the birdhouse in my soul

In vSphere 6, if the vi-admin account get locked because of too many failed logins, and you don't have the root password of the appliance, you can reset the account(s) using these steps: reboot the vMA from GRUB, "e"dit the entry "a"ppend init=/bin/bash "b"oot # pam_tally2 --user=vi-admin --reset # passwd vi-admin # Optional. Only if you want to change the password for vi-admin. # exit reset the vMA log in with vi-admin These steps can be repeated for root or any other account that gets locked out. If you do have root or vi-admin access, "sudo pam_tally2 --user=mylockeduser --reset" would do it, no reboot required.

The vCenter Server Appliance in vSphere6 can be deployed as "tiny", "small", "medium", and "large". The deployment wizard gives info about the vCPU and vRAM consequences of this choice, and about the total disk size of the appliance. But as there's 11 (eleven!) disks attached to the VCSA appliance, it's worth looking into which disks get a different size. Tiny Small Medium Max hosts 10 100 400 Max VMs 100 1000 4000 vCPU 2 4 8 vRAM 8 16 24 Disk size 120 150 300 disk0 / and /boot 12 12 12 disk1 /tmp/mount 1,3 1,3 1,3 disk2 swap 25 25 50 disk3 /storage/core 25 50 50 disk4 /storage/log 10 10 25 disk5 /storage/db 10 10 25 disk6 /storage/dblog 5 5 10 disk7 /storage/seat 10 25 50 disk8 /storage/netdump 1 1 10 disk9 /storage/autodeploy 10 10 25 disk10 /storage/invsvc 5 10 25 N.B. I currently don't have the config data for "large". This table can help if your environment is growing slightly or wildly beyond th...

(an update of an older post, now complete up to vSphere 6) Your Linux runs on a VMware VM, but which on which ESXi version? You can see for yourself: run "dmidecode" and look at lines 10, 11 and 12. ESX 2.5 - BIOS Release Date: 04/21/2004 - Address 0xE8480 - Size 97152 bytes ESX 3.0 - BIOS Release Date: 04/17/2006 - Address 0xE7C70 - Size 99216 bytes ESX 3.5 - BIOS Release Date: 01/30/2008 - Address 0xE7910 - Size 100080 bytes ESX 4 - BIOS Release Date: 08/15/2008 - Address 0xEA6C0 - Size 88384 bytes ESX 4U1 - BIOS Release Date: 09/22/2009 - Address 0xEA550 - Size 88752 bytes ESX 4.1 - BIOS Release Date: 10/13/2009 - Address 0xEA2E0 - Size 89376 bytes ESXi 5 - BIOS Release Date: 01/07/2011 - Address 0xE72C0 - Size 101696 bytes ESXi 5.1 - BIOS Release Date: 06/22/2012 -  Address: 0xEA0C0 -  Size: 89920 bytes ESXi 5.5 - BIOS  Release Date: 07/30/2013 -  Address: 0xEA050 -  Size: 90032 bytes ESXi 6 - BIOS  Release Date: 09/30/2014 -  Address: 0xE9A40 -...

MIDI is the standard for communication between electronic music instruments like keyboards and synthesizers. And computers! While tinkering with an old floppy-less GEM WS2 keyboard, I wanted to figure out the structure of their System Exclusive memory dumps. SysEx is the vendor-specific (and non-standard) part of MIDI. Vendors can use it for real-time instructions (changing a sound parameter in real-time) and for non-real-time instructions (sending or loading a configuration, sample set, etc.). In the GEM WS2, there's two ways of saving the memory (voices, globals, styles and songs): in .ALL files on floppy, and via MIDI SysEx. The .ALL files are binary files, 60415 bytes long. The only recognizable parts are the ASCII encoded voice and global names. The SysEx dumps are 73691 bytes long. As always in MIDI, only command start (and end) bytes have MSB 1, and all data bytes have MSB 0. The data is spread out over 576 SysEx packets, preceded by one SysEx packet with header informat...

A default virtual machine has straightforward hardware. A single SCSI disk on a single SCSI card, for example. Having multiple SCSI disks or cards in a VM creates the need for in-guest identification. Linux complicates matters slightly by using alphabetical disk naming: /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, ... /dev/sdz, /dev/sdaa, /dev/sdab, ... This post looks at how you can identify individual disks in a VMware virtual machine. Executive summary: VMware notation "X:Y" typically maps onto Linux scsi(X+2), Id:Y, which are then named in ascending order with /dev/sd* identifiers.

(an update of an older post, now complete up to vSphere 5.5) Your Linux runs on a VMware VM, but which on which ESXi version? You can see for yourself: run "dmidecode" and look at lines 10, 11 and 12. ESX 2.5 - BIOS Release Date: 04/21/2004 - Address 0xE8480 - Size 97152 bytes ESX 3.0 - BIOS Release Date: 04/17/2006 - Address 0xE7C70 - Size 99216 bytes ESX 3.5 - BIOS Release Date: 01/30/2008 - Address 0xE7910 - Size 100080 bytes ESX 4 - BIOS Release Date: 08/15/2008 - Address 0xEA6C0 - Size 88384 bytes ESX 4U1 - BIOS Release Date: 09/22/2009 - Address 0xEA550 - Size 88752 bytes ESX 4.1 - BIOS Release Date: 10/13/2009 - Address 0xEA2E0 - Size 89376 bytes ESXi 5 - BIOS Release Date: 01/07/2011 - Address 0xE72C0 - Size 101696 bytes ESXi 5.1 - BIOS Release Date: 06/22/2012 -  Address: 0xEA0C0 -  Size: 89920 bytes ESXi 5.5 - BIOS  Release Date: 07/30/2013 -  Address: 0xEA050 -  Size: 90032 bytes NB These DMI properties are set at boot time. Even if your VM g...

Using a voucher code, anyone can do a VCA exam (datacenter virtualization, cloud, or desktop, and maybe network when it becomes available) for half the regular price. VCA is a certification that you can do from the comfort of your desk! Enroll at http://vmware.com/certification/ . To do the exam for half the normal price, use this voucher code:  VMRT4B425324. Best of luck to anyone who tries! NB This code used to reduce the exam price to 0, rendering VCA certification completely free, but starting somewhere in december 2013, the discount will be reduced to 50%.