I was P2Ving a server for a client this week. I did a ‘trial run’ just to make sure everything would be OK, and got this;
Yes, that says 13 days and 29 minutes! Suddenly doing this at 1700hrs on a Friday became a moot point! (Note: I was using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone version 6.2)
Solution
At first I assumed this was a network problem, so I moved everything onto the same Gigabit switch, and made sure all the NICs were connected at 1Gbps. Still no improvement. I then shut down as many services on the source machine as I could, still it was terribly slow 🙁
Firstly, make sure Concurrent Tasks, and Connections per Task are set to ‘Maximum’.
Then locate the converter-worker.xml file and edit it;
Usually located at “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone“
Note: ProgramData is, (by default) a hidden folder!
Locate the section, <useSsl>true</useSsl>, change it to <useSsl>false</useSsl> then save and exit the file.
Then restart the ‘VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Worker‘ service.
Boom! That’s better.
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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, credentials, and the fix is nearly always the same;
Locate VMware-Converter-Agent.exe in C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, copy it to the target machine, and install it manually. Then try the conversion again.
If it gets this far, your problem is solved.
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Thin provisioning of hard drives is pretty cool stuff, full support for thin provisioning was brought in with vSphere version 4. Put simply a thin proviosioned drive is as big as it needs to be, and a thick provisioned drive is set to its maximum size when it’s created. The virtual machines that use these hard drives don’t know, and assume that their hard drive is a set size (even if it is thin proviosioned).
Thick provisioned drives should be used for machines/applications that will have intensive input/output (RAW mappings are also better for this). But what happens if you want to convert them? From Thin to Thick is very simple (see below), But from Thick to thin is a little more convoluted.
Note: You can change drive provisioning by running the Converter on the virtual machine, and change the disk provisioning as part of the conversion process (click here for details).
Solution
ESXi Converting Thick to Thin Provisioned Drives
1. Here you can see I’ve got a VM (Server 2008 R2) with a 40GB vmdk file (Hard Drive). You can also see it’s in a datastore called ‘RAID5’. Before you start make sure the VM using this disk is shut down.
2. Log into your ESX box via SSH, I’m logged in as ‘root’ if you are not don’t forget to ‘su’. To find out what the symbolic link is for the RAID5 datastore issue the following comand;
[box] ls -l /vmfs/volumes/ [/box]
From the output below we can see RAID5 is called “4f214fe5-c5ce77b0-a889-00110a59a5d6”.
3. Using the Symlink and the path (from the datastore browser, see step one) you can construct the command, use the following syntax;
[box] vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/{volume-symbolic-link}/{folder}/{original-drive-name}.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/{volume-symbolic-link}/{folder}/{new-drive-name}.vmdk -d ‘thin’ -a lsilogic [/box]
If you didn’t turn off the machine (I did tell you in step one!) you will see the following;
4. Now we have a “New” thin provisioned drive cloned form the old one, go to the properties of your VM (Edit Settings). And remove the old drive.
5. Then add in your new “Thin” Drive.
6. It should look a little like this.
7. Now power up your VM and, once you are happy, don’t forget to DELETE the old thick provisioned drive.
ESXi Converting Thin to Thick Provisioned Drives
1. This is much simpler to do; browse the datastore in question and locate the vmdk file you want to convert. Right click it and select “Inflate”.
8. The drive will be converted.
9. You can also see its progress in the VI client’s “Recent Taks”.
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When VMware released ESX 4.1, they took away the “Host update utility”, (which was a mistake!). For people without VMware Update Manager, you now have to either put in the CD/DVD and do an ‘in place upgrade’, or grow a ginger pony tail and put some socks/sandals on and do some Linux.
Below I’ve got a build of ESX with no updates on it, I’m going to apply the ‘Update 1″ then the most recent patch to bring the host up to date (at time of writing).
Solution
1. Whilst connected to your host with the VI client > Select the host > Configuration > Security Profile > Services Section > Properties > SSH > Options >Start > OK > OK > Exit the VI client.
2. Connect to the host via an SSH command window (PuTTy shown). Log on as the root user, to check your current ‘build’ version issue the following command;
[box]vmware -v[/box]
3. You should have a fair idea what piece of storage has the most free space already, this host only has one datastore (datastore1). That’s the one I’m going to download the updates into. To view the Datastores issue the following command;
[box]ls -l /vmfs/volumes/[/box]
4. Change directory, so that you are ‘in’ that datastore and create a directory called ‘UPDATE’.
6. From a browser visit the VMware patch portal, locate the update you want to download and install, (here it’s VMware 5.0.0 Update1). Right click the download link and copy the URL.
Note: Patches after major updates are cumulative, I also downloaded the ‘latest’ patch.
7. You need to remove the ‘s’ from the URL, I just paste the link into notepad, edit it then copy it again.
8. Back at your command window download the update with the following command;
12. When complete, you will need to ‘scroll up’ and make sure it says, “Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.”
13. After the update, I am applying the latest patch with the same esxcli syntax, like so;
14. Once again you will need to ‘scroll up’ and locate, “Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.”
15. Now reboot the host;
[box]reboot[/box]
16. Once the host is back online, connect and take it out of maintenance mode.
17. Then locate the folder containing the update software and patches.
18. And delete it.
19. Finally power your guest machines back on again.
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I have made the transition to a MAC laptop pretty easily, but theres one thing thats still a pain, VMware ESXi servers! I know these days vCenter has a nice shiny web management portal, but ESXi does not. When I’m working on the test bench I usually connect using the VI client from a virtual machine running inside VMware fusion. Which works, but the performance is not brilliant, things wont move where I want them, and for some reason copy and cut will work, but paste does not (I have no idea either).
So when I’d spend half an hour trying to move some certificates from one VM to another, I lost my temper, and made a monumental discovery. VMware fusion can connect straight to an ESXi host, (why did I not know this!)
Solution
1. With Fusion running > File > Connect to Server (or command+K).
2. Enter the details as if you were using the VI client > Connect.
3. If you are using self signed certificates accept the warning and continue.
4. OK it looks a bit mickey mouse but from here you can open a console, and provided the VMware tools are installed in the VM it performs quite well.
5. Console Session.
6. And you can even change the VM settings, including browsing data stores on the ESXi server for ISO files etc.
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