PowerCLI: An Aspiring Automator’s Guide

Getting into scripting can be daunting. It’s easier to just use existing scripts found online, but if you choose this route you’ll quickly run into limitations. If you take the time to learn how to create your scripts, trust me, you’ll never look back!

clip_image002

Automating vSphere is particularly useful for countless applications and the best way is through PowerCLI – a version of PowerShell developed specifically for VMware. Learn how to develop your own PowerCLI scripts with this free 100+ page eBook from Altaro, PowerCLI: The Aspiring Automator’s Guide.

Written by VMware vExpert Xavier Avrillier, this eBook presents a use-case approach to learning how to automate tasks in vSphere environments using PowerCLI. We start by covering the basics of installation, set up, and an overview of PowerCLI terms. From there we move into scripting logic and script building with step-by-step instructions of truly useful custom scripts, including how to retrieve data on vSphere objects; display VM performance metrics; how to build HTML reports and schedule them; the basics on building functions; and more!

Stop looking at scripts online in envy because you wish you could build your own scripts.

Get started on your path to automation greatness – Download the eBook now!

This World Backup Day, WIN with Altaro!

image

As World Backup Day approaches, we’re reminded of all the mishaps, backup scares, and near-catastrophes that we’ve experienced over the years – and how grateful we were to have backup during those times!

If you use Microsoft 365/Office 365, Hyper-V or VMware, celebrate with us. All you have to do is sign up for a 30-day free trial of either Altaro VM Backup or Altaro Office 365 Backup – it’s your choice!

What can you win?

· Receive a guaranteed €20 Amazon voucher when you sign up for and use the trial of Altaro Office 365 Backup or Altaro VM Backup

· Get a chance to WIN one of our Grand Prizes when you tell us about your funniest IT catastrophe!

What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 is available

This week Nakivo Backup & Replication 9.3 has been released. There are a lot of cool features within Nakivo Backup & Replication, but one special new feature is support for Oracle RMAN. It’s now possible to backup Oracle databases using Oracle RMAN. Within a few steps, your databases are protected now.

image

The installation is really straightforward. It is possible to install Nakivo Backup and Replication on Windows, Linux, virtual appliance (VMware and Hyper-V), on NAS devices as well, like QNAP, Synology, NETGEAR and even on a Raspberry Pi. You can find the list of supported devices and hardware here. Also the deployment requirements for Nakivo Backup and Replication.

Features of Nakivo Backup and Replication:

Oracle backup and restore – there is integration with Oracle RMAN to backup and restore your Oracle databases, using the native Oracle tools. You can schedule and automate your backups.

Backup to cloud – you can send backup copies directly to the cloud (AWS EC2 or Microsoft Azure)

Protect physical, virtual and cloud environments – support for AWS, VMware, Hyper-V, Office 365, Nutanix AHV cluster, physical machines (Windows and Linux)

P2V – backup physical machines and recover it to a virtual machine, like VMDK, VHD or VHDX.

Backup Office 365 mailboxes – backup user mailboxes and recover single items in the origional mailbox, or in a different mailbox

Cross-platform Recovery – export your virtual machine in the desired format and recover it on your hypervisor (VMware or Hyper-V)

Support for Windows Server 2019 – also support for Windows Server 2019, including Hyper-V Server and cluster environtments

Performance – creat performance optimizations like Advanced Bandwith Throtteling, Deduplication, LAN-Free Data Transfer, Network Acceleration using multiple transporter instances

Huge variety of integrations

Nakivo Backup and Replication offers a huge variety of application and platform integrations. ensuring that your critical data, applications and workloads are safe.

image

Conclusion:

Nakivo Backup and Replication is a really powerfull and easy to manage backup and recovery solution. The setup is easy, with a great performing webinterface/GUI. It supports a lot of different platforms and cloud environments. Hopefully support for Microsoft Azure workloads will come in the future, but at this moment it is not possible. Support for backup and restore Oracle databases is really powerfull!!

You can get Nakivo 15 days trial and you’re up and running within 2 minutes.

NAKIVO Backup & Replication – Installation, Configuration, and Backup

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 Generally Available (GA)

This week Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 became Generally Available (GA). With a lot of new features, customer requests and performance enhancements, it’s a realy nice product to backup your workloads.

My attention goes sepcially to Hyper-V backup, because I’m a real Microsoft geek!!

Here’s a overview of some enhancements:

  • Hyper-V Failover CLuster Support;
  • Checksum Based Incremental Tracking;
  • Shared VHDX support for Hyper-V;
  • Credential Manager;
  • Improvements to the User Interface (UI);
  • Reconnection for VMware and Hyper-V jobs;
  • New Disk Addition for VMware and Hyper-V;
  • Live Recovery to VMware;
  • Live Recovery to Hyper-V;
  • Quick VM Recovery Report;
  • API for VM list with Storage utilization report;

Some major features in the new Vembu BDR Suite:

  • Agentless Microsoft Hyper-V Backup with CBT Incrementals;
  • Disk Image Backup for WIndows Servers and Workstations;
  • Native Tape Storage support;
  • File & Application Backup for Windows, Linux and Mac;
  • Bare Metal Recovery;
  • Vembu Universal Explorer;
  • Failover and Failback;
  • Free Edition support;

This is only just a bunch of new features and major features in the new Vembu BDR Suite v4.0. Check the release notes here.

Personally I’m realy happy with the Hyper-V Failover Cluster Support!! In my daily job I’m designing and building a lot of Hyper-V environments, inclusing huge and complex clusters.

The whole team from Vembu did a realy great job with the new release of Vembu BDR Suite v4.0. Great enhancements, great new features and realy easy to use! With the new features, new major features, enhancements and support for cluster environments, Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 is a very powerful solution for backup and disaster recovery.

Below some handy URL’s. Check it out and try Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 yourself!!

Note:

Vembu BDR Suite v4.0 is available only for fresh installation. Soon it will also be available for existing environments to upgrade from older versions.

 

 

 

 

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0

Screen-Shot-2014-04-08-at-22.10.53

Microsoft® Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution for the information technology (IT) pro or solution provider who wants to convert virtual machines and disks from VMware hosts to Hyper-V® hosts and Windows Azure™.

MVMC can be deployed with minimal dependencies. Because MVMC provides native support for Windows PowerShell®, it enables scripting and integration with data center automation workflows such as those authored and run within Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 R2. It can also be invoked through the Windows PowerShell® command-line interface. The solution is simple to download, install, and use. In addition to the Windows PowerShell capability, MVMC provides a wizard-driven GUI to facilitate virtual machine conversion.

New Features in MVMC 2.0
MVMC 2.0 release of MVMC includes the following new features:
◾Converts virtual disks that are attached to a VMware virtual machine to virtual hard disks (VHDs) that can be uploaded to Windows Azure.
◾Provides native Windows PowerShell capability that enables scripting and integration into IT automation workflows.
Note The command-line interface (CLI) in MVMC 1.0 has been replaced by Windows PowerShell in MVMC 2.0.
◾Supports conversion and provisioning of Linux-based guest operating systems from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts. ◾Supports conversion of offline virtual machines.
◾Supports the new virtual hard disk format (VHDX) when converting and provisioning in Hyper-V in Windows Server® 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
◾Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.1, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts Hyper-V virtual machines.
◾Supports Windows Server® 2012 R2, Windows Server® 2012, and Windows® 8 as guest operating systems that you can select for conversion.

Standard MVMC Features  
In addition to the new features previously identified, MVMC provides the following functionality:
◾Converts and deploys virtual machines from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts on any of the following operating systems: ◾Windows Server® 2012 R2
◾Windows Server® 2012
◾Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
◾Converts VMware virtual machines, virtual disks, and configurations for memory, virtual processor, and other virtual computing resources from the source to Hyper-V.
◾Adds virtual network interface cards (NICs) to the converted virtual machine on Hyper-V.
◾Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.0, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts to Hyper-V.
◾Has a wizard-driven GUI, which simplifies performing virtual machine conversions.
◾Uninstalls VMware Tools before online conversion (online only) to provide a clean way to migrate VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.
Important  MVMC takes a snapshot of the virtual machine that you are converting before you uninstall VMware Tools, and then shuts down the source machine to preserve state during conversion. The virtual machine is restored to its previous state after the source disks that are attached to the virtual machine are successfully copied to the machine where the conversion process is run. At that point, the source machine in VMware can be turned on, if required. Important  MVMC does not uninstall VMware Tools in an offline conversion. Instead, it disables VMware services, drivers, and programs only for Windows Server guest operating systems. For file conversions with Linux guest operating systems, VMware Tools are not disabled or uninstalled. We highly recommend that you manually uninstall VMware Tools when you convert an offline virtual machine.
◾Supports Windows Server and Linux guest operating system conversion. For more details, see the section “Supported Configurations for Virtual Machine Conversion” in this guide.
◾Includes Windows PowerShell capability for offline conversions of VMware-based virtual hard disks (VMDK) to a Hyper-V–based virtual hard disk file format (.vhd file).  Note The offline disk conversion does not include driver fixes.

You can download Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0 here

Unitrends | Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Giveaway

Today kicks off the Unitrends “Countdown to Doctor Who” giveaway.  We’re counting the days to the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who (Nov 23) and celebrating with gift cards and Doctor Who themed giveaways.

All you need to do is browsing to the Unitrends website and download Unitrends Enterprise Backup (UEB) for VMware or Hyper-V. You can also win a ¤25 giftcard. Just tweet your love for #DoctorWho and mention @Unitrends. Unitrends will select 10 Twitter winners per day, how cool is that!!

Doctor-Who-Banner