ESXi 4.0 to 4.1 Upgrade

There appears to be significant differences on various websites and blogs on the proper way to perform this upgrade.  I ran across several variations of command lines etc.

I was able to complete an upgrade from 4.0.0,294855 to 4.1.0,260247using the following process:

1. Download the ESXi 4.0 to 4.1 Upgrade package to c:\vmware
2. Shutdown all guests
3. Put host into maintenance mode
4. Run the following command line:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vihostupdate.pl –server <hostname> -i -b c:\vmware\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip

A username and password with root level access to the ESXi host will be prompted for.  After several minutes the following message will appear:

The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

Reboot and remove the host from maintenance mode.

Note that command line is found on page 63 of the vSphere Upgrade Guide which can be found here vSphere Upgrade Guide

Ford Sync Review

As a recent owner of a new Ford vehicle that includes the SYNC system I thought a review might be in order.  Ford Sync is described at syncmyride.com.  Its major features include:

• Hands free calling with a Bluetooth enabled phone
• Hands free music playback
• 911 Assist
• Hands free text messaging
• Turn by turn navigation
• Vehicle health report

Unfortunately, the last two features above are currently only available in the United States.  Here in Canada they are still being worked on.  On a personal note I hope they hurry up and get it enabled.  The nice thing is by registering the vehicle on syncmyride.com an email warning will appear once an upgrade is available.  The upgrade and a loader program get put on a USB thumb drive.  Put them in the vehicle and boom…updated system.  In my opinion this software based system is a much better setup than a hardware based system, that likely would be harder to upgrade.

In terms of the hands free setup all the controls are on the steering wheel.  A “voice command” button is used to get SYNC’s attention.  You then select by voice what service you want (Phone or USB).  During the Bluetooth pairing exercise SYNC downloaded the address book from the phone.  So any contact can be dialed by name and by location (cell, home, office, etc).  Any incoming call’s ID is displayed on the display console.

Selecting USB (assuming an iPod, Zune, any other MP3 player, or even a thumb drive with music on it) will index the music on the device; building a catalog of metadata regarding each of the songs.  Title, Artist, Genre, and Album are all indexed.  Once indexing is completed you can “tell” SYNC to play any of these items by calling for a track, artist, etc.  SYNC also has a play “similar” feature.  Find a song you like then ask SYNC to “play similar”.

911 Assist places a 911 call on your behalf if the airbags are deployed, a very comforting safety system.  The hands free texting will read out incoming text messages and allow you to select from a set of canned responses.  Unfortunately, this feature requires a cell phone that supports a text profile over Bluetooth, something my BlackBerry 8120 does not do.

All in all I am very impressed with this setup and feature.  It was jointly developed by Ford and Microsoft and it works very well.  At a $500 option it was well worth it.

vSphere Host Update Utility 4.0

Had some difficulties upgrading my ESXi 4 host today using this utility.  The patching process failed several times with an uninformative error message.

I was instructed to check the log file, unfortunately it was not obvious where that log file was.  After several Internet searches I was no closer to finding the source of my problem, let alone the log file that was going to answer my questions.

Finally found it so thought I would share in case anyone else finds themselves looking for the log file created by the Host Update Utility.  The logs can be found in C:\%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\VMware\VIU\logs.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)

Attended an interesting presentation tonight on the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010.  This appears to be a very powerful way to manage image deployments for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

I have to admit I’ve been eyeing this tool up for some time and been looking for a way to give it a try.  For a free tool it appears to have promise.

The presenter deviated from the canned Microsoft presentation and showed us some examples from his production MDT environment.  To any presenters this is an excellent approach and I highly recommend it.  Real world approaches almost always make for a better demo.

The presenter was able to show a depth of experience with the MDT product.  His blog appears to have a large amount of information on this subject, it can be found at http://www.toddlamothe.com/.

Here is a link to the Microsoft MDT site, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791.aspx.