can never assign more than 9. GB RAM, and therefore cannot generate more than 9. GB of BIN file on its storage. You also cannot have more than X GB of BIN file if your VMs with the save state shutdown action have a total of X maximum RAM dynamic memory setting. PALId never heard of this tool. Well worth noting I have heard very interesting stories about the abilities of PFEs to troubleshoot problems based on perfmon metrics aloneVMQTheres much more to VMQ than just enabling it. BE VERY CAREFUL  You need to know what you are doing, especially if implementing RSS as well or doing converged fabrics or NIC teaming. Jumbo Frames. I wouldnt be so liberal about recommending Jumbo Frames for i. SCSI.   Consult your hw vendor first. SCSI and NIC Teaming. Correct i. SCSI NICs should not be NIC teamed. Its not supported and it will end badly. HOWEVER, there is a subtle exception to this in converged fabrics. Note that the i. SCSI virtual NICs in this design are not NIC teamed, and MPIO is used instead. The actual NIC team is abstracted beneath the virtual switch. But you should still check with your SAN manufacturer for support of this option. Recommended Networking on Hosts. Wmiprvse.Exe Windows 7. There is something subtle here that most are missing. Teamwear Software more. You only need i. SCSI if you are using i. SCSI.   That should seem obvious to everyone but there are always a few people 2 Note the poster talks about the recommended number of networks. They are not talking about the recommended number of physical NICs. I can quite happily create these networks using a single 1. Gb. E NIC.   See converged fabrics. Dynamic disks I like that they recommend fixed VHDX files for production. Thats what I recommend. Yes, Microsoft are back on the Dynamic VHDs are just as good bandwagon, just as they were with W2. R2.   And many of us found that fragmentation caused read performance issues, particularly for relational databases. BTW, there is a near religious split in the MVP world over Dynamic versus Fixed VHDX. Some of the optimisations in VHDX TRIM and UNMAP muddy the waters, but I always come back to fragmentation. Storage particularly databases only ever grow, and tiny growth increments lead to fragmentation. Fragmentation leads to read performance issues, and that slows down queries and user interaction with applications. And that leads to helldesk calls. As for passthrough disks. I hate passthrough disks. If you find an engineer or consultant who says you should use passthrough disks for scalability or performance, then I want you to do this Kick them in the balls. Repeatedly. Fixed VHDX will run read and write at nearly the same speed as the underlying physical disk. There will be contention across the physical spindles on your storage. More spindles more IOPS. Creating a passthrough disk on the same disk group as a CSV is pointless and shows how dumb the engineer really is. And VHDX scales out to 6. TB.   Few people need virtual LUNs bigger than 6. TB. Page File. The PFE blog tells us to set the paging file to 4 GB. That is my advice for W2. W2. 00. 8 R2 Hyper V. However, we have been told not to do this for WS2. Hyper V.   It is intelligent enough to figure out how to manage its own paging file. Management OS Memory Reserve. The PFE blog tells us to configure the Memory. Reserve registry key. I also used to tell people to do this on W2. R2 to reserve memory on the host against the needs of Dynamic Memory because the default reservation algorithm might not do enough. We are told not to use Memory. Reserve in WS2. 01.