@DustinB3403 said in With ESXi Licensing what happens if I let it lapse: Microsoft started pulling Security patches off of their servers after your contract expires but the platform is still supported. Microsoft no longer provides patches for XP Server 2003 unless you pay them a lot of extra money. It's basically a license with security updates for a fixed interval that can be extended for a ton of money...

Couple things for a total cluster shutdown) If patching, stage patches to host, and out of bands (if pushing firmware). Gracefully shutdown all virtual machines (from in guest, or using VMtools). If using vSAN change Maintenance Mode behavior to "Do Nothing" Put Hosts in Maintenance Mode. 3b. If patching issue update commands. Power off hosts once in Maintenance Mode. Power back on. If patching verifies patches if vSAN change cluster policy back.

@BRRABill said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @Dashrender said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @JaredBusch said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: @scottalanmiller said in StarWind V2V Converter: Now with Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion option!: Think of the alternative... how much hardware and man hours are going into working around extracting the data? No where near as much as reverse engineering the database to create the output needed. This is something I have done more than one time. It is not that easy. Depends on the database. But it's something we do from time to time and often is pretty basic. I mean days of work, yes. But maintaining all that stuff is also days of work, plus the cost of hardware, isolation, risk, etc. On top of maintaining all that old stuff, we assume that there is no support should something break, either. The system is basically in a static state. So if it breaks - restore to a known good working state and move on. The problem I see running into over time is hardware and hypervisor tech that can support this until the kill date of 2036. we can manually use the built system to do what is called a CCD export of the children's files - while this will be extremely manual in nature, it will likely be less expensive than hiring NTG or whomever to learn the DB layouts and extract the desired data. Maybe, personally I think this seems very unlikely given 2036. That's 18 more years of dealing with stuff already in a ridiculous state today. Remember that you are going to be dealing with people that are not you and have no memory or knowledge of this system decades from now, a system already insanely old, trying to do restores or run systems 30 years old. I doubt that that stuff will be cheap at that point, or anytime between now and then. A one time conversion to text files or PDF is over and done. Yeah, it's a bigger up front cost, but it is a single cost that never comes back to haunt you. Oh believe me - I completely agree with you. Personally, we need to run a report to find all patients who were under 13 years old, export those. Then we can kill this system off in 2023 for all patients, and we'll have the children who have a longer hold requirement already exported. Once you can export one, export all of them. The cost of one is the same as the cost of all. With a script, you're right - I'm not looking to hire someone to make said script at this time. You mean doing it manually? That'll likely take a really long time. Well - the report will tell us how many patients we have, then management can make the determination if they want to hire someone to script it all - or just do it manually. Any idea how long manually takes? Is that like just taking a screen shot of the current output? No, the manual for children will likely be 1-4 mins, likely more on the 1 min side. But that's only a guess, I haven't done the process in years. Oh, that's really fast. If it is that simple, let's say you have 10,000 customers. That's 10,000 - 40,000 minutes. I bet that it gets faster with someone doing one after another. That's a maximum of 33 weeks of full time work for 10,000 customers to be transferred. And that is a lot of customers. And that is assuming four minutes per customer. And assuming that you realistically get four productive hours of doing a task like that per day. wow - you really do build in the 'a person wastes half their work day away' don't you? LOL, you have to, especially with a tedious task. You can't do that eight hours a day without bleeding from your ears. Try it sometime. Time a task like that once. Then try to keep it up for an hour. Then realistically think about eight times that in a day. Then think about how hard it would be to do in an isolation chamber versus the real world with interruptions and other tasks that happen. Four hours in an eight hour day is actually quite hard. I couldn't even read this post without checking my phone and buying something on Amazon. Exactly!

I'm sorry to say but this is a terrible article. It's all marketing fluff... I'd like to see some implementation specifics outside of "we did this so you should too" marketing bs.

Interesting read. I hope I never need to use it. Though, I would rather have it and not need it...

@jaredbusch said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM: @scottalanmiller said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM: @aaronstuder said in Ubuntu Set Default Resolution Through GRUB for VM: @scottalanmiller Ubuntu is a surprising choice for you Runs ScreenConnect. So does Fedora. Always fail when I do it, there is some trick to it. Happen to know what's needed so that it doesn't just put hashes on the screen for forever?

@hobbit666 said in VMware vSphere 6.7 Released: @scottalanmiller then you're missing some of the page. I see Dell and HPE custom images then under that there is a link to a keygen Ah ha, either I didn't go down that far or just didn't see it. I looked all over for that somewhere. Yes, those look like key gens, then.

@storageninja Thanks so much, I will read in the mean time those blogs: https://www.codyhosterman.com/ https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/author/cormac_hogan

@luismc said in Port - How to go about setting up a client to be virtualized?: @dashrender said in Port - How to go about setting up a client to be virtualized?: As for Sharepoint - You don't get that much storage in Sharepoint in O365, so you'll likely be paying for more storage there. Sharepoint also has a number of files per site limit, just something else to watch out for. For future reference to anyone wondering, I spoke to three different O365 reps today and they said the limit has been bumped to 1 million items so we'll be good for a while! That's a bit more!

@emad-r NVM, forgot about VMware Remote Console (VMRC), which is the optimized way of connection to VM GUI console, download it now. I think vsphere C# client currently is VMRC in some minimal way. At least one is still actively developed. (You cant connect to an .iso file using webclient flex without uploading the whole .iso file to the host, however with the older C# client and newer method VMRC this can be still done). That said, we lost the export to .ova or .ovf easier method compared to web ui export which gives you the .vmdk file as is.

@scottalanmiller said in ESXi and Xen Orchestra - Licensing models that are eerily similar: @brrabill just people who like beating horses. Well that's just cruel.

What questions and answers brought you to use ESXi? Did you purchase ESXi or are you using the free version?

@Tim_G said in Caching Needs and SSDs: you have something on I/O path going wrong What do you mean? Everything looks good and appears to be going smooth according to all monitoring. No errors or performance issues. It's been doing a very good job the past couple years. I keep it fairly updated. So if something recent broke something on it, let me know and I'll hold off on updating.

@beta said in SW Port - New Server for virtual host - Sanity Check: Oh, one thing I was really curious about too, would it make sense to get an extra drive as a hot spare? Normally with OBR10 and spinning HDD, I'd put every spindle into the array, but since SSDs are going to give me plenty of IOPS and capacity, I didn't know if it is a good/bad idea with OBR5. The rule of "no hot spare ever" for RAID 5 still applies. If you were going to do this, you would do OBR 6. OBR6 can make loads of sense here, but OBR5 + HS does not. But it is up to you, depends on cost and risk aversion.

Not worth the effort for the case. Thanks for the help guys.

@TheDeepStorage said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5: @hobbit666 said in Deploying a 2-node StarWind VSAN Free for VMware ESXi 6.5: Thanks just that I might have some kit becoming available but they are all different Dell models, just wondered if the Hard Drive space/RAID matched that would be OK for a test lab, e.g. R610, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS R410, 64GB RAM with 4x 600GB SAS Sounds like it will work just fine for a test lab, anyways, once you get down to testing, DM me and I'll get you in touch with an engineer, who will review your environment to make sure everything will work perfectly. See now I want to purchase more lab equipment to test this. . . .