VMware 3 - Mike Tabor

Fix VMware VCSA /storage/log filesystem out of disk space

February 8, 2017 VMware

This morning I ran into an issue where users were reporting the production VCSA 6.0 was not allowing them to connect into the web or thick client. Another administrator rebooted the VCSA which seemed to work only briefly. I then logged into the VCSA web management (https://<VCENTER_IP>:5480) and noticed the following health status right away:

The /storage/log filesystem is out of disk space or inodes

Easy upgrade ESXi 6.5 via command line

November 22, 2016June 5, 2017 VMware

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VMware has recently released ESXi 6.5 and last week I posted on how to Install VCSA 6.5 as well as how to upgrade VCSA 6.0 to 6.5, now we’re going to look at how to easily and quickly perform an ESXi 6.5 upgrade via command line.

Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 to 6.5

November 18, 2016June 5, 2017 VMware

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VMware vSphere 6.5 has been released as general available and earlier this week I posted about Installing VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 as a new install, this post will walk through upgrading an existing vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 to 6.5!

Similar to a fresh VCSA 6.5 install, the VCSA 6.5 upgrade is also broken up into two stages. The first stage is deploying a new vCenter Server Appliance and the second stage is copying data from the 6.0 VCSA to the newly deployed 6.5 VCSA.

Installing VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5

November 17, 2016November 18, 2016 VMware

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VMware has announced that VMware vSphere 6.5 has gone general available this week. Now installing VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 (VCSA) is even easier as the requirement for the client integration plugin has been removed and now the VCSA appliance is delivered via an ISO image with an installation wizard that’s been broken up into two stages.

The VCSA 6.5 ISO offers two types of installation methods, CLI and GUI install – both availalbe for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. In this guide I’ll walk through the steps of installing VCSA 6.5 using the Windows GUI install.

VMware Workstation 12.5 and Fusion 8.5 Released

September 14, 2016 VMware

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VMware announced VMware Workstation 12.5 and Fusion 8.5 during VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas. Well VMware Workstation 12.5 and Fusion 8.5 is now available for download!

Both Workstation 12.5 and Fusion 8.5 include a large number of fixes, security and performance improvements, but most noticibly both have added support for Windows 10 Anniversary Update as well as Server 2016 operating systems.

VMware Update Manager U3e upgrade failing? Un-install it!

August 31, 2016August 31, 2016 VMware

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I was recently upgrading a VMware environment from vCenter Server Update 3b to Update 3e and during the scheduled change I had also planned on upgrading VMware Update Manager to Update 3e and ran into the following error:

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vthread-3)
GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve ENGINE)load_aesni: 127
You can request support.

Looking for a possible solution at the VMware Knowledge Base came back with no results and to error message wasn’t overly useful either with “VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vthread-3)” as Workstation wasn’t installed on this server.

Microsoft’s Convenience Update breaks VMware VMXNet3 vNICs

June 2, 2016June 2, 2016 VMware

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Microsoft recently pushed out a “Convenience Update“, a sort of rollup of rollups for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 machines. This “Convenience Update” however comes with an incompatibility issue with VMware virtual machines that are using VMXNet3 network adapters, which causes the network to become unresponsive.

How to create a bootable VMware ESXi installer USB flash drive

May 19, 2016March 6, 2017 VMware

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I’ve mentioned how to create a bootable VMware ESXi installer USB flash drive in an older post, but wanted to detail the steps I use to create an ESXi bootable install drive.

Creating a bootable flash drive is very useful for machines without a CD-Rom or remote access like an iDRAC where you can virtually mount an ISO image – such as the Intel NUC.

The process is very easy with just one tool needed, Rufus – if you don’t already have it go ahead and download it now!

How to fix “SRA command discoverArrays failed” in SRM with RecoverPoint

April 25, 2016August 10, 2017 VMware

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We’ve ran into an issue trying to get VMware SRM and SRA 2.2.0.3 along with EMC Recoverpoint 4.1.2 to communicate with one another and would receive this error in SRM:

SRA command discoverArrays failed. Failed opening session for user to site mgmt IP.

Please see server logs for further details.

After some digging around a bit and talking with the Storage Team and EMC we found out that this is due to the SRA’s using HTTP by default and Recoverpoint 4.1.2 does not accept HTTP, but instead only accepts HTTPS or port 443. The steps below is how to get everything to default HTTPS and then communication will resume.

Download VMware vCenter & ESXi 6.0 Update 2

March 17, 2016March 17, 2016 VMware

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VMware has released vCenter Server 6.0 Update 2 and ESXi 6.0 Update 2 (build: 3620759) which include a number of new features and fixes. VMware has also released the much anticipate VSAN 6.2 which includes it’s own bunch of new features such as deduplication, compression, QoS, and RAID5/RAID6 Erasure coding.