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showing posts tagged with 'esx'
 
Configure a coredump file (instead of partition) in VMware ESX 5.5 and newer
edited by on November 8th 2021, at 17:14
Coredumps are used for analysis and debugging if/when a ESX host "crashes" with a "kernel panic". This is visualized by a purple screen (often called PSOD, similar to Windows'es "Blue Screen Of Death").

VMWare ESX 5.5 and newer introduces the ability to perform coredumps to a file instead of a partition.

To configure this, you need access to the ESX host's CLI (either through vSphere Management Assistant (vMA), directly on the host through console or SSH, or some other method). For this to work, you need "root" access (or the equivalent of it through vMA).

Once logged on, take a directory listing of the VMFS datastores to determine on which datastor  ...
 
Virtual NUMA Topology in vSphere 6.5 (link)
edited by on January 29th 2019, at 12:03

Found this article online about how vSphere virtualizes NUMA and how this is relevant to the configuration of vCPUs in your VMs:

https://www.opvizor.com/decoupling-of-cores-per-socket-from-virtual-numa-topology-in-vsphere-6-5

 
ESX: enter/exit maintenance mode via CLI
edited by on January 17th 2018, at 11:29

You can use either esxcli or vicfg-hostops to enter/exit maintenance mode.

esxcli

  • Enter: esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
  • Exit: esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false

vicfg-hostops

  • Enter: vicfg-hostops --operation enter
  • Exit: vicfg-hostops --operation exit

Note that you can use vicfg-hostops --operation info to check whether the host is finished with entering maintenance mode or is still busy.

PowerCLI

After connecting to the host or vCenter server:

  • Enter: Get-VMHost <name-of-host> | Set-VMHost -State Maintenance
  • Exit: Get-VMHost <name-of-host> | Set-VMHost -State Connected
 
Create an UEFI-bootable ESXi 6.5 USB installer on Mac
edited by on October 9th 2017, at 14:42
To create an UEFI-bootable USB installer for ESXi 6.5 (or newer) on a Mac, follow the steps below.

First, you'll need an USB flash drive. Any recent drive will be large enough (you'll need at least 512MB). Also, download the latest ESXi installer ISO from My VMWare. You probably need a My VMWare account.

With the prereqs in place:

Insert the USB flash drive in the Mac and start up Disk Utility.

Erase the USB flash drive and choose to format it:Partition map = MBR

Filesystem = FAT32

Give it a descriptive name of your choosing.

After erasing the drive, we still have to mark the one partition on it as "active". Disk Utility does not support this and needs to be done using Termi  ...
 
ESX host lost connection to vCenter? Check free ramdisk space!
edited by on January 10th 2017, at 14:42
If your ESX host has lost connection to the vCenter server, but you can still directly access the host's management, and can find nothing else wrong with the vCenter server or its network connection to the host, you may want to the free space on your ESX host.

Logs and other temporary files may have filled up one or more ramdisk partitions (e.g. when you don't have a persistent scratch partition, it gets mounted on /tmp). This can cause any of the following issues:

Connection loss between the ESX host and vCenter server;

Errors when attempting to reconnect or add an ESX host to a vCenter server;

Errors while attempting to activate or configure HA;

Other unexplainable errors...

You can   ...
 
PowerCLI: get a list of VMs, the datastores they're using and the folder they are in
edited by on December 5th 2015, at 13:19

You can quickly get a list of VMs, the datastores they are using and the logical folder they are in through PowerCLI:

Get-VM | Select Name,@{N="Datastore";E={[string]::Join(',',(Get-Datastore -Id $_.DatastoreIdList | Select -ExpandProperty Name))}},@{N="Folder";E={$_.Folder.Name}}

Combine it with Export-CSV to export the results to a CSV file.

 
Cannot unmount/delete a VMFS datastore in VMWare because of Storage I/O Control (SIOC)
edited by on October 26th 2015, at 14:00
When attempting to unmount or delete a VMFS datastore on a cluster, you may get the message that the resource is still in use, even though all the VMs have been moved off the datastore, or that Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is enabled on it (usually when attempting to unmount).

To circumvent the issue, temporarily stop SIOC, unmount/delete the datastore, then start SIOC again. If an unplanned Permanent Device Loss (PDL) is invoked when Storage IO control enabled on a storage device (iSCSI device or FC), the ESX host cannot remount the VMFS datastore, and also the steps below are then also required in order to be able to remount the datastore.

On each of the ESX hosts (if there's more than one  ...
 
Download any version of VMWare Tools
edited by on October 6th 2015, at 13:44

You can download installation files and ISOs of any of the latest versions of VMWare Tools for each released version of ESX:

→ https://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/index.html

This is useful if you need support for a certain OS version but are not able to upgrade the ESX host in order to get it (e.g. Windows 10 support on ESX 5.5 "non-u3").

Note that, although officially unsupported, VMWare Tools is technically backwards compatible, meaning you can install a newer version on a guest running on an older ESX host.

 
Windows 10 supported VMWare Tools on ESX 5.5
edited by on October 6th 2015, at 13:37

Windows 10 is not out of the box supported on ESX 5.5, unless you're running 5.5u3. One of the issues is that earlier versions do not have a compatible video driver for Windows 10.

However, for older versions of ESX 5.5, you can manually download the VMWare Tools and install them:

→ https://packages.vmware.com/tools/esx/5.5u3/windows/index.html

 
Disable SSL certificate warning in vSphere PowerCLI
edited by on August 21st 2015, at 10:23

If your vCenter server has a self-signed certificate, you will get a warning about this when connecting to it from vSphere PowerCLI. You can disable this warning through PowerCLI with the Set-PowerCLIConfiguration cmdlet.

  1. Start an elevated vSphere PowerCLI (right-click, Run as Administrator).
  2. Enter the following cmdlet:
    Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore
    Press Enter again to confirm the change.

After making the change, new connections to the vCenter server will no longer produce a warning about the certificate.

 
Disable ESXi Shell/SSH warnings on vSphere
edited by on July 7th 2015, at 11:54
When you enable the ESXi Shell or SSH on a particular host in a vSphere cluster, a warning will appear on a ESX host:

ESXi Shell for the host has been enabled

or SSH for the host has been enabled

This is normal behaviour, but you can turn off these warnings for each of the hosts.

Note that prior to vSphere 4.1 Update 2, it is not possible to suppress the warnings.

Open vSphere Client.

Select the ESX host. From the Configuration tab (right pane), click Advanced Settings.

Navigate to UserVars → UserVars.SuppressShellWarning.Set its value to 1.

Click OK to confirm. The warning will disappear immediately.

Log on to vSphere Web Client.

Select vCenter from the Home menu. Select Host  ...
 
vSphere Web Client error: Failed to verify the SSL certificate for one or more vCenter Server System
edited by on July 3rd 2015, at 15:39
The vSphere Web Client may display the following error:

Failed to verify the SSL certificate for one or more vCenter Server Systems: https://vCenter-Server-FQDN:443/sdk

or

Could not connect to one or more vCenter Server Systems:https://vCenterFQDN:443/sdk

Additionally, objects such as hosts or VMs are not displayed in the vSphere Web Client.

These errors usually occur with a re-installation or upgrade of vCenter Server, where the vCenter Server is registered to the same vSphere SSO more than once.

The faulty registration needs to be resolved by unregistered all duplicate vCenter Server instances from vSphere SSO, so only the correct registrations remain.

You will have to unregister al  ...
 
How to suppress vSphere 5 HA heartbeat datastore warning of 1
edited by on May 20th 2015, at 16:45
After configuring HA for a vSphere 5 cluster, you may encounter the following warning on each ESX host:

Configuration Issues
The number of vSphere HA heartbeat datastores for this host is 1, which is less than required: 2

vSphere 5 introduces datastore heartbeats in addition to network hearts, which allows to distinguish between a network-isolated host and a crashed host. In order for datastore heartbeats to work properly, vSphere requires at least 2 shared datastores available on every host in the cluster. If there's less than 2 shared datastores, datastore heartbeats will not function properly, resulting in the configuration issue message.

If you only have one shared datastore and wish   ...
 
VMWare vSphere client on high DPI settings
edited by on May 6th 2015, at 09:20

You may have noticed that running the VMWare vSphere client on a display with higher DPI settings causes problems with the mouse cursor alignment when working inside a VM. This is because of a mismatch between the DPI settings of the VM and the DPI settings of your computer.

To resolve, right-click the shortcut to the client, go to the Compatibility tab, and enable Disable display scaling on high DPI settings.

The downside of this method is that there will be misalignment of some parts in the client, but it is still workable and moreover, it solves the mouse issue in a VM.

 
Adding ESX host to vCenter: Cannot install the vCenter agent service
edited by on April 29th 2015, at 16:49
When attempting to add an ESX host to vCenter, you may get one of the following errors:

Error #1
Cannot install the vCenter agent service: Cannot upload agent.

Or:

Error #2
Cannot install the vCenter agent service: unknown installer error

Below is a list of most common errors:

Check whether the host is accessible through port 902/tcp. Check the firewall settings and/or routing between the ESX hosts and the vCenter server.

Check whether there is sufficient space on the ESX disk. If there's not enough space, this often gets logged in /var/log/syslog.log during the installation of a VIB.
Usually the problem occurs with the tmp partition (i.e. scratch disk) being full or almost full. You n  ...
 
List of most common VMware ESXi SSH/CLI commands
edited by on April 29th 2015, at 16:39
Below is a list of most common CLI commands for VMWare ESXi. Type these in directly in an ESXi or SSH shell.

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvmsList all VMs running on the host. Also provides vmid, required for commands below.vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off vmidPower off specified VM.vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on vmidPower off specified VM.vim-cmd vmsvc/power.reboot vmidReboot specified VM.vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/volume/datastore/subdir/vm-file.vmxRegister the VM stored at location on the ESX host inventory.vim-cmd vmsvc/unregister vmidUnregister VM from the host. Does not remove the VM's files from the datastore.vim-cmd vmsvc/destroy vmidDelete the specified VM. The VMDK and VMX files will be deleted from stor  ...
 
Reclaim disk space from thin provisioned VMDK files in ESX
edited by on December 12th 2014, at 12:52
When you have some VMs with thin provisioned disks, you may have noticed that these will continue to grow, and never shrink, even after cleaning out data from within the VM. Currently, VMware does not have automatic space reclamation, unless you're running a SAN which supports this (and you have the necessary components installed, such as EqualLogic's HIT-kit). Luckily, there are some tools to allow you to reclaim unused space from your virtual thin disks. The only downside is that you have to power off the affected machines.

Reclaiming disk space only works when the blocks on your virtual disk are really empty. Deleting data usually only removes the entries from the file allocati  ...
 
Veeam: VSSControl error 0x8004230f
edited by on August 27th 2014, at 11:00
When using Veeam to back up your VMs, and you get the following error on one or more VMs:

Error: VSSControl: -2147212529 Backup job failed.Discovery phase failed.Cannot add volumes to the snapshot set.Cannot add a volume to the snapshot set. Volume name: [\\?\Volume{6c169bc7-d7bf-11e0-b074-806e6f6e6963}\].Cannot add volume to the set of volumes that should be shadowed.VSS error: VSS_E_UNEXPECTED_PROVIDER_ERROR. Code:0x8004230f

According to KB1785, this is because of a third party VSS provider, present on the VM. If more than the default software provider is installed, another third party backup software suite may have enabled their provider on the VM, causing the initiation of a VSS backup  ...
 
"VMware Image Customization in progress" displayed repeatedly
edited by on August 14th 2014, at 14:17
In certain cases when deploying machines from a template using deployment customization, parts of this process may fail. As a result, upon each reboot, the system may try to re-run the customization process, and the following message is displayed at each startup:

VMware Image Customization in progress

To remove any pending sysprep customization routine, you can manually remove the reference to it by editing the Windows Registry

Start regedit.exe.

Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\.

Change the value of BootExecute. Remove the part that says sysprepDecryptor.exe. Leave the other parts of the value as they were (so only remove the one w  ...
 
Completely disable time synchronisation in VMware
edited by on January 8th 2014, at 12:34
Even though you've unchecked the time synchronisation checkbox in VMware Tools, synchronisation may still occur. Particularly when a certain action is performed, such as a power-off/power-on, suspend/resume, snapshot handling, etc., time synchronisation will still occur.

To complete disable time synchronisation, even during the events mentioned, you have to add additional parameters to the VMware VM configuration. There are two ways to do this.

Note that you need to have the machine powered off before you can do these changes.

Use a text editor to directly edit the .vmx-file, adding the required parameters:

tools.syncTime = "0"time.synchronize.continue = "0"time.synchronize.restore = "0"  ...
 
 
showing posts tagged with 'esx'
 
 
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