vSphere 5 – Install and Configure the Web Client
KB ID 0000551 Problem The ability to administer vCenter via a web browser is nothing new, vCenter has had a web console in previous versions. vCenter vSphere 4 Web Client (Web Access) The version with vSphere 5 is much more feature rich. Like the VMware vSphere client it talks directly to the vCenter vSphere API, but unlike previous web access, the component needs to be installed and configured before you can use it. What the Web...
VMware ESXi – Converting ‘Thick’ Provisioned Drives to ‘Thin’, and ‘Thin’ to ‘Thick’
KB ID 0000579 Problem Thin provisioning of hard drives is pretty cool stuff, full support for thin provisioning was brought in with vSphere version 4. Put simply a thin proviosioned drive is as big as it needs to be, and a thick provisioned drive is set to its maximum size when it’s created. The virtual machines that use these hard drives don’t know, and assume that their hard drive is a set size (even if it is thin...
VMware ESXi 5 – Applying Patches and Updates
(ESXi 5 Update 1 and Patches) KB ID 0000623 Problem When VMware released ESX 4.1, they took away the “Host update utility”, (which was a mistake!). For people without VMware Update Manager, you now have to either put in the CD/DVD and do an ‘in place upgrade’, or grow a ginger pony tail and put some socks/sandals on and do some Linux. Below I’ve got a build of ESX with no updates on it, I’m going to...
Cannot Open a Console Session in the VMware VI Client on Windows 8
KB ID 0000677 Problem Mostly my conversion to Windows 8 has been pretty painless, the only thing that wont work is the VMware VI client cant open a console session to the VMs on my ESX server. Error The VMRC console has disconencted…attempting to reconnect This happens because the IE10 that comes with Windows 8 does NOT LIKE the requests the VI client is sending to the Internet Explorer plug-in. Update 08/03/13 – This...
VMware VI Client – Remove Cached IP addresses and Hostnames
KB ID 0000644 Problem If you connect to a lot of ESX, ESXi and vCenter machines, the drop down list in your VI client can get a little cluttered. Solution 1. Start > Run > Regedit {enter} 2. Navigate to; HKEY_CURRENT_CURRENT_USERSoftwareVMwareVMware Infrastructure ClientPreferences Locate the ‘RecentConnections’ string value, and either delete them all, (or just the ones you no longer need). 3. Now things will be a...
Cant login to vCenter after upgrade to 5.1
Error 29155. Identity source discovery error KB ID 0000679 Problem Note: I’ve had the same problem on a freshly installed vCenter 5.1 as well. I upgraded my Virtual Center from 5.0 to 5.1 yesterday, and post upgrade I could no longer login, it would tell me “Unknown user or bad password”. During the upgrade I did see this error, but after that the install completed successfully. Error 29155.Identity source discovery...
VMware ‘Virtual Machine MessageVirtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is not supported on this platform’
KB ID 0000777 Problem Everytime you go to power on a virtual machine you get asked the following question, Virtual Machine Message Virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is not supported on this platform. Continue without virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT? And if you choose No it throws up an error. You need to choose Yes before it will let you power on the VM. Solution This is a problem of my own making, a while ago I was trying to enable Hyper-V on a...
VMware ESXi – Adding a USB device to a Guest Virtual Machine
KB ID 0000778 Problem About a week ago a client asked me how to do this, and I was surprised I’d not got it covered on the site. I have already covered how to do this with VMware Workstation, but never got round to doing the same for ESX. There are a myriad of reasons why you may need to do this, either to connect a UPS, a printer, thumb drive, or a software dongle etc. But the process is identical. Solution 1. USB pass through...
VMware VI Client error ‘Unable to connect to the MKS: Failed to connect to server {ESX-Host}:902’
KB ID 0000815 Problem Seen when connected to the VMware VI client software, and attempting to open a console session with a virtual machine. Solution This is a pretty generic error, for whatever reason the client software cannot connect to the KMS (Keyboard, Mouse, and Screen). In NEARLY every case this is a communication issue, either the machine running the client software cannot resolve the name of the ESX host that is hosting the...
VMware ESX – When Deploying a Template ‘Network interface {name} uses network {name} which is not accessible’
KB ID 0000846 Problem I tried to deploy a VM Template today and was greeted with this error, I had renamed all the networks in this environment since I created this template, so I know why I was getting this error. But there seems to be no way to edit the template itself to change the value to the correct network. Solution In the procedure below I will be jumping backwards and forwards between Hosts and Clusters view and VMs and...