It’s patch time! That means time to upload the firmware bundles to all my UCS domains. Instead of doing it manually I figured i would create a quick script to do that for me.

Pre-Requsites

• UCS Powertool

Link to Script

• UploadUCSFirmware.ps1

Preparing to Execute the Script

The script is pretty straight forward, just need to define a few variables seen below and then you execute the script. I will walk you through the process.

It is now VCAP6-Design study time! Here is my blueprint laid out, and hopefully will be populated with some content.

Section 1 – Create a vSphere Conceptual Design

Objective 1.1 – Gather and analyze business requirements

Skills and Abilities

• Associate a stakeholder with the information that needs to be collected.
• Utilize inventory and assessment data from a current environment to define a baseline state.
• Analyze customer interview data to explicitly define customer #### Objectives for a conceptual design.
• Determine customer priorities for defined #### Objectives.
• Ensure that Availability, …

Im finally getting to dive back in to working with UCS. My latest task with my project of configuring 9 UCS Domains, was configuring the Policy Backup and Export. See below on how to automate this process!

Pre-Requsites

• UCS Powertool

Link to Script

• Set-UCSPolicyBackupandExport.ps1

Preparing to Execute the Script

The script is pretty straight forward, just need to define a few variables seen below and then you execute the script. I will walk you through the process.

Im finally getting to dive back in to working with UCS. My latest task with my project of configuring 9 UCS Domains, was swapping out certificates. The first few I did via the GUI, and I thought can this be scripted? Well the answer is yes! See below for information on executing the script.

Pre-Requsites

• UCS Powertool

Link to Script

• AddUCSCert.ps1

Preparing to Execute the Script

The script is pretty straight forward, just need to define a few variables seen below and then you execute the script. I will walk you through the process.

Normally when i need to install and update a host VIB I use Update Manager. However there is currently a bug with Cisco’s latest enic/fnic drivers that wont let you install them via UM.

I had to run these updates on over 50 hosts and I really didn’t want to have to ssh and install it manually. Lucky I remember Brian Graf’s Host Client Install Fling and borrowed some of the code to come up with the below script.

Ever needed to modify a DVS uplink configuration from ESXi Shell? I am currently troubleshooting some issues with DVS uplinks no longer being assigned on reboot.

As a heads up. If you are doing this on ESXi 6.0.. don’t. It can cause an issue with the proxy DVS having different ID than the actual DVS causing my original issue, still working with VMware Support to find out more details.

After “Restoring Network Configuration” a few too many times, I finally realized I could just add the uplinks back via CLI until support can figure out why this is occurring, here are the …

We are currently working on some Cisco ACI Integration and wanted to add a large VLAN Pool to a UCS Configuration.

Since currently Cisco UCS does not allow selecting multiple VLAN’s easily when adding to a VLAN Group or vNIC Template, we now have a pretty decent script that will do it for you.

The script can be found here.

 1# PowerCLI Script for adding VLAN to VLAN Group and vNIC Template
 2# @davidstamen
 3# http://davidstamen.com
 4
 5#Define Variables
 6$cred = Get-Credential
 7$ucs = "ucs01"
 8$startvlan = "100"
 9$endvlan = "150"
10$vnictemplate = …

Ever wonder why a VM isn’t on the network?

I was working on deploying some test VM’s and for some reason all the VM’s that were cloned decided to start with the network disconnected, and the connect on power on was also not selected.

I decided to throw together this quick one-liner that will make sure every VM is set to start connected on power on and is currently connected.

Have you ever worked with a Horizon View pool with 10 VM’s and deleted 3 and it recreated as 11? May want to pay attention to learn how you can reuse view desktop names.

First you will need to connect to the ADAM database on one of your servers. Use KB2012377 for instructions.

To connect to the View ADAM database:

• Log in to one of the View Connection Servers as Domain Administrator.
• Click Start > Administrative Tools > ADSI Edit.
• In the console window, right-click ADSI Edit and click Connect to.
• In the Name field type:
  • View ADAM Database
• Select Select or type a Distinguished …