Getting VitalSource Bookshelf to work with a Virtual Machine

All current VMware class materials are delivered via VitalSource Bookshelf.  It's pretty good for digital book software (still doesn't go much beyond what you can do with a paper book, but that is another article).  If, like me, you run VitalSource on a virtual machine, you may have noticed after a recent upgrade you can't open your books anymore, you just get a grey screen.

After doing some digging, I discovered this is because the new version of the software requires DirectX 10 (yes, for a book).  https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/sections/200390856-Troubleshooting

The default VMware SVGA driver doesn't support DirectX 10, however the solution is pretty simple, just enable 3D Graphics.

The challenge of teaching with Powerpoint

Generally when I teach a class, I try to tell a story, and use the slides as a background, rather than use the slides to tell a story.  Sometimes, when I'm relatively new to teaching a specific class I will use the slides as more of a crutch than I prefer however.  I also think that using a whiteboard, demoing, and engaging the students in a discussion is more effective than a simple slideshow.  It turns out a lot of people agree with me.  Here is a slideshow explaining why slideshows are not the best way to teach.  My favorite comment is ""Your slideshow by itself should be incomprehensible, because the most important part is what is not on the slides."  If the slides stand completely on their own, then instructors aren't necessary, and the students might as well be reading a book.

Digital slides are the scourge of higher education

Minor bug in vSphere Web Client autofilling the VLAN when creating portgroup.

While adding a new host in my home lab this week, I discovered a minor bug in the web client related to VLANs.  The VLAN dropdown will remember previous VLANs that you used, and try to autofill them.  Generally autofill isn't a problem, you just type a space to indicate you want a shorter version.  However this doesn't work as typing a space isn't an option for a VLAN.  So there is no way to indicate for instance that you want VLAN 30 instead of 300.  After some experimenting, I discovered that you can type in 030 and it will take it, and it'll work correctly.  That is however a workaround and not an ideal fix.  

Configuring Auto Deploy: Changing a host profile and checking compliance

I desperately needed a second host in my lab network, the primary host isn't overloaded in terms of resources, but in working on it I would sometimes have to restart it, which meant shutting down all of my VMs, some of which provided services for my home network (like the firewall to the outside world).  I dug up an old Dell Precision workstation that I haven't used in a while and decided to put it in to service.  I also figured it was time for me to gain some experience with Auto Deploy.
I used a combination of two great blog entries on setting up Auto Deploy as a starting guide.
     vSphere 5 Auto-deploy in 20 steps over at vClouds.nl
     Using vSphere 5 auto-deploy in your home lab from Duncan Epping over at Yellow-bricks.

Those entries got me through most of the setup, but after getting the host to boot up, I decided I wanted to make some changes to the image and the rules.  After adding changes to the ruleset, I had to test compliance to get the rules to update.  I was curious how I could verify the changes, so in my research, I came across a KB for troubleshooting Auto Deploy that pointed me to this page you can access on your autodeploy server

     http://autodeployserver:port/vmw/rdb/

From here I can look at registered hosts as well as the Auto Deploy cache information.  By selecting my host, prior to testing compliance of the rule set, I saw this information:

Notice that the PxeProfile that is cached does not match the new rule listed below it.  To test and repair the rule set, I ran the following commands:

     PowerCLI C:\> $tr = test-deployrulesetcompliance esxi50.starship.local
     PowerCLI C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI> $tr.itemlist
     CurrentItem                                                 ExpectedItem
     -----------                                                 ------------
     ESXi-5.1.0-799733-standard                                  ESXiHA

     PowerCLI C:\> Repair-DeployRuleSetCompliance $tr

At this point, if I go back to the host on the autodeploy page, I now see:

Notice that at this point the PxeProfile matches on the top and the bottom.  At this point when I reboot the host it will load the new image.

Seeing what exactly is in the PxeProfile is a little bit more tricky.  If you look in the cache, you can locate PxeProfile-2, and from there, determine the locate of the imgprofile.xml file location.  If you log in to the Auto Deploy server, in my case the VCVA, and go to /var/lib/rdb/cache and locate the file to view it's contents.