Nostra-Daniel once pontificated that memory is like stacking penguins on an island. Each thing you’d like to remember is a penguin, as you fill the island, you have to choose which penguins end up in the ocean. For me, setting a static IP on Ubuntu was one of those penguins that ended up being fed
-> Continue reading Set a Static IP on Ubuntu
Perhaps it’s just been a while since I’ve needed said floppy image, but I recall a time when you had to search the VMware KB to get the XP LSI driver. Well, today while changing some of my lab VMs over to PVSCSI, I found that the needed floppy images are in “/vmimages/floppies/” (at least
-> Continue reading TIL – VMware Driver Floppy Images Already Included
Nathan Small, a Senior Escalation Engineer with VMware storage sent along this presentation he has been giving on troubleshooting vStorage Performance. Lots of gold in here… lots and lots: vSphere vStorage: Troubleshooting Performance View more presentations from ProfessionalVMware.
I’ve hit the point in Chrome where I’ve been so productive that I can’t be productive. That is, the point in which I have more tabs open than I could hope to reasonably read. What that means for y’all, is that as I close them out, I hit a few that hit interest points and
-> Continue reading Things in my Open Tabs – Face Melting Java in VMs
Actually, learned this one yesterday, but just got around to writing the post. I was actually clued into this by some friends in the UK. According to these VMware docs: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180 http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-esx-4-1/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm#context=vm_admin&file=c_about_snapshots.html An ESX snapshot contains the VM settings. Thus reverting it, will also revert this settings. Because I was under the opposite impression, I
-> Continue reading TIL – Snapshots Also Revert VM Settings
Ran into an issue today where my vCenter would not come back up after a reboot. Standard troubleshooting ensued… the DB is up, it is accessible, odbc is Kosher, etc. At that point, Windows helpfully popped up a message balloon: “I pity the fool who runs outta disk space!” So I dug, and a dug…
-> Continue reading vCenter out of Space! – A Lesson on Shadow Copy
We’ve covered snapshots here a few separate times in past. However most of these were focused on ESX classic or preforming the work using one API or another. As VMware is making the shift to ESXi, it makes sense that you will need a way to deal with snapshots from the ESXi console (aka TSM/Tech
-> Continue reading Revisiting Snapshots from ESXi (TSM) Tech Support Mode
What is VMTurbo? Well, before we can deploy it, we kinda need to know what it is, right? VMTurbo is a company that provides a suite of products aimed at the management, optimization, and automation of your virtual environment. Basically, they’ve got a set of tools in a vApp, designed to make your life easier.
-> Continue reading Getting Started With VMTurbo
While this isn’t as big a problem as it used to be, Context Switches in applications can still bring a VM to it’s knees. In this post I’m going to link you to some resources as to what context switching is, how to look for it, and why excessive context switches hurts performance. What Is
-> Continue reading Context Switching, Some Resources
The version of Likewise-Open that ships with VMware’s vMA is a bit old, and for one reason or another, it may need to be upgraded outside the normal window for upgrading the vMA bits. So… here goes the update: Checking the Current Install You can check the currently installed version with an rpm -qa: $
-> Continue reading Upgrading Likewise on vMA
Recently I set upon a quest, one of grand scope and sure to bring honor to my family. Well, maybe. This quest you ask? This quest was to attach the VMware vSphere Management Appliance to Active Directory. Like any good quest, this was not without it’s challenges. First, Connect vMA to Active Directory: This is
-> Continue reading Connecting vMA to Active Directory (Troubleshooting)
After purging my vCenter database, I seemingly corrupted it (I should have taken a snapshot first). In this case, as the database was small (read: 1 host, 6 VMs) I decided to rebuild it. This is not something you’ll want to do lightly, as well, everything kinda goes away. If you do proceed with this
-> Continue reading Rebuild the vCenter 4.1 Database
My home lab vCenter is a self contained Windows 2008 R2 VM, running vCenter 4.1 on SQL Express. Last night, I ran into an issue where the vCenter service would not start, in fact, it was quite angry. Why? Well it seems after 14(ish) days I had hit the 4GB database limit. Here’s the process
-> Continue reading Pruning vCenter 4.1 Database Using SQL Express
The Problem! Was doing some work with UDA and nested ESX & ESXi installs this weekend and ran into an interesting hiccup: Or on ESXi: What? Can’t format what? But we’re working with nested ESX, it’s a VMDK, format it! I tried any number of things here: Different controller types, disk sizes, partitioning within the
-> Continue reading “Could not Format VMFS” – Nested ESX
There are times when you will need to put a host into, or take a host out of maintenance mode and you wont otherwise have the remote access needed to make PowerCLI or other API methods work. For times like those, vimsh works wonders: This little gem comes from xtravirt: To enter Maintenance Mode, at
-> Continue reading Put ESX Into Maintenance Mode From the CLI
Well, if that wasn’t an SEO title, I’m not sure what is. Basically, I find myself often having to find this in either the VMware KB or via Google each time I need it. Where are the logs? C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter The problem you may run into however, is that the “ProgramData” folder is hidden by
-> Continue reading Finding Virtual Center Logs on Windows Server 2008
Over the course of my travels, I’ve found that having a quick reference to random Windows commands is helpful. Here are two sets of commands I use often enough to be useful, but not often enough that I’ve committed them to memory: Managing IP Addresses from the CLI Netsh! – This one predates PowerShell on
-> Continue reading Useful Windows Commands for VM Administrators
With vSphere comes the ability for third parties to add hardware to the HCL without having to wait for an update to ESX for their drivers to be included. An excellent move on VMware’s part as this opened up the door hugely for 3rd parties to supply certified & updated drivers as well as provide
-> Continue reading Installing 3rd Party Drivers in ESX
This came up on Twitter Sunday, and having happened upon it in the past, I thought I’d share the solution that Ed Haletky (Blue Gears) and I came to. Basically it boils down to the service start order for the vCenter and related services. Specifically the order should be: SQL (MS SQL, Oracle, etc) ADAM
-> Continue reading vCenter Will Not Start! – vCenter Services Startup Order
Lacking a service console, ESXi needs to be approached differently when performing common troubleshooting tasks. One of these, like the title states, is to find the CPU Ready values for a particular VM. There are more than a few ways to skin this particular cat, but in this case I’ll show you two: The vSphere
-> Continue reading Finding CPU Ready Values on ESXi