PowerCLI: vMotion Multiple VMs
Aug23

PowerCLI: vMotion Multiple VMs

KB ID 0001585 Problem vMotioning one VM is pretty simple to do; Get-VM VM1 | Move-VM -Destination (Get-VMHost ESX-02.pnl.com) And moving ALL the VMs on one host, to another is pretty straight forward also; Get-VMHost ESX-01.pnl.com | Get-VM | Move-VM -Destination (Get-VMHost ESX-02.pnl.com) But what if you have a list of VMs you want to move, and you are too lazy, (sorry too skilled), do do them manually or one at a time? Solution...

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VMware Converter Slow!
Aug23

VMware Converter Slow!

KB ID 0001584 Problem I was P2Ving a server for a client this week. I did a ‘trial run’ just to make sure everything would be OK, and got this; Yes, that says 13 days and 29 minutes! Suddenly doing this at 1700hrs on a Friday became a moot point! (Note: I was using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone version 6.2) Solution At first I assumed this was a network problem, so I moved everything onto the same Gigabit switch, and...

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VMware Converter ‘Unable to Connect to the Network Share’
Aug22

VMware Converter ‘Unable to Connect to the Network Share’

KB ID 0001583 Problem I don’t think, Ive ever run the VMware Standalone Converter, without at least one error message or popup complaining about something! Today I was trying to convert a clients old Windows Server 2003 document management server, when trying to deploy the agent this happened; Unable to connect to the network share ‘{Sever-name-or-IP} \ADMIN$’. Solution It’s a pretty descriptive error, can you...

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Cisco ASA: NAT 2 Public IPs to 1 Private IP
Aug20

Cisco ASA: NAT 2 Public IPs to 1 Private IP

KB ID 0001582 Problem I got asked today if this could be done. My first response was ‘why?’ I cant really think of a use case for this. But a client had this on their previous firewall and were migrating to a virtual ASA, and wanted the config replicating. So I built something like this; Solution To be fair, my first thought was ‘why not simply add an additional internal IP to the web server, and NAT the second...

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Mailbox Move ‘StalledDueToMailboxLock’
Aug17

Mailbox Move ‘StalledDueToMailboxLock’

KB ID 0001581 Problem I was doing a migration from Exchange 2007 (on prem) to Exchange 2013 (on prem), this week. I had a number of mailboxes that were ‘StalledDueToMailboxLock’. Solution Nice easy fix, on the Source and Destination Exchange severs, restart the ‘Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication Service’. Wont this break my Mailboxes! No, it will interrupt the migration process, (which is already stalled)....

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Virtualising Hyper-V ‘Validation Fails’
Aug13

Virtualising Hyper-V ‘Validation Fails’

KB ID 0001580 Problem Normally if you saw this error, it would mean that you didn’t have the advanced virtual extensions turned on, in the physical machine’s BIOS. But here I’m installing on Hyper-V in a vSphere/ESX environment; Validation Results The validation process found problems on the server which you want to install features. The selected features are not compatible with the current configuration of your...

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vSphere: Migrating vSwitch PortGroups and VLANS
Jul30

vSphere: Migrating vSwitch PortGroups and VLANS

KB ID 0001578 Problem Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some work for a client that involves me adding some new ESX hosts. These will be setup the same as their existing ESX hosts. That’s fine, but they use standard vSwitches and have A LOT of port groups and VLANs. I could sit and create them all manually, and tag them onto the the correct VLANs, but something that’s boring and repetitive is better solved with...

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Veeam: ‘Failed to open disk for read’
Jul29

Veeam: ‘Failed to open disk for read’

KB ID 0001577 Problem EVERY VMware Job in Veeam Backup and Recovery failed with the following error, (for every Guest VM); Processing SERVER-NAME Error: Failed to open VDDK disk [[DATASTORE-NAME] SERVER-NAME/SERVER-NAME.vmdk] ( is read-only mode – [true] ) Logon attempt with parameters [VC/ESX: [ESXi-SERVER-NAME.DOMAIN-NAME.COM];Port: 443;Login: [administrator@.vsphere.local];VMX Spec: [moref=vm-231];Snapshot mor:...

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VMware: Upgrade Errors
Jul29

VMware: Upgrade Errors

KB ID 0001576 Problem This weekend I had to upgrade some servers from VMware 5.5 to version 6U3, (that’s the latest supported version, on the hardware I was using: HP BL460c). As the VC was at version 6.5 I couldn’t use the built in update manager, so I had to use the ‘offline bundle’ method.  TWO THINGS then jumped up and bit me; Problem 1 [DependencyError] File path of ‘etc/init.d/hp-mst.init’ is...

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Cisco SFR Cant Ping its Default Gateway?
Jul25

Cisco SFR Cant Ping its Default Gateway?

KB ID 0001575 Problem This is a strange one? I was deploying FirePOWER to a pair of ASA 5550-8-X firewalls in Active / Standby failover last week. After each SFR was updated (via ASDM.) I could no longer ‘ping it’, the SFR itself could ping everything on the same VLAN, APART from its own default gateway, (which was an SVI on the Cisco 3750 switch it was connected to). This happened every time I updated the SFR, (or...

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