Tag Archives: script

HEVC media optimization

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Do you have a large collection of video media files not using HEVC (H265) yet? There is a massive amount of disk space coming your way if you flick over to the new video codec format.

HEVC definitely lives up to its name, for most media you can expect a 70% or more disk savings from transcoding from an old codec. There are some catches though… If you want your TV to play it direct (i.e. straight off the file) the codec will need to be supported by it. You can of course get around this by using a media server such as Plex or Emby which will transcode from HEVC back to a compatible format.

Why would you transcode to HEVC? – again, disk space. HEVC as stated above can reduced you Media footprint significantly. You could boost your quality and save your disk space at the same time by recording at a higher resolution then applying the HEVC codec.

I created a powershell script to transcode my media to HEVC using my AMD graphics card. The advantage of doing this is that transcoding completed by my GPU is significantly faster than my CPU. I do not have the graphics card in my media server, so instead connect via SMB and let my gaming machine run the transcoding from remote…

The powershell script uses ffmpeg to ;

  • transcodes video stream to hevc using AMD h/w encoder
  • copys all existing audio and subtitles (i.e. no conversion)
  • works in batches (to prevent constant scanning of files) – able to set max batch size and processing time before re-scanning disk
  • overwrites source with new HEVC transcode if move_file = 1 (WARNING this is default!)
  • checks to see if video codec is already HEVC (if so, skips)
  • writes transcode.log for successful transcode (duration and space savings)
  • writes skip.log for already hevc and failed transcodes (used to skip in next loop, errors in transcode.log)

Check here for updates and script – https://github.com/dwtaylornz/hevctranscode

vmware – updating vcenter email alert for monitoring

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I’ve used the following powershell script to assist with setting up a consistant email alert on various vmware envionrments.


# Usage ;
# Please manually connect to vCenter, use "Connect-VIServer" -- this promotes usernames and passwords not beings saved with script.
# Update below variable with email(s) use comma as delimita $MailtoAddresses= “[email protected]”

#—-These Alarms will send a single email message and not repeat —-
$LowPriorityAlarms=”Timed out starting Secondary VM”,`
“No compatible host for Secondary VM”,`
“Virtual Machine Fault Tolerance vLockStep interval Status Changed”,`
“Migration error”,`
“Exit standby error”,`
“License error”,`
“Virtual machine Fault Tolerance state changed”,`
“VMKernel NIC not configured correctly”,`
“Unmanaged workload detected on SIOC-enabled datastore”,`
“Host IPMI System Event Log status”,`
“Host Baseboard Management Controller status”,`
“License user threshold monitoring”,`
“Datastore capability alarm”,`
“Storage DRS recommendation”,`
“Storage DRS not supported on host”,`
“Datastore is in multiple datacenters”,`
“Insufficient vSphere HA failover resources”,`
“License capacity monitoring”,`
“Pre-4.1 host connected to SIOC-enabled datastore”,`
“Virtual machine cpu usage”,`
“Virtual machine memory usage”,`
“License inventory monitoring”

#—-These Alarms will repeat every 24 hours—-
$MediumPriorityAlarms=`
“Virtual machine error”,`
“Health status changed alarm”,`
“Host cpu usage”,`
“Health status monitoring”,`
“Host memory usage”,`
“Cannot find vSphere HA master agent”,`
“vSphere HA host status”,`
“Host service console swap rates”,`
“vSphere HA virtual machine monitoring action”,`
“vSphere HA virtual machine monitoring error”

#—-These Alarms will repeat every 2 hours—-
$HighPriorityAlarms=`
“Host connection and power state”,`
“Host processor status”,`
“Host memory status”,`
“Host hardware fan status”,`
“Host hardware voltage”,`
“Host hardware temperature status”,`
“Host hardware power status”,`
“Host hardware system board status”,`
“Host battery status”,`
“Status of other host hardware objects”,`
“Host storage status”,`
“Host error”,`
“Host connection failure”,`
“Cannot connect to storage”,`
“Network connectivity lost”,`
“Network uplink redundancy lost”,`
“Network uplink redundancy degraded”,`
“Thin-provisioned LUN capacity exceeded”,`
“Datastore cluster is out of space”,`
“vSphere HA failover in progress”,`
“vSphere HA virtual machine failover failed”,`
“Datastore usage on disk”

#—Set Alarm Action for Low Priority Alarms—
Foreach ($LowPriorityAlarm in $LowPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($MailtoAddresses)
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Green” -EndStatus “Yellow”
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Yellow” -EndStatus “Red” # This ActionTrigger is enabled by default.
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Red” -EndStatus “Yellow”
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$LowPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Yellow” -EndStatus “Green”
}

#—Set Alarm Action for Medium Priority Alarms—
Foreach ($MediumPriorityAlarm in $MediumPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Set-AlarmDefinition “$MediumPriorityAlarm” -ActionRepeatMinutes (60 * 24) # 24 Hours
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($MailtoAddresses)
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Green” -EndStatus “Yellow”
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | Get-AlarmActionTrigger | Select -First 1 | Remove-AlarmActionTrigger -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Yellow” -EndStatus “Red” -Repeat
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Red” -EndStatus “Yellow”
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$MediumPriorityAlarm” | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus “Yellow” -EndStatus “Green”
}

#---Set Alarm Action for High Priority Alarms---
Foreach ($HighPriorityAlarm in $HighPriorityAlarms) {
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail| Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false
Set-AlarmDefinition "$HighPriorityAlarm" -ActionRepeatMinutes (60 * 2) # 2 hours
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | New-AlarmAction -Email -To @($MailtoAddresses)
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Green" -EndStatus "Yellow"
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | Get-AlarmActionTrigger | Select -First 1 | Remove-AlarmActionTrigger -Confirm:$false
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Red" -Repeat
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Red" -EndStatus "Yellow"
# Get-AlarmDefinition -Name "$HighPriorityAlarm" | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType SendEmail | New-AlarmActionTrigger -StartStatus "Yellow" -EndStatus "Green"
}
This is another version i created that just grabs all alarms and sets email trigger. Note that it will delete all the current triggers (so ensure you dont have SNMP traps etc that you need)


# v3 : grab all alarms from vcenter (so should work all versions) and use these for alarm variables
# Usage ;
# Please manually connect to vCenter, use "Connect-VIServer" -- this promotes usernames and passwords not beings saved with script.
# Any alarm that is currently active will send email alert -- please confirm appropriate values for tiggers before running this script.

#Set Notification emails here;
$MailTo= “[email protected]”

#define alarms to be set;
$Alarms = Get-AlarmDefinition | sort Name | select name | ft -HideTableHeaders

foreach ($Alarm in $Alarms)
{
# Delete Trigger;
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$Alarm” | Get-AlarmAction | Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false

# Create Trigger;
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name “$Alarm” | New-AlarmAction -Email -To “$MailTo”
}

UPDATE : I generally use the following script now. Less to maintain, and covers any alarms that have not been managed.

# Author : Darren Taylor
# v5 : grab all alarms from vcenter (so should work all versions) and use these for alarm variables
# Usage ;
# Please manually connect to vCenter, use “Connect-VIServer” — this promotes usernames and passwords not being saved with script.
# Any alarm that is currently active will send email alert — please confirm appropriate values for tiggers before running this script.
#
# Note ;
# This script needs to be modified to exclude alarms that are not critical (exclusive rather than inclusive)
# Once Exceptions list is updated, re-run script.

# ——————- VARIABLES ————————-

#Set Notification emails here;
$MailTo= “[email protected]”

# These are the names of the alarms to ignore — i.e. do NOT setup email alert
# THESE ALARMS ARE CONSIDERED NON CRITICAL
$Exceptions= `
“Virtual machine cpu usage”,`
“Virtual machine memory usage”

# ——————- CODE ONLY BELOW ——————-

# TODO:
# Change triggers on some alarms?

#define alarms to be set; (ALL ALARMS)
$Alarms = Get-AlarmDefinition | sort name | select name

foreach ($Alarm in $Alarms)
{

# Test variable in array
Write-Host “Setting Alarm… ” -NoNewLine; Write-Host $Alarm.Name -NoNewLine;

# Delete Trigger; (clears all existing EMAIL triggers)
Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $Alarm.Name | Get-AlarmAction -ActionType:SendEmail | Remove-AlarmAction -Confirm:$false;

# Exceptions to email trigger
$SetAlarm = 1;
foreach ($Exception in $Exceptions) {if($Alarm.Name -eq $Exception){$SetAlarm=0; Write-Host ” Ignored” -foregroundcolor red;}}

# Create Trigger;
if($SetAlarm -eq “1”){Get-AlarmDefinition -Name $Alarm.Name | New-AlarmAction -Email -To $MailTo}

}

 

Optimising Windows 7 Images for use in VDI

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Cool tool for optimizing win7 VDI – http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2010/08/31/optimising-windows-7-images-for-use-in-vdi.aspx

The beta of this tool is available from http://www.autoitscript.com/files/tools/VDIOptimizer.zip but please remember The tool is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, confers no rights, and is not supported by the authors or Microsoft Corporation.

monitoring changed blocks (CBT) for replication of vmware virtual machines

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Check this link for a great script to monitor changes made to a virtual machine via the vmware CBT API. This is perfect for finding culprit machines that are generating a lot of replication traffic if you are replicating over a WAN.

http://www.vmguru.com/index.php/articles-mainmenu-62/scripting/105-using-powershell-to-track-block-change-sizes-over-time

If you have some disks on a virtual machine you don’t want this script to capture then just set them as independent disks (so no snapshots can take place). This is handy if you have your windows page file on a separate disk that you don’t want to be measured as a part of the CBT changes.

CBT_Tracker