Tag Archives: console

Beginning with AWS CloudFormation – Part 1

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One of my few new goals for this year is to get back to blogging regularly about stuff I’m learning or interested in.  Keep a look out here for (hopefully!) more content this year than previous years which might have had just a handful of posts.

AWS CloudFormation is a utility that allows you to define AWS “infrastructure” as code in text files called Templates.  You can use it to deploy almost anything via JSON or YAML scripts.  The deployed resources are collectively called stacks.  There are other IaC options here as well, like Terraform, but I think it is handy to know the native toolset as well.  Plus if you are going for AWS certifications you’ll need to be familiar with it.

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vSphere Client Console Black Screen

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Or, more accurate than the title, a black area on the border of the console window.

I got a new laptop running Windows 10 and when I brought up the console in my home lab, this is what I’d get.

screwyconsole

It actually ended up being worse even than it looks as the mouse is pretty much unusable on the screen and a huge chunk of the screen (bottom and right side) is cut off.  It is virtually impossible to do anything with VMs including installations of operating systems.

I tried several fixes like compatibility mode, update drivers, etc. without success.  Then I stumbled upon this scaling setting which is mentioned on several sites dealing with mouse usage in the VDI space.

Browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\ and right click on VpxClient.exe and select Properties.

clientsetting

On this screen, select the Disable Display Scaling box indicated.  Then restart your client.

As a annoying side effect, now some of the text isn’t scaled right so some things in the client look wrong.  But it is still usable and the console is usable.

Weirdly, the vCenter console from the web client has no such issue that I noticed.  But if you are being pestered by this “feature” try this setting and see if it helps.