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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
vCenter ‘Root’ Account Expired
KB ID 0001568 Problem Today I found I could no longer log in to the VCSA vCenter appliance; Exception in invoking authentication handler User password expired Solution Just because I can’t log into the web console, I could still log into the the appliance via SSH. Then invoke the shell command, and reset the root password with the passwd command; Now if you wish, you can Disable VCSA Password Expiration: Administration > Edit...
vSphere ESX: Replace / Update the VMware Tools ISO
KB ID 0001566 Problem On Experts Exchange this morning someone asked about how to upgrade the VMware Tools as a result of a security advisory that advocated updating Windows VMware Tools to version 10.3 So here’s how to replace / upgrade the VMware Tools distribution ISOs, that live inside ESX. Solution Firstly, you need to download the tools! It’s easier if you simply get them in .zip format. Download and extract them,...
vSphere: Cannot Change the Host Configuration
KB ID 0001565 Problem There’s always one! I had a single ESX host that refused to add a datastore? Failed to create VFMS Datastore {Name} – Cannot change the host configuration. Solution I already half suspected what the problem was, because I’d had a similar problem earlier on this week presenting disks to a Windows VM, there’s a GPT partition table on the dive/array. But without waiting an hour for the HP...
vSphere: Presenting Physical Disks to a VM
KB ID 0001563 Problem I’m doing some work presenting StarWind vSAN into VMware ESX. Because we also want ‘disk tiering’ it has to be ran from Microsoft Windows with Storage Spaces*. To do that I needed to present the physical disks in the ESX hosts, (HP DL380 Gen 10s) to the Windows Virtual Machines that StarWind will be running on. *Note: At present, ‘tiering’ cannot be done from the StarWind Linux...
Veeam: Restore/Migrate vSphere VM to Hyper-V
KB ID 0001559 Problem I saw this question asked on EE the other day, and while I’ve done Migrating from vSphere to Microsoft before, I’ve never really tried with Veeam. Migrating and Restoring vSphere Machines to Azure is easy, but what about Hyper-V? Solution Veeam Backup and Recovery Download Natively with Veeam Backup and Restore, the only way to do this, is to perform an Agent Based backup of your VMware VM. If you are...