VMware: ISO Upload or Deploy OVA Fails ‘Undetermined Reason’
KB ID 0001499 Problem I see this a lot! Usually I assume I just need to change browser, here the error is in Chrome. You can see this if you attempt to upload an ISO file to a datastore, or attempt to deploy an OVF file. Error The operation failed for an undetermined reason. Typically this problem occurs due to certificates that the browser does not trust. If you are using self-signed or custom certificates, open the URL below in a...
VMware Composer Install Fails
KB ID 0001498 Problem While attempting to deploy VMware Composer, (in my case version 7) on a windows Server, (in my case 2016 Datacenter). This happened; Installation Failed The wizard was interrupted before VMware Horizon7 Composer could be completely installed. Your system has not been modified. To complete installation at another time please run setup again. Click Finish to exit the wizard. Annoyingly I know what it was straight...
Upgrading vSphere ESXi Hosts (Including HP and Dell)
KB ID 0001343 Problem Before you think about upgrading your hosts, you should upgrade your vCenter, Upgrade vSphere vCenter Appliance Assuming that’s all done, your task now is to upgrade your hosts, if you have a vanilla VMware ESXi version installed. You COULD simply SSH into the host, and execute the following commands; esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient esxcli software profile install -p...
VMware View Connection Server – Stop Session timeouts
KB ID 0000605 Problem For security reasons, the VMware View Administrator will timeout after a short period of inactivity, and you will see the following. Server Error Your session has timed out. Please log in again. Click OK to be redirected to the login screen. However if you work in the console a lot, this can get quite annoying. Solution From within the View Administrator console > View Configuration > Global settings >...
Firefox: Cannot Open vCenter Web Client
KB ID 0001482 Problem I wonder how many hours Ive lost trying to get browsers to connect to things, and the browser has not been happy? This week I needed to connect to a vCenter (6.5) web console with Firefox and was greeted with this. Your connection is not secure The owner of {site} has configured their web site improperly. To protect information being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website. Error Code:...
VMware: The OVF Descriptor is Not Available
KB ID 0001483 Problem I’ve seen this a couple of times now, and each time I’ve (wrongly) assumed that the OVA/OVF file I’ve downloaded is either corrupt, or it has some sort of problem. Failed to deploy OVF package. Cause: A general system error occurred: Transfer failed: The OVF descriptor is not available. Solution Redeploy the OVF file, but this time instead of selecting the Cluster, select A SPECIFIC HOST to...
VMware Cannot Remove / Unmount an NFS Store
KB ID 0001479 Problem After I had a datastore failure I needed to ‘unmount’ a datastore in my VMware 6.5 environment. But when I attempted to do so I got; The “Remote Datastore” operation failed for the entity with the following error message. The resource “Datastore-Name” is in use. Solution In use by what? Thanks for the assistance! Usually this happens because you have a VM with a VMDK in their...
VMware vSphere Hot Add and Hot Plug
KB ID 0000527 Problem I was trying to hot add some memory to a VM the other day, and found the option grayed out. Normally I’d just down the VM, add the memory, then bring it back up. But it was a production server and I was pretty sure the OS supported it. A quick Google search told me why it was grayed out, but it also transpired there was little to no information on what version of Windows hot add and hot plug would work...
VMware: Creating a Storage Encryption Policy
KB ID 0001471 Problem This is essentially part-two of deploying encrypted virtual machines, in a vSphere VMware (6.5 and above) environment. Back in part-one we deployed a KMS server and registered it with vCenter. Now we will create a storage policy that enforces encryption, then apply that policy to a virtual machine. Solution While logged into vCenter > Home > Policies and Profiles > VM Storage Policies > Create VM...
VMware vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption
KB ID 0001470 Problem Other that learn this for an exam I’ve never had to deploy this in anger. So when I heard we had a customer at work who wanted to take a look at it I was quite keen to take a look. To encrypt a VM you need to have an additional KMS (Key Management server) which VMware do not provide. They do provide a list, so theres no point me posting a list that will be out of date in a couple of weeks. Our client...