VMware vSphere 7 announced

VMware
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VMware vSphere 7

Some pretty big news coming out of VMware today. The announcement of VMware vSphere 7 to become available May 1, 2020! One of the biggest item coming out of this news so far is that vSphere 7 will come in two options.

The first being vSphere 7 as we all have known it to be for years and then the second being vSphere 7 with Kubernetes which will be available through VMware Cloud Foundation and is a new generation of vSphere for containerized applications.

Other notables is that the flash based vSphere client is FINALLY no more! From here on out, only the HTML 5 will exist. vCenter Server on Windows will also finally be put to rest and new deployments of vCenter server will be done using the tried and tested vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) based on PhotonOS linux.

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How to fix Veeam Backup after installing vCenter 6.7 Update 1

Tools
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After upgrading vCenter 6.7 to vCenter 6.7 Update 1 in one of my environments, it was noticed that Veeam backups where failing with the error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

I’m running Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 U3a and after doing some digging around, it seems there is an API change in vSphere 6.7 Update 1 that is causing the backups to fail.

While Veeam plans to resolve this issue with their new Update 4 version coming out soon, there is a very simple work around thanks to this forum post.

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Fixing, This host currently has no management network redundancy

VMware
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host no management network redundancy

I recently redid my VMware home lab environment and after enabling HA the warning message “This host currently has no management network redundancy” started displaying on each of my ESXi hosts.

This warning happens because in a HA cluster there is a requirement for the management network to have redundant NICs, but in my case I’m using Intel NUCs which only have a single NIC and since this is only a lab I don’t care to see the warning so lets disable it.

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VMware VCP5-DCV Delta Re-certification Exam

VMware
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VMware VCP DCV

Looking to renew your VCP before the March 10th 2015 expiration date? Then the new VMware VCP5-DCV Delta (Exam Code VCP550D) is a cheaper way to renew your VCP without taking the full on exam or not just ready to tackle the VCAP. The new exam covers new material between the vSphere 5.0/5.1 and vSphere 5.5 exams – looking the the blueprints, most noticeably VSAN.

While you still have to schedule the exam through Pearson VUE, you don’t have to take the course at a testing center and instead can take it online from any device!

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Edit Virtual Hardware 10 VM’s with vSphere 5.5 U2 client

VMware
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When ESXi 5.5 came out so did a new virtual hardware version, 10, as well. However the ability to edit virtual machines have have been upgraded to virtual hardware 10 was restricted to only the vSphere web client. In some cases people have put off upgrading to virtual hardware 10 either for dislike of the web client or knowing you cannot edit the VM in the event of the web client being down.

That all changes today, VMware has just released vCenter 5.5 Update 2 today and one of the “resolved issues” in today’s release notes is the ability to now edit virtual machines with Virtual Hardware 10 using the vSphere thick (C#) client.

edit virtual hardware 10

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Upgrade ESXi host to ESXi 5.5 using VMware Update Manager 5.5

VMware
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A while back I wrote about how to upgrade to ESXi 5.5 via command line which works great when you only have a few hosts as each host has to download the ISO from the web each time. This time I’ll show you step by step how to upgrade your ESXi 5.1 host to ESXi 5.5 using VMware Update Manager 5.5 (aka VUM).

For this post I’m going to assume you have already upgraded your vCenter and VUM to versions 5.5 as well as the VUM plugin installed. So lets begin!

Upgrade ESXi host to 5.5 using VMware Update Manager (VUM)

  1. Open the vSphere client and click on Update Manager
    VMware Update Manager icon

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Restore a VM using the {vm}-flat.vmdk file

VMware
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missing vmdk file error

A couple days ago I was asked the question “An admin deleted the vmdk file associated with a VM, there are no snapshots or backups of the VM . Can we restore this VM somehow?“. I believe in backups, I like to have my VM’s backed up so that I can depend on them for events just like this very issue. At first I was stumped, until the {vm-name}.flat.vmdk was mentioned. That’s when I remembered a method to recover a VM using the vm-flat.vmdk file that I had actually done 2-3 years ago.

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vSphere 5.1 and View 5.1 are finally compatible

VMware
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As mentioned before, I mentioned vSphere 5.1 currently not compatible with any VMware View version. As of yesterday, VMware has finally released a patch (ESXi510-201210001) to correct the incompatibility issues.

Alternatively you can also download an updated ESXi 5.0 ISO. To download the ISO:

  1. Navigate to the vSphere Download Center.
  2. Click View Download for the VMware ESXi 5.1.0 Installable for your version of ESXi.
  3. On the Product Downloads tab, download VMware-VMvisor-Installer-201210001-838463.x86_64.iso.

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