VMware – Replace the ESX Certificate
ESX Certificate KB ID 0000974 Problem ESXi comes with a self-signed certificate, and for most people that’s fine, but some clients want to have a ‘Trusted’ certificate on theirs, and have their own PKI infrastructure for issuing them. Below I will generate a new certificate for my ESXi server using the Active Directory Certificate Services role on Windows Server 2012. Then replace the self-signed certificate with my new...
Export VM to a Local Folder
Export VM KB ID 0001912 Problem We had a situation recently where a client who was leaving us needed to take their data, the VM in question was very large (12.5Tb in size) Exporting to an OVA file was problematical, (due to the size of the file). So Getting the flat files for the VM seemed like the best option. Solution : Export VM Firstly when using PowerShell there’s a tendency for it to use the %TEMP% and %TMP% directories to store...
VMware: Export a VM to OVA With PowerCLI
OVA KB ID 0001507 Problem : Creating OVA files It’s pretty easy to create an OVA/OVF from the vCenter Web console, but what about from Powershell / PowerCLI? Below I run though converting a Windows server to OVA. Note: Update 25/03/25 – Had a friend try and do this today, the VM was very large (over 12Tb) it proceeded to create the conversion in the servers c:\windows\temp directory. Obviously, this is not good! If you encounter...
VMware – Setting up ESX NTP Time Sync
ESX NTP KB ID 0000798 Problem Having your ESX Server running the correct time is quite important, and before you visit this subject, I would suggest you MAKE SURE the time is set in the ESX Servers BIOS, ie the internal clock is set correctly first. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen Windows domains fall over because the ESX host has reverted to its BIOS time and replicated that time to its guests, suddenly your...
VMware – Cannot Cut, Copy, or Paste to VM’s
KB ID 0000515 Problem Ever since ESX 4.1 this feature has been disabled and you have been unable to paste to VM, VMware say in their own documentation: Source (Page 215 – ESX Configuration Guide ESX 4.1 vCenter Server 4.1). To turn this feature back ON you have a few choices. Please be aware: We are talking about copy and pasting TEXT to and from a guest VM NOT files and folders. Solution ESX Option 1 (Enable Copy and Paste to...
vCenter Login Grayed Out (post 8.0 Update 3)
Login Grayed Out KB ID 0001881 Problem After upgrading my vCenter to 8.0 Update 3 I went to login, and the login box itself was grayed out, with a ‘no entry’ sign when I attempted to click it, and Bizarrely I now had a Use RSA ID option? Solution: Login Grayed Out Apparently, this is a known problem with this update, and the ‘fix’ is to clear the browser cache, which I attempted to do. However the problem...
PowerCLI: Get Snapshot Information
Get Snapshot Information KB ID 0001829 Problem The question was asked on Experts Exchange today. Are there any scripts or reports that would give me information on VMware VM’s with snapshots? was pretty sure this was a straight forward one, so I jumped on the test network. Solution: Get Snapshot Information Connect to your vCenter and use the following commands. Connect-viserver vCenter-Name THEN AUTHENTICATE Get-VM |...
VMware vSphere Adding vTPM
vTPM KB ID 0001875 Problem I’ve been asked about this a couple of times in the past, back then my test bench was running a mix of ESX 6.7 and 6.5 so I could not test and document the process. Now Everything is running ESX 8.x I can test the procedure in anger. The reason is because I was met with this today. TPM 2.0 must be supported and enabled on this PC So what’s a TPM, and a vTPM and why is that important? Trusted...
Nutanix on VMware vSphere ESX 8
Nutanix on VMware KB ID 0001866 Problem In the wake of Broadcom doing its best to strangle VMware and its discontinuation of free ESX. I thought I’d look at the free alternatives. The most obvious is Nutanix CE (Community Edition) which is both free, and lets you have up to 4 nodes – which is impressive, as Free ESX does not have clustering or access to vCenter. Honest Opinion: It’s very flaky, if you want a solution...
Cannot Remove vCLS Virtual Machine
Cannot Remove vCLS KB ID 0001863 Problem I had a NAS box fail on me and the NFS share it was presenting to my vSphere environment was no longer available. Which was fine, but there was a vCLS (vSphere Cluster Services) virtual machine in that datastore, that I could not get rid of, as the datastore was no longer available, and I could not remove the datastore because, (as far as VMware was concerned it had a VM in it). Solution:...