VMware vSphere and ESXi – Create a ‘Logon Banner’
KB ID 0001346 Problem Before you create your logon banner it’s important to understand; Where you want it to appear. What the underlying file is actually called (on ESXi). For access to the vSphere Web client (including the Flash client), the setting you want is ”Login Banner’ (Note: vCenter 6.0.Update2 or higher is required); Using this you CAN FORCE, (but you don’t have to) a user to tick “I...
VMware Converter – Unable to Deploy Agent
KB ID 0001345 Problem I still think P2V conversions are cool, and I’ve been doing them since version 3! It seems though every time I try and do one with the standalone converter though I get this error; VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Unable to complete installation/uninstallation of converter agent on ‘{target}’ Solution I always spend five minutes messing with firewalls, checking remote registry services,...
vSphere 6.5 vCenter Appliance – Replacing Certificates
KB ID 0001194 Problem In vSphere 5 and earlier versions this was not a ‘fun’ job at all, many times I sat down to do it, and lost the will to live. Now there’s a nice new tool built into vCenter that does ‘most’ of the hard work for you. Here I’m using the vCenter appliance but the tool is also available on the Windows version. For my certificates I’m using Microsoft Certificate Services....
VMware ESXi6 – Replacing the Default Certificates
KB ID 0001195 Problem This is pretty much part two of the last article I wrote, so make sure you have the vCenter CA setup as a Sub CA of your Microsoft Certificate Services Deployment. See the following article; vSphere 6 vCenter Appliance – Replacing Certificates Now we take the next step, and replace the certificates on the ESXi hosts. Solution Note: Joining the ESXi Hosts to the domain is not essential, it just makes things a...
Deploying and Configuring The vCenter Server Appliance
KB ID 0001146 Problem The vCenter Appliance used to be a simple to deploy from OVA, but now you need to deploy it from another machine, (and it has to be a Windows machine). Solution Before you attempt to deploy the appliance, ‘pre-create’ its host records in your DNS. Download the vCenter Appliance .ISO file and mount it on your Windows machine, navigate to the vcsa-iu-installer directory, and run the installer.exe file....
VMware Linux VM – ‘No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found’
KB ID 0001334 Problem Last week while trying to create a Linux VM on a VMware ESX 6.5 server, I saw this; No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found Solution Normally the error indicates theres something wrong with the install media, so I deleted it and uploaded it again, same error. So I downloaded the setup iso file again and checked its checksum, to make sure it was OK, (it was, but the problem persisted). To fix the problem I...
Linux – Install VMware Tools
KB ID 0001330 Problem Note: This is to install the VMware Tools NOT the OPEN-VM-TOOLS. I’ve had to do this a few times now, and every time I Goolge how to do it, I get pages of instructions on how to install the open vm tools. When what I really want is to install the VMware Tools. Solution I’m using vSphere ESX, but even if you are using VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion, you can still select ‘Install/Upgrade...
CentOS / Redhat / Fedora – VMware VMXNET3 Adapter Not Working
KB ID 0001329 Problem This has tripped me up a couple of times, and if you Google the problem, you find a load of posts saying ‘Just install VMware tools that will fix the problem’ It Wont! And I’ll tell you why, run ifconfig You will notice you have a network card, but you will also notice that it’s got a strange name ‘ens160’ not eth0 as you would normally expect? Anyway let’s prove...
vCenter – Management Ports
KB ID 0001324 Problem A while ago my colleague was struggling to get into a vCenter server. Normal https (TCP 443) wasn’t letting him in, I knew you could manage the appliance directly, (but I couldn’t remember the port number!) He knew there was an alternate port number, but we didn’t know what it was. Solution vCenter Appliance (Direct) Management Port TCP: 5480 i.e. https://{ip-or-host-name}:5480 vCenter /...
ESX Cannot Mount MSA P2000 Datastores
KB ID 0001292 Problem For the first time in ages I’ve been doing a VMware upgrade this week, a client had an MSA P2000 G3 and two G8 DL380 servers running vSphere 5.5. I put in a new 6.5 VCSA, built some new G9 DL380 servers, I noticed that the SAN was presenting five storage LUNs but the new ESX 6.5 servers could only see three of them? Strangely when I selected the SAS storage controllers they could see all 5 storage LUNs,...