The default pathing policy for a LUN can be changed (for example from Fixed to Round Robin). This can be a LUN on an iSCSI or FC array (or FCoE for that matter).
When I refer to pathing policy I'm refering to what you may have seen if you've ever clicked manage path's on a VMFS datastore and see it set to Fixed, Round Robin (RR) or Most Recently Used (MRU).

In this example I will be changing the default pathing policy for an EqualLogic array from Fixed to Round Robin.

Before I get into how to change the multi-pathing policy, it's important to understand the below 3 plugins (NMP, SATP and PSP):

• NMP (Native Multipathing Plugin) is an extensible multipathing module within ESXi. "esxcli storage nmp" can be used to manage devices associated with NMP and to set path policies. SATPs and PSPs are plugins within the NMP plugin.
• SATP (Storage Array Type Plugin) determines how path failover is handled for a specific storage array.
• PSP (Path Selection Plugin) determines which physical path is used to issue an I/O request to a storage device.

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I recently came across a vCenter/Update Manager server which had been built whilst been joined to one domain. Then later it has been removed from that domain and joined to a different one.

i.e. from "something.local" to "managed.something.com"

As such VMware vSphere Update Manager has not been reconfigured as was not working correctly (even though the service was running), giving the following errors:

• In Plug-in manager:

"Plug-in is unavailable for the following server(s) : server.something.local"

• A repeatedly displayed error dialog in vSphere client saying:

"There was an error connecting to VMware vSphere Update Manager [server.managed.something.com]"

and

"The request failed because the server name 'server.something.local' could not be resolved"

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In the first 2 parts we deployed and configured vCOPS foundation edition.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.8 (vCOPS) - Part 2 Configuring vCOPs and Introduction to vCOPS Foundation

Now in this 3rd instalment we are going to upgrade from vCOPS foundation to standard edition.

Standard edition still only requires the virtual appliance (vApp) and is simply upgraded by assigning a license key and the vCOPS edition changes on fly.

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Much like I did for ThinApp 4, I'm going to create a simple kick start how to series covering how to install ThinApp and capture some applications.

VMware ThinApp is an agentless application virtualisation. ThinApp is able to execute applications without them being installed in the operating system. This is achieved by virtualizing resources such as environment variables, files and the Windows registry.

It is also possible to package and run a legacy application from Windows XP on a Windows 7 desktop.

File type associations can be configured in the client OS as part of the ThinApp integration, such that opening a .pdf can for example launch a virtualised ThinApp of Adobe Reader.

ThinApps can be stored locally on the desktop, made portable on a USB drive or stored on a network share. Furthermore VMware Horizon View can integrate with ThinApp to assign ThinApp applications to virtual desktops.

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