So after following the CIFS setup and examples in the FreeNAS online documentation I could not connect to the share in Windows 8. I must have setup permissions about 10 times before I decided to restart the CIFS service and that did the trick. So as a quick reminder, after you setup your CIFS share(s) go into Services → Control Services and turn CIFS off, wait a minute a two and turn it back on.
As a side note File History setup in Windows 8 works well with a FreeNAS CIFS share.
There’s an issue with using the SQL 2012 client with vCenter 5.0U2. So as a workaround I installed the SQL 2008 native client on a Server 2012 installed vCenter to connect to a SQL 2012 database on a Server 2012 server.
As an update to a previous post on the subject of installing .Net Framework 3.5 on Windows Server 2012 I discovered a PowerShell method as an alternative. Before trying this make sure you have the Windows 2012 DVD in your respective DVD drive and run the following command in an Administrative PowerShell window:
Install-WindowsFeature Net-Framework-Core -Source D:\Sources\sxs
I was always leery about what constitutes management traffic when going through a kernel port. Well this post from Duncan Epping over at Yellow Bricks pretty much sums it up.
The feature described as “Management traffic” does nothing more than enabling that VMkernel NIC for HA heartbeat traffic.
Much clearer when you put it like that. The vCenter Server Best Practices for Networking touches on this but it’s worded differently.
On ESXi hosts in the cluster, vSphere HA communications, by default, travel over VMkernel networks, except those marked for use with vMotion. If there is only one VMkernel network, vSphere HA shares it with vMotion, if necessary. With ESXi 4.x and ESXi, you must also explicitly enable the Management traffic checkbox for vSphere HA to use this network.