ESX SD Card?
KB ID 0001785 Problem For a while it’s been common knowledge that running ESX 7.x from a server that boots with an SD-Card is a no no. VMware themselves said (originally) that they would not support it. Then they said they would ‘sort of’ support it, if there was additional persistent storage. Then in the past week they’ve said, VMware will continue supporting USB/SD card as a boot device through the vSphere...
vSphere Disable Timeout
KB ID 0001118 Problem One annoying thing about the vSphere web client is the fact it throws you out after a period of inactivity. Now I know there are straight forward security reasons for this, and on a production environment thats fine. But on my test network theres just me, sighing every few minutes and logging back in again. As the ‘Flash’ client is getting depreciated I’ll concentrate on the HTML5 client, but...
Download VMware Converter
KB ID 0001778 Problem NOTE Conveter 6.3 can now be downloaded directly from VMware! If you try and Download VMware Converter, you will find VMware ‘pulled’ the files because of a zero day exploit that’s associated with the software, the VMware official posting you can find here. (they are working on publishing a replacement.) Download VMware Converter If you are adamant you want to use this tool and accept the risks...
Upload Files to VMware Datastore Fails
KB ID 0001777 Problem Whilst attempting to upload an ISO into a VMware datastore this morning, I got this error; The operation failed for an undetermined reason. Typically this problem occurs due to certificates that the browser does not trust. If you are using self-signed or custom certificates, open the URL below in a new browser tab and accept the certificate, then retry the operation. Solution I’ve encountered this exact...
vSphere Upgrade VMware Tools Suppress Reboot
KB ID 0001760 Problem If you want to Upgrade VMware Tools and Suppress the Reboot, (because rebooting production servers is always a touchy subject), But putting ‘maintenance windows’ and ‘CAB procedures’ to one side. If you want to deploy new versions of VMware tools from vSphere, if you just right click and select automatically upgrade, it will reboot the server. How do you stop that happening? Solution:...
Can you Backup the Free Version of ESX 7?
KB ID 0001757 Problem ‘Backup the Free Version of ESX?’ This was asked on Experts Exchange this week, I responded with the usual answer of “No the VAPI is not exposed in the free version, so it cannot be backed up by a third party backup application.” The poster responded with, “That’s what I thought, but I’ve got a Technical Consultant here who says it can be done with version 7” This...
VMware ESX – Sockets and Cores (Logical Processors)
KB ID 0001124 Problem While explaining to a client the difference between Sockets, Cores, Logical processors, I had to revisit this post today, so I updated it for vSphere7 Calculating Sockets and Cores Essentially; A: Processor Sockets: The Physical amount of CPUs on the motherboard. B: Cores Per Socket: For a dual core processor this would be 2, triple core=3, quad core = 4, hex core = 6, octa core=8, deca core=12, etc. C: Logical...
Your vSphere Client Session Is No Longer Authenticated
KB ID 0001711 Problem I updated my vCenter to 6.7.0.45100 yesterday, and since then every time I tried to login to the HTML5 web client, it authenticated, let me in, showed me the error (below), then kicked me out again? Solution I assumed, (wrongly) that the upgrade had overwritten the webclient.properties file that controls timeouts. this may be you problem, see the following article If my ‘fix’ does not work for you....
OVA / OVF Deployment Gets Stuck ‘Validating’
KB ID 0001664 Problem I had this problem (on sphere 6.7) the other day when trying to deploy some OVA files on my test network. Solution Well as stated elsewhere I tried reconnecting to my vCenter using its FQDN, this didn’t solve the problem, using Flash or HTML5 didn’t cure the problem either. What did cure the problem was using a different browser! I switched from IE to Chrome and it worked fine. Update: I Also cured...
VMware: Cannot Resize a VMs Hard Drive?
KB ID 0001704 Problem One of the lads in support messaged me this week, he needed to raise the size of the hard drive on a VM, and the option was greyed out (not available). Solution Now assuming you actually have the rights to do this, the problem is ‘nearly always’ that the ‘disk’ in question has an active snapshot on it. Remove your snapshots first. Now you can raise the size. Don’t forget: In your OS...