Author: Michael Schroeder

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Pockethernet hands on

The Swiss Army knife of network troubleshooting

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to follow a network cable through a mesh (or should I say mess?) of hundreds of other cables, just to find out which switchport it is connected to? If your answer is no, please tell me your secret! 🙂

Cool tool

Last week I got a packet with a handy new tool inside. It’s called Pockethernet. Once started as a crowdfunding project, it is now a mature, full featured network analyzer that easily fits into one hand or the pocket of your shirt.

Continue reading “Pockethernet hands on”

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Generate DataCore Support-Bundle by CLI

How I’ve learned the hard way to collect support bundles on the CLI

It is a standard procedure to generate a support bundle after any changes on your DataCore SANSymphony-Cluster. Usually you’d click the Cluster Object in the Datacore-Console and select “upload support bundle”.  You just enter the customer’s name, an incident ID and select your choice of Mini-, Standard- or Full-Bundle. The collection will be initiated on both hosts simultaneously. Files will be archived as ZIP and (if there’s an internet connection) uploaded to DataCore Support.

Single-Host Collection

Sometimes it might not be possible to collect bundles from both servers or you may not want to trigger a log-collection on both hosts simultaneously. Continue reading “Generate DataCore Support-Bundle by CLI”

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VCSA HA – What is it good for?

Once upon a time Edwin Starr (and later Bruce Springsteen) raised that question – ..well kind of. 😉

With the increasing popularity of virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) the role of the virtual center has become much more important. In the beginning of virtualization vCenter was a tool to configure and control your ESX hosts and virtual machines. If it went down for maintenance or failure it wasn’t a serious problem. Your server-VMs still kept running.

VDI turned out to be a game changer. If your vCenter goes offline, users can no longer log into their deskstops. This makes vCenter maintenance a tricky task. It can’t be done during business hours and even late at night or on weekends there are remote users who want to log into their virtual desktops. Or think about employees working in different timezones. In some companies the sun never sets on vCenter. Continue reading “VCSA HA – What is it good for?”