Last week i was contacted by two customers facing the same problem. Both customers running vSphere 5.1 U1 and ESXi 5.1 U1 and they couldn’t start one or more virtual machines and received the following error in the vSphere Web Client: The useful option to submit an error report in the vSphere Web Client adds …
vSphere and vCloud Director database creation script
A customer called me yesterday asking for a script to create the necessary databases to run: vCenter Server vCenter Single Sign On vCenter Update Manager vCloud Director The customer was about to perform a clean install in their test environment and will be using vCenter Server 5.1 U1, ESXi 5.1 U1 and vCloud Director (vCD) …
vCloud Director vApp VM stop action
I have been asked by a couple of customers lately why the vCloud Director (vCD) based VMs by default are being Power Off when you Stop a vApp using the vCD UI. This behavior applies to all existing vCD versions including the latest 5.1.2 release. The Power Off action does not perform a VM guest …
ESXi host advanced configuration using PowerCLI – parameter Net.BlockGuestBPDU
I was recently asked by one customer to verify the existing Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) Filter configuration for their 75+ ESXi hosts and if needed (not activated) change the default configuration from the value “0” to the value “1” to activate the feature. This blog post will focus on the PowerCLI configuration and not explaining …
VMware certification preparation
Lately i have received a couple of questions regarding how to prepare (what to study and for how long) before taking VMware certification exams. Basically, it all comes down to your current knowledge meaning it is not that easy to make recommendations. In this blog post i’ll include what i personally do (practice & study) …
vCloud Director cell firewall management
At present time, 2013-04-30, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system (64 bit version of 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.8, 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3) is the only one officially supported by VMware for vCloud Director (vCD) 5.1.2. Please see the vCD 5.1.2 release notes found here regarding the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 support since the the …
vSphere HA design consideration
I want to highlight a risk in one of my previous designs and also explain what you can do to avoid it, if you get approval from the customer. The VMware vSphere versions referenced in the blog post are VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0b 947939 and VMware ESXi server 5.1. Background Below i have listed a few …
vCloud Director Management cluster disaster recovery
A while ago i needed to perform a vCloud Director (vCD) management cluster disaster recovery. There are four main sections in the blog post: Infrastructure – describes the infrastructure used by the vCloud Director Management cluster environment. Rollback reasons – describes why the HP LeftHand P4300 storage volume rollback was carried out. Rollback preparation – describes …
Change ESXi license using PowerCLI
A few days ago a new customer asked me to review the PowerCLI script used for the initial ESXi host configuration. The ESXi hosts are factory installed and the most recent batch of ESXi hosts were all configured with the “VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5 License” license. This means the initial ESXi host automatic PowerCLI configuration …
VSM response error – Not licensed for entity
A few weeks ago one customer changed his evaluation licenses for vCenter Server, ESXi, vCloud Director (vCD) and vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) to their newly purchased licenses. The customer runs the most recent versions, at present time 2013-04-12, of vSphere (ESXi 5.1 and VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0b 947939) and VMware vCloud Director (5.1.1 868405). Everything looked ok in …
VM per datastore PowerCLI e-mail report
I have been asked to create a monitoring script to calculate the number of virtual machines per datastore. I know there are a lot of examples in the community doing the exact same thing. This particular case includes one requirement which i have not seen in the communities examples. My customer wants one e-mail to …
vCloud Director internal server error when deploying vApps
During VMware vCloud Director (vCD) vApp deployments using the latest versions of both vSphere (ESXi 5.1 and VMware vCenter Server 5.1.0b 947939) and VMware vCloud Director (5.1.1 868405) i got the below vDC error message: The vCD cell logs located in the /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs directory told me e.g. “vCenter Server is unresponsive” These errors made me start investigating …
VMware Tools installation fails
When trying to install the VMware Tools software in a virtual machine, using the typical option, i received the following error messages: The virtual machine was running Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 so i have successfully installed VMware Tools many times using the same virtual machine operating system. The virtual machine was running …
vCloud Director vApp Template IP Mode bug
2013-05-06 – I am happy to inform you that the vCloud Director version 5.1.2 does not contain the problem described in this blog post // Magnus Andersson I have been involved in several vCloud Director (vCD) implementations lately where the customer requires the following: One virtual machine per vApp and/or vApp Template. The vApp virtual …
vCloud Director thin provisioning & storage allocation per allocation model
I have run into several discussions lately regarding the thin provisioning option, storage over subscription and the storage allocation per Organization virtual datacenter (Org vDC) in vCloud Director (vCD). This is my way of clarifying what to expect from the different options and rule out potential missunderstandings. You activate the thin provisioning option when you …
vCloud Director binary has invalid MD5 checksums
When installing vCloud Director the other day i ran into a strange problem. After uploading (using pscp.exe from a Windows based PC) the vCloud Directory binary file to the vCD cell /tmp directory i run the command: ./vmware-vcloud-director-5.1.1-868405.bin The output usually tells me there are some missing RedHat packages but not this time. I received …