If for some reason the deployment of the VMWare vConverter agent fails, you can also copy the installer to the machine you wish to P2V and manually install it.
On the machine VMWare vConverter is installed, navigate to the location where it's installed (by default: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone), and look for the file VMware-Converter-Agent.exe. Copy over this file over to the target machine and run it to install the agent. Accept the defaults, including the TCP-port (unless your setup requires you to change it). Once finished, a service will have been installed and you will be able to connect to it using vConverter.
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
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.
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:
software-packages stage --iso --acceptEulas
software-packages list --staged
software-packages install --staged
After the update has finished, you will have to reboot the VCSA.
You can use either esxcli or vicfg-hostops to enter/exit maintenance mode.
esxcli
vicfg-hostops
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:
Sometimes, you need to temporarily start a service (such as SSH) to perform some maintenance task. PowerCLI can help you with this:
To start the SSH server on each host of a vCenter:
read moreGet-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | ? {$_.Key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | Start-VMHostService
To stop the SSH server:
Get-VMHost | Get-VMHostService | ? {$_.Key -eq "TSM-SSH"} | Stop-VMHostService -Confirm:$false
As always, you can make adjustments to the oneliner to select another service to start/stop, or further limit the selection of hosts to a cluster or a group of hosts (e.g. filtered by name).
If for any reason you need to determine whether a specific instance of VMWare View Connection Server is installed as a standalone server or a replica server, you can do so by looking into the registry.
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM, the value ServerInstanceType will indicate which type the CS is:
1 = standalone/first CS
2 = replica CS
Note that this doesn't really matter, as the only difference between them is whether they set up a new ADAM instance or connect to an existing one. After the installation of VCS, they are identical.
Hyper-V does not allow to be installed on a machine that's already virtual (such as on another Hyper-V or VMWare). For VMWare, you can circumvent this by adding custom configuration parameters to the VM's configuration.
Add these to the VM's configuration, either through the vSphere (web)client, or by directly editing the VMX-file:
hvh.enable = TRUE hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = FALSE
If you're editing the VMX-file, you need to enclose the values (behind the =) in double quotes (").
