Monday 27 October 2014

Synchronizing problems the time with VMware tools on Windows Server

When running a virtualized host with VMware tools installed; time information (by default) is syncronized against the ESXI host. Although it is far to easy to take this feature for granted and not actually understand how this process actually works. Initially assuming that the ESXI host setup an NTP server and the Windows host was consuming from this on the ESXI host was my initial thought, although it turns out the process is much simpler than this, by invoking the VMwareToolboxCmd.exe utility using the 'timesync' switch you can perform time related operations. If for some reason you are having syncronization issues with the time you should firstly ensure that it is currently enabled:

 cd C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools  
 VMwareToolboxCmd.exe timesync status  
 VMwareToolboxCmd.exe timesync enable  

Thursday 23 October 2014

Implementing SCOM with Linux Hosts

System Center 2012 Operations Manager provides a management pack for a selection of Linux distributions (including the likes of Debian, Ubunutu and some other well-used distros.) They are available as part of the Universal Linux management pack which is available with System Center 2012 SP1 onwards.