vSphere: Get ESX Server Serial Numbers
KB ID 0001670 Problem A few weeks ago I needed to sort out some extended warranty for a customers servers. To do that I needed the serial numbers of those servers, (a mixture of IBM/Lenovo and Dell Servers). As I didn’t fancy a drive to two different datacenters, I wanted to try and get them programatically. Solution After some searching I came across a post by one of my old EE buddies LucD with exactly what I needed. I’m...
VMware Edge Gateway VPN to Cisco ASA
KB ID 0001658 Problem I was asked to setup a VPN to help out a colleague this week. When I had a look, one end turned out to be an Edge Gateway, I wasn’t that concerned, I’d done similar things in my prior role, I just didn’t have access to the vCloud or VMware at this datacenter. Depite my best efforts on the ASA, the tunnel refused to come up, it took a little looking ‘under the covers’ to accurately...
DHCP Scope: Full of BAD_ADDRESS Entries
KB ID 0001651 Problem I had a client machine struggling to get an DHCP address, and when I looked in DHCP the scope it was full of this; BAD_ADDRESS This address Is Already in Use Solution A tour of Google and forums is full of posts by people with this problem, and other than, ‘Oh I looked in the logs and fixed it’ (with no mention of what log, or where this log was), or ‘Yeah I used Wireshark and located a problem...
Resizing (Shrinking) Drives With VMware Standalone Converter
KB ID 0000185 Problem Using: vSphere 6.7 and VMware Standalone Converter Version 6.2.0 I’m performing this procedure on vSphere 6.7, back ith the release of vSphere 5, This process changed, with vSphere 4 and VI3, you had to install VMware Converter on the vCenter Server then download and enable the plugin in your VI client software (like this). VMware now only has the “standalone converter”, so now you DONT install...
Adding Windows Server NFS Shares to VMware ESX
KB ID 0000319 Problem You have a Windows 2019/2016, 2012, or 2008 server with plenty of storage space, and you would like to present that to an ESX/ESXi server as a datastore. You can configure a folder (or drive) as an NFS share and present it to VMware vSphere, so that it can be used as a datastore. Note: For Server 2008 and vSphere 4/5 Scroll down. Create NFS Shares on Windows Server 2019, 2016, and 2012 Essentially you need to add...
VMware: List/Audit VMware Tools Versions
KB ID 0001618 Problem If you want to either audit, or simply get a quick list of which of your VMs are running which versions of VMware Tools, here are a few options. Show VMware Tools Versions With PowerCLI Use the following Syntax Get-VM | Select-Object -Property Name,@{Name=’ToolsVersion’;Expression={$_.Guest.ToolsVersion}} Like so; Show VMware Tools Versions With VI Client Using HTML Client To Show VMware Tools...
VMware: Install PowerCLI
KB ID 0001606 Problem There was a time you had to go to VMware and download PowerCLI then install it, that’s no longer the case, any machine with a, (reasonably new) version of PowerShell can simply pull the commandlets down from a repository and you are ready to go. Solution Firstly if you have the ‘old version’ of PowerCLI you can uninstall it from Add/Remove programs (appwiz.exe). Before installing, you need to be...
PowerCLI: Connect-VIServer Certificate Errors
KB ID 0001603 Problem When attempting to connect to a vCenter or ESXi host, you see the following error; Connect-VIServer : {Date} {Time} Connect-VIServer Error: Invalid server certificate. Use Set-PowerCLIConfiguration to set the value for the InvalidCertificateAction option to Prompt if you’d like to connect once or to add a permanent exception for this server. Additional Information: Could not establish trust relationship...
VMware vSphere – How to Import and Export OVF and OVA Files
KB ID 0000562 Problem I prefer to think of OVF Templates as “Zip” files for Virtual Machines and Virtual Appliances. Where as the OVA file is the complete appliance pre packaged. There are two things you will want to do with an OVF Template; 1. Export a VM to an OVF Template 2. Import an OVF Template (Note: VMware call this “Deploy an OVF Template”) Note: There are tools for OVF templates for other VMware...
VMware ESXi Syslog Errors – ‘System logs on host {host-name} are stored on non-persistent storage.’
KB ID 0000456 Problem Syslog Error Seen on ESXi 6.0 and 6.5 System logs on host {host-name} are stored on non-persistent storage. Syslog Error Seen on ESXi 5.1 Error Configuration Issues System logs on host {host-name} are stored on non-persistent storage. Syslog Error Seen on ESXi 5 Error Configuration Issues System logging is not configured on host {host-name}. Syslog Error Seen on ESXi 4 Error Configuration Issues Issue detected...