Some “blogging” colleagues posted their home lab configuration on the internet, see the list below:
I also give it a try and post my test lab on my blog.
I own 3 physical machines that I moved a few months ago to the datacenter at my work in Soest (the Netherlands). With a VPN tunnel from my Cisco ASA 5505 (at home) to the datacenter, my 50/50 mbit ISP, it feels like the systems are near me 
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Latest Version: 2.8 | January 31, 2010
RVTools is a windows .NET 2.0 application which uses the VI SDK 2.5 to display information about your virtual machines and ESX hosts. Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.5, ESX 3.5, ESX3i or ESX4i RVTools is able to list information about cpu, memory, disks, nics, cd-rom, floppy drives, snapshots, VMware tools, ESX hosts, datastores, switches, ports and health checks. With RVTools you can disconnect the cd-rom or floppy drives from the virtual machines and RVTools is able to list the current version of the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine. and update them to the latest version
Whats new:
On vHost tab field "# VMs" now only powered on VMs are counted.
On vHost tab field "VMs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.
On vHost tab field "vCPUs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.
On vDatastore tab field "# VMs" now only calculated for VM’s which are powered on.
Health check "Number of running virtual CPUs per core" now only powered on VMs are counted.
Health check "Number of running VMs per datastore" now only powered on VMs are counted.
During Installation there will be an application event source created for RVTools. This to fix some security related problems.
Some users run into a timeout exception from the SDK Web server. The default web service timeout value is now changed to a higher value.
New fields on vHost tab: NTP Server(s), time zone information, Hyper Threading information (available and active), Boot time, DNS Servers, DHCP flag, Domain name and DNS Search order
New Health Check: Inconsistent folder names.
Improved exception handling on vDisk, vSwitch and vPort tab pages.
Download: here
Information: here
Source: here
VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (Localized version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227640
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227671
VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (English only version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637
What’s New
Guest Operating Systems Customization Improvements
Customization support for the following guest operating systems has been added in this release:
For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
- Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access
This release adds support for Firefox 3.x browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access. Firefox 3.x is not a supported browser for ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Web Access with this release
Note: In many public documents, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is now known as VMware ESX 3.5, and VMware ESX Server 3i version 3.5 as VMware ESXi 3.5. These release notes continue to use the earlier convention to match the product interfaces and documentation. A future release will update the product names.
Source information: VMware
Information: VMware vCenter Upgrade Guide
Known issue’s:
When attempting to upgrade ESX 4.0 to ESX 4.0 Update 1 (U1), you may experience these symptoms:
- Upgrade operation may fail or hang and can result in an incomplete installation
- Upon reboot, the host that was being upgraded may be left in an inconsistent state and may display a purple diagnostic screen with the following error:
COS Panic: Int3 @ mp_register_ioapic
To download the newest (re-released) Update 1 check url:
http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4
To install vcb follow the instructions on this link.
The first time I came in contact with vcb I created some batch files to make vcb snapshots. I encountered all kind of problems. Snapshots that vcb didn’t remove. unexpected errors no vss support and some more issues.
To overcome some of these problems I created a vbs script vcbBackup.vbs. The full howto is comming soon for now only the code. Read more…
What’s New
The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX:
VMware View 4.0 support – This release adds support for VMware View 4.0, a solution built specifically for delivering desktops as a managed service from the protocol to the platform.
Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support –This release adds support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as well as 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 as guest OS platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
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After upgrading from VMware ESX 3.x to ESX 4.0 you can cleanup the bootloader from the older ESX 3.5 installation. You can do this from the console of by connection the host with ssh, give the command “cleanup-esx3”
Little note: You can run the cleanup-esx command as long as everything works for you in 4. If you use the -f flag, the software prompts you to confirm that you want to disable the ability to roll back to the ESX 3.x.x.
Thanks xchello from Dutch VMug for the tip!
The VMware KB 1003926 is very helpful to support problems with your VirtualCenter Server service that won’t start. VMware updated this document 2 September 2009.
Symptoms
- You cannot connect to VirtualCenter
- If you try to connect to VirtualCenter, you see the error:
Cannot connect to host <server>: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.
- If you try to start the VMware VirtualCenter Server service, you may see the errors:
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