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...
VMware Horizon – Replacing Certificates
KB ID 0001547 Problem I deployed Horizon v7 a while ago for a client, they messaged me to say their wildcard cert was about to expire, could I replace it in the Horizon infrastructure. On logging in, sure enough; Connection Server Details Status: The service has a minor issue SSL Certificate: About to expire {Date} {Time} This is why I like VMware, it’s picked up the problem, and pointed me in the right direction, (the...
VMware: Fiber Channel HBA Reports Wrong WWN?
KB ID 0001534 Problem I was building some new ESX 6.7 U1 (HPE) servers this week, they had Emulex Fiber HBA’s in them. When it came to ‘allowing’ them access to the SAN, I went to get the Port World Wide Name; And was presented with this; Not only is that 19 Characters long, and not 16 characters, but BOTH VMHBA’s WERE THE SAME! Like MAC addresses they should be unique? So I’m guessing this is a bug....
Disable ATS Heartbeat
KB ID 0001529 Problem After ESX 5.5 Update 2, VMware added ATS Heartbeat.Some vendors, (like HPE SureStore and VSA) recommend that this is disabled. I can’t find any info about whether it’s safe to do this in production, so to be on the safe side I placed the hosts in maintenance mode first. Enter Maintenance Mode Use the following command; vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter Disable ATS Heartbeat Use the following...
Virtual SAN: Suppress ‘Datastore Usage on Disk’ Alarm
KB ID 0001527 Problem While deploying a HPE StoreVirtual VSA this week. We noticed all the local Datastore were showing an ‘Alarm’. If you are unfamiliar with Virtual SANs, then you give all the LOCAL Storage to them, which then gets ‘aggregated’ and provided back to the host(s) as fault tolerant clustered storage, like so; Which is great, but the VMware hosts just see that their LOCAL Datastore(s) are full,...
VMware ‘Disable DelayedAck’ Does Not Work?
KB ID 0001525 Problem I’ve got a client that’s been having some performance issues with their VMs. Their storage vendor, (EMC) said that as a result of finding this in the logs; B 02/28/19 09:50:53.953 scsitarg 117000e [INFO] System: iSCSI Logout Initiator Data: IP=192.168.200.161 Name=…-ec-21 Target Data: Port=2 Flags=0x00002002 Info=0x01200801 B 02/28/19 09:50:53.969 scsitarg 117000e...
VMware Fusion on macOS Mojave: No Mouse or Keyboard
KB ID 0001523 Problem While building my new MacBook, I installed VMWare Fusion, (I always run a Windows VM, in case I have to do something on Windows). But no matter what version I tried to install, I could not interface with the VMs, (no mouse or keyboard). I ran Fusion 11 on my old MacBook, (running Mojave). So I was a bit confused. Solution Click the ‘Apple’ (top left) > System Preferences > Security and Privacy...