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showing posts tagged with 'vcenter'
 
Resizing vCenter VCSA disks (with auto-grow)
edited by on August 18th 2021, at 13:53
Occassionally, the vCenter may run out of disk space on a specific disk, in which case it may become necessary to resize it. While there are many articles written about resizing a disk (like this), VMware also provides a very useful auto-resize script which automatically does the work for you, significantly improving the user experience even to those who are not familiar with resizing partitions and/or LVM in Linux. The best part is that it can be done online, so no need to stop services.

Log on to the vCenter console through SSH or through VMRC using the root account. If you wish to use SSH, you may need to enable it first through VAM.

Determine which virtual disk needs resizing. VCSA use  ...
 
VMWare vMotion: compatibility check fails with connection refused
edited by on December 9th 2019, at 16:54
I had an issue where vMotion would no longer work. When selecting the target host in the vCenter UI, the compatibility check would fail with the error:

Error
A general system error occurred: Connection refused: The remote service is not running OR is overloaded, OR a firewall is rejecting connections.

A Google search for the issue reveals quite a bit of possible causes, mostly pointing to several more standard causes, which were all in order. When digging deeper in the logs, I stumbled upon the same message appearing in /storage/log/vmware/vmware-vpxd/vpxd.log.

Continuing the search, someone mentioned that it could be caused by services not started, which can easily be revealed when loggi  ...
 
VMWare VCSA/PSC: disable password expiration for the root account from the CLI
edited by on December 9th 2019, at 15:45
You can disable password expiration from the command-line when logging on using SSH or by enabling the Bash shell. Note that you will need root privileges (i.e. root account) to make this change.

If shell access is not enabled, you need to enable it first:

Log on to the appliance management portal: https://ip-or-fqdn:5480/.

In the Navigator, click on Access. On the right side (Access Settings), click on the Edit button.

Tick the box next to Enable SSH Login for remote access, or if you rather prefer making the change through the VMRC, check the box Enable BASH Shell. Then click OK. The change is effective immediately.

Log on to the shell using either SSH (using PuTTY or another applicat  ...
 
How to reset root password of vCenter Server Appliance or Platform Services Controller
edited by on March 25th 2019, at 13:33
You can reset the root password of any (recent) VMWare appliance, such as the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), or Platform Services Controller (PSC) by following the procedure outlined here. Note that you will need to have physical or console access to perform the reset. The reset also requires a restart of the appliance so you'll need to schedule downtime for it.

First of, take a snapshot or backup of the virtual appliance before proceeding. In case the reset should fail, you'll always have a backup to go back to.

Restart the appliance. Right after the BIOS screen, the PhotonOS splash screen will appear for a few seconds.

During this time, press e to enter the GNU GRUB edit menu, allowin  ...
 
Toggling the vCenter Server Appliance 6.x default shell
edited by on March 25th 2019, at 12:15
You can change the default shell (used when logging on with VMRC or through SSH). By default, this is set to the appliance shell, providing limited functionality. If you rather have BASH as the default shell, you can switch this.

Log on through SSH or VMRC with the root account.

If shell access hasn't been activated yet, run this first:

shell.set --enabled true

If you are running the appliance shell, type shell to launch the BASH shell.

In the BASH shell, at the prompt, type the following to change the default shell to BASH (instead of the appliance shell):

chsh -s /bin/bash root

You'll need to log out for the changes to take effect. The next time you log in, you will log on directly   ...
 
Selective deletion of tasks, events, and historical performance data in vSphere 5.x and 6.x
edited by on January 11th 2019, at 10:04

In the event of migrating your old vCenter Server to a new version (or from Windows to the appliance), it may become necessary to first clear out old historical data. Not only will this speed up the migration process considerably, it will also prevent certain issues which may block the migration from completing successfully.

VMWare provided a KB with database scripts which allow you to selectively purge historical data and decreasing the database size: KB 2110031.

 
Updating the vCenter Server Appliance via ISO and CLI
edited by on October 26th 2018, at 13:29

You can easily update your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) offline by downloading a product patch ISO and via the CLI.

Download the latest patch from VMware Patch Download Center. Select VC from the Search by Product drop-down menu, then select the correct version (i.e. 6.0 or 6.5). Download the patch ISO and attach it to the VCSA.

Log in to the shell (using SSH or VMRC) and initiate the update:

  1. Stage the ISO updates:
    software-packages stage --iso --acceptEulas
  2. Optionally, you can view the list of packages to be updated:
    software-packages list --staged
  3. To install the updates, run:
    software-packages install --staged

After the update has finished, you will have to reboot the VCSA.

 
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   ...
 
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  ...
 
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  ...
 
Installing or upgrading VMWare vCenter components gives error "insert the disk: 1"
edited by on April 29th 2015, at 10:00

When attempting to install or upgrade VMWare vServer server or its components, you may get the following prompt:

Please insert the Disk: 1

If you click OK, the message reappears. Clicking Cancel results in the installation to roll back.

Resolution

Copy the entire installation files to a location on the local hard drive and run the install/upgrade from there.

When running the installation from the local hard drive, and you get the error Provided password is wrong or empty, reboot and re-run the install from the local hard drive.

 
Error java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException when joining vCenter to AD
by on January 1st 1970, at 01:00
When attempting to join your vCenter appliance to AD, you may get the following error message when clicking the Join button:

Error
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

This is known behaviour when running vCenter with an external Platform Service Controller (in HA mode) but the issue may persist even after upgrading vCenter to a new version with the option to switch to an embedded PSC. You can work around the issue by performing the domain join from the CLI (through SSH):

Connect to the vCenter appliance through SSH (if it's still an external PSC, connect to that instead).

Unless shell access is already activated, use the shell command to enter the regular shell.

Run the followin  ...
 
 
showing posts tagged with 'vcenter'
 
 
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