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showing posts tagged with 'vmware'
List virtual disk info (incl SCSI ID) for a VMWare VM using PowerCLI
edited by on April 11th 2017, at 14:03

I wrote a script to list virtual disk information for a specified VM, including VMDK path, SCSI IDs and more. It is loosely based on this script but excludes all WMI info.

Download here.

 
Installing Nimble NCM on VMware directly from internet
edited by on February 16th 2017, at 10:08

It is possible to install the integration plugins for VMware on an ESX host directly from the Nimble website, provided your hosts have internet access:

  1. Place the host into maintenance mode.
  2. Connect to the host through a shell (e.g. SSH).
  3. Run the command:
    esxcli software vib install -d http://update.nimblestorage.com/esx5/ncm
    Wait for the installation to complete.
  4. Take the host out of maintenance mode and continue with the configuration.
 
Retrieve list of VMs by OS version using PowerCLI
edited by on January 19th 2017, at 16:49

With PowerCLI, you can generate all sorts of lists. To retrieve the configured and reported OS version of your VMs, try running this one-liner:

Get-VM | Sort | 
   Get-View -Property @("Name", "Config.GuestFullName", "Guest.GuestFullName", "Guest.IpAddress") | 
   Select -Property Name, 
       @{N="Configured OS";E={$_.Config.GuestFullName}},
       @{N="Running OS";E={$_.Guest.GuestFullName}},
       @{N="IP Address";E={@($_.Guest.IpAddress)}} | 
   Export-CSV -Delimiter ";" -Path "vms.csv"
 
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   ...
 
ql_ima.log filling up /tmp on ESX hosts
edited by on January 10th 2017, at 14:38
If the scratch partition (/tmp) gets filled up, check for the presence of the file ql_ima.log. If it is present, you are bothered by a bug from an older version of the qla4xxx driver. Even if you use Update Manager, this driver does not get updated automatically. The solution is add the driver to Update Manager or download and install the update manually.

This procedure describes the manual installation of the update on your ESX host. There's no need to put the host in maintenance mode but you will have to reboot to use the new driver.

Download the driver (you need a VMware account):

VMware 5.5

VMware 6.0

Unpack the download and copy the file qla4xxx-634.55.28.0-offline_bundle-1682448.z  ...
 
Configure fixed IP address in vShield Manager 5.x
edited by on December 9th 2016, at 10:53
When deploying a vShield Manager VA, its IP address is set to DHCP by default. Once deployed and started, you can log on through the console to change it to a fixed IP.

Open a VMWare console to the appliance and log on:

manager login: adminPassword: ****** (the CLI 'admin' password you entered during the deployment)

Go into enable mode and enter the setup:

manager> enablePassword: ****** (the enable password you entered during the deployment)manager# setup

Enter the IP address, subnet mask, gateway and DNS settings. When finished, you will be prompted to log out.

Note that after setting the IP address, I had to restart the appliance because the web interface was only accessible on t  ...
 
About VMFS Extents...
edited by on August 19th 2016, at 16:17

Found this interesting read on VMFS Extents and some of the (negative) myths that have arisen over the years:

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/02/vmfs-extents-are-they-bad-or-simply-misunderstood.html

 
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) Uninstall HP Network Configuration Utility
edited by on June 22nd 2015, at 10:29
The HP Network Config Utility provides advanced network configuration tasks for HP servers. It allows to set up NIC teaming, VLAN and more.

Uninstalling this software (e.g. after a P2V) is not possible through Control Panel (Add/Remove Programs) because it's not in the list like other HP software components. The only way to uninstall HP Network Config Utility is through an NIC's properties:

Open the network properties for any Ethernet NIC (doesn't matter which one).

In the This connection uses the following items: box (where you also set up IPv4/v6 settings), you'll see the HP Network Configuration Utilty.

Select (click) it, then click the Uninstall button. At the following prompt, click  ...
 
Get rid of WRITE SAME kernel error messages on linux (3.x kernel)
edited by on June 17th 2015, at 10:34
Linux distros with a 3.x kernel running on virtualized hardware (e.g. pvscsi on VMware) may ever so often spit out the following error:

$ dmesg | grep "WRITE SAME"
kernel: sda2: WRITE SAME failed. Manually zeroing.

This is because the disk driver (in our case: the VMware paravirtual driver) does not support the WRITE SAME SCSI command, resulting in this message.

While this poses no problem for the system at all, you may want to get rid of these messages, which is done by disabling the use of the WRITE SAME command. This can be done through a bit of configuration. Most modern systems have systemd on board which can be used for this, but in case your system doesn't, there's also a  ...
 
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  ...
 
showing posts tagged with 'vmware'
 
 
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