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,...
Unified Networking Lab – Connecting ESX VM to the Internet
KB ID 0001276 Problem UPDATE: This is an old article, UNL is now EVE-NG, please use the following link; EVE-NG Connecting to the Internet UNL is by far the coolest bit of kit I’ve got my hands on this year. I can run it in ESX, and connect to it from anywhere, so I don’t have to keep my labs on my laptop. But what if you want to connect your labs to a live network? Theres a great article on the unetlab website for the...
VMware ESXi 6.5 – Setting up ESX Time Sync via Web Client
KB ID 0001274 Another guest post from Daniel Newton Problem Now that we have the web console instead of the VI client, and don’t have a windows machine anymore, it would be better to use the web console. Also, having your ESXi Server running the correct time/date is very important, before you follow this article I should suggest that by making sure the time is set in the ESX Servers BIOS, e.g. the internal clock is set correctly...
Upgrade vSphere vCenter Appliance to Version 6.5
KB ID 0001265 Problem Here I’m upgrading from version 6.0 to 6.5, the process creates a new vCenter appliance, then migrates all your settings into it, finally it then shuts down the old appliance and brings up the new one. Note: This procedure is ‘non-invasive’ i.e. it does not affect your production VMs, a vSphere environment can run for about 60 days without it’s vCenter, all that you would lose is the...
VMware ESX – Enable ‘Embedded Host Client’
KB ID 0001231 Problem Since ESX 6.0.0 Update 2 you’ve been able to use the Embedded Host Client in ESX. Which is great if (like me) you use a Mac because I don’t have to fire up a windows box to load the ‘Fat’ VI client anymore. What about older version of ESX? If you are running 5.5 (update3) or newer then you can install and use the Embedded Host Client. Why didnt you just upgrade to 6.0.0 Update 2? Well my...
vSphere – ‘The Number of HA Heartbeat Datastores for this host is 0’
KB ID 00011202 Problem Seen after enabling HA on your vSphere Cluster HA Error: The number of heartbeat datastores for host is 0, which is less than required: 2 or HA Error: The number of heartbeat datastores for host is 1, which is less than required: 2 I had this on my test network today, and to be honest thats not really surprising because I don’t have any shared storage. Note: You can see the same error if your ‘HA...
VMware Upgrading the vSphere Virtual Center Appliance
KB ID 0001193 Problem I had a vCenter 6.0.0.1 appliance on my test network and wanted to update it to version 6.0.0.2. But I didn’t want to reinstall the whole thing from scratch. Solution Let’s assume it’s going to go wrong! Take a snapshot off the appliance first. Go to the patch update site and get the latest patch for your version of vCenter. Upload the ISO file into your vSphere storage, and present it to your...
Convert a Virtualbox VM to a VMware Fusion VM
KB ID 0001169 Problem I have a bunch of VM’s that I use with GNS3 that are in Virtualbox. I also run VMware Fusion, and since my upgrade to version 1.4.4 I need to run the GNS3 VM in VMware, (I could not get the Virtualbox version to work). So I decided to copy over the remainder of my VMs as well. Solution Within Virtualbox > File > Export Appliance. Select the VM in question > Continue. Important: Ensure you have...
Applying and Assigning vSphere / ESXi6 Licences
KB ID 0001153 Problem I’ve used the old VI client since version 3, so getting to grips with the vShpere web client has been fun. (I know it’s been out for ages, but I don’t like it sorry!) After rebuilding my test server to ESX 6 and deploying a new vCenter appliance, I was getting the usual nag messages about licensing etc. So I went to install the licences, that’s pretty easy, you can do that from the home...