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 VI Client error ‘Unable to connect to the MKS: Failed to connect to server {ESX-Host}:902’
KB ID 0000815 Problem Seen when connected to the VMware VI client software, and attempting to open a console session with a virtual machine. Solution This is a pretty generic error, for whatever reason the client software cannot connect to the KMS (Keyboard, Mouse, and Screen). In NEARLY every case this is a communication issue, either the machine running the client software cannot resolve the name of the ESX host that is hosting the...
Windows Server – DHCP Service Starts then Stops again
KB ID 0000617 Problem Saw this last week on an SBS 2011 Server. When attempting to get the DHCP service running it span up then stopped straight away. Solution A quick look in Event Viewer showed me what the problem was, Event ID 1054 The DHCP/BINL service on this computer is shutting down. See the previous event log messages for reasons Fair enough lets see the previous error on the same server; Event ID 1053 The DHCP/BINL service...
Windows – Schedule a Reboot For a Specific Time
KB ID 0000866 Problem If you want to do this, and you do a quick internet search, all results come back as either suggesting using psshutdown or writing a script then scheduling that. I suppose a script is a good idea if you want to reboot at 01:00 every day for example. But what if you want to reboot a client server once at 17:00 and it’s 10:00 in the morning? Chances are, if you’re like me, you will be working on...
Force Media Center to Update its Libraries
KB ID 0000627 Problem I use Media Center a lot, and the one thing that bugs me is, every time I add a new film or TV series etc, I have to restart Media Center, restart services, or reboot the entire media PC before I can see them in the list. After some searching it appears that Media Center uses the same repository/database of media that Windows Media Player uses. There is a convoluted method of stopping services, deleting files...