Mac OS Upgrade Saga: Adding ownCloud for cardDav & calDav

I have gone through many Mac OS upgrades with no issues. However, the upgrade to OS X Mavericks caused quite an issue. I lost the ability to use sync services to sync calendar and contact information with my iPhone. To gain this back, I would either have to use iCloud (not something I am willing to do) or put in my own iCloud-like service. There are several to choose from, including Baikal-Server, ownCloud, and even functionality that is part of my Synology device. I chose to go the route of ownCloud.

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vSphere Upgrade Saga: Fixing issues via vCLI

After my upgrade to vCenter 5.5, there were still a few things that needed to be tweaked to fully upgrade my environment. I was in a working state, but now I needed to plug in all the bells and whistles I normally use, such as Host Profiles, VIN, and HP Insight Control, as well as vCenter Log Insight (which is a fairly handy troubleshooting tool). All of these are relatively little things, but they take a fair amount of effort to get right. So, where to begin? By ensuring that I can manipulate the vSphere consoles without actually logging in to each of the consoles. I did not need this for some of the bells and whistles, but I do need it for other things. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Fixing issues via vCLI”

vSphere Upgrade Saga: vCenter 5.5

It has been a while since I added to my vSphere Upgrade Saga, but everything has been running smoothly. Now it is time to upgrade to vSphere 5.5, not because I have to, but because something within SSO broke, and the fix is to use SSO for vCenter 5.5. This leads me to upgrade to vCenter 5.5. What broke? I use the self-signed certificates from VMware for my environment. I probably should not, and that will be fixed shortly, but the long and short of it is that the certificates expired, and an upgrade of vCenter caused SSO, VUM, VIN, and other critical systems to stop talking to each other. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: vCenter 5.5”

vSphere Upgrade Saga: Installing vCLI on RHEL 6

When using Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) with VMware vSphere ESXi you are required to use a collector to interact with vSphere ESXi. That collector can be of RHEL or SLES types of Linux. In my case I use RHEL 6, so need a collector that has on it at least two things: vSphere vCLI and the CSP Linux agent.  RHEL 6 exists as a template within my environment so cloning it is not a major issue but after you clone there are a few things that have to happen to install vCLI and the other components. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Installing vCLI on RHEL 6”

vSphere Upgrade Saga: Move the Data Center: Step 1

We recently moved from Boston to Austin, in doing so, we had to move our data center but we still need to maintain uptime while we physically move the data center. The obvious answer was a Cloud presence to help us with the move. While this move was planned for a bit, finding an inexpensive but good provider was difficult. Continue reading “vSphere Upgrade Saga: Move the Data Center: Step 1”