vCenter SSO update/installation oddities and hints

I have just updated my lab with the recently released vSphere 5.1 Update 1 and want to share some oddities I encountered with the Single Sign On (SSO) component.

[Release] VMware Converter 5.1, finally with GPT support!

After a long public beta test VMware has released an important update to its free Converter product: version 5.1.

What's new

[Release] vSphere 5.1 Update 1

VMware has released Update 1 for vCenter Server 5.1 and ESXi 5.1:
Both updates include tons of bug fixes. Here are some highlights of what issues were fixed (read the release notes for a full list):

HP Offline Bundles April 2013 Updates

HP has recently released updated Offline Bundles that are available in the directory http://vibsdepot.hp.com/hpq/apr2013/. Unlike the other release directories (feb2013 was the latest up to now) it is not (yet) properly set up as an Online Depot, so you can not add it as a download source to Update Manager.

How to vMotion from Intel to AMD - and why not to do it.

Have you ever been bugged by a vMotion Compatibility check error that you couldn't really explain e.g. while you tried to put a host into maintenance mode for doing some urgent work?

Have you ever dreamed of live migrating VMs from a cluster of hosts with Intel CPUs to another cluster of hosts with AMD CPUs (in a hardware migration scenario or just for fun)?

How to build device drivers for ESXi 5.x - Update

A while ago I posted about How to build device drivers for ESXi 5.x and pointed you to Dave Mishchenko's vm-help.com forums where trickstarter has started a series of awesome blog posts on this topic. Here is an update ...

The VMware Tools GUI is gone - Now what?

If you run Windows VMs on VMware ESXi 5.1 hosts or Workstation 9 then you may have noticed that VMware silently made an important change to the recent VMware Tools (for Windows) versions. Older versions exposed a GUI for configuring and using the VMware Tools that was accessible via a tray icon and a Control Panel applet. With the latest version this GUI has been replaced by simple "About" box that just shows the VMware Tools service status and build number:
The reduced GUI of VMware Tools version 9

A VMware Storage vMotion riddle - survey results and resolution

A week ago I invited you to think about a little riddle concerning something I called "self-referential Storage vMotion". What happens if you try to migrate a VM on to a datastore that this VM provides itself? Here is the resolution: