VMware

VIRTUAL LAB – PART 1 – Planning

Im now in the process of building up my Virtual Lab (I’m pretty excited about this as I have been out of the Virtualisation arena for a few years, so this will be an opportunity to learn whats new in 6.5 and also have a good play with Hyper-V) – My Home Lab Hardware is now in place and I have upgraded my VMWare Workstation to 12.5 (Current latest version)

The overall plan for my Lab is to run a small vSphere 6.5 and Hyper-V Environment for various reasons (mainly my new role – which i will post about soon) all contained within VMware Workstation.

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Installing Nested ESXi VM Tools

Ensure SSH / Port 22 is open and the Services are started as per previous post Enabling SSH

Download the relevant VIB File from the Flings Website here:

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-tools-for-nested-esxi

Open up your SFTP / FTP Application; In my lab I am using WinSCP

Copy the VIB to a Datastore on the ESXi Server

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PuTTy onto the host and run:

esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/[DATASTORE]/esx-tools-for-esxi-9.7.1-0.0.00000.i386.vib -f

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After a short while you should receive the following Successful message:

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Summary – From the Official FLINGs Website: https://labs.vmware.com/flings

Note:  See Instructions tab for downloads.

This VIB package provides a VMware Tools service (vmtoolsd) for running inside a nested ESXi virtual machine. The following capabilities are exposed through VMware Tools:

    • Provides guest OS information of the nested ESXi Hypervisor (eg. IP address, configured hostname, etc.).
    • Allows the nested ESXi VM to be cleanly shut down or restarted when performing power operations with the vSphere Web/C# Client or vSphere APIs.
    • Executes scripts that help automate ESXi guest OS operations when the guest’s power state changes.
    • Supports the Guest Operations API (formally known as the VIX API).

VCSA – Failed to execute, during Setup Wizard

When running through the Setup Wizard in the vCenter Server Appliance  version 5.5

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you receive:

Failed to execute ‘/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg ‘db’ write’…..

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This occurs for SSO and the Database Setup

Connect to the VCSA via Console and Stop the vmware.vpxd service

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Once this is down – go back to the GUI and re-run the Setup Wizard

The CachePoint Appliance could not create the boot image

Unidesk reported back the following error on a single Desktop

“The CachePoint Appliance could not create the boot image. Error is: Failed to detach disks from the desktop and reattach to the CachePoint Appliance; export the logs and notify Technical Support that this error occurred.”

After looking in vSphere, it turned out that there was an error on that particular desktopUntitled

vSphere had put a lock on the Snapshot for this desktop.

After removing the Snapshots and forcing a rebuild from the Unidesk console, the Desktop Booting as normal

Performance Data is currently not available for this entity on a single ESXi Host

When no performance data is available on a single host, restart the hostd and vpxa services

From the Local Console or SSH:

  1. Log in to SSH or Local console as root.
  2. Run these commands:/etc/init.d/hostd restart
    /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

    Note: In ESXi 4.x, run this command to restart the vpxa agent:

    /etc/opt/init.d/vmware-vpxa restart

  3. Alternatively, to restart all management agents on the host, run the command:services.sh restart

Another Day, Another SQL Express issue with VMware vCenter Database

As the title says – another issue with the vCenter Database becoming full on SQL Server

Go into the SQL Management Studio and navigate the vCenter Database

First check the Size of the DB – Right Click on the DB and select Properties – you see that the DB space available is too low

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Now close this and stop the VMware vCenter Service (more…)

Display what is filling up SQL Express Database on vCenter

Run this in SQL Management Studio to see what is taking up space on vCenter SQL Express Database:

 

SELECT [Table Name],
(SELECT rows FROM sysindexes s WHERE s.indid < 2 AND s.id = OBJECT_ID(a.[Table Name])) AS [Row count], [Total space used (MB)] FROM ( SELECT QUOTENAME(USER_NAME(o.uid)) + ‘.’ + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(i.id)) AS [Table Name],
CONVERT(numeric(15,2),(((CONVERT(numeric(15,2),SUM(i.reserved)) * (SELECT low FROM master.dbo.spt_values (NOLOCK) WHERE number = 1 AND type = ‘E’)) / 1024.)/1024.)) AS [Total space used (MB)] FROM sysindexes i (NOLOCK) INNER JOIN sysobjects o (NOLOCK) ON i.id = o.id AND ((o.type IN (‘U’, ‘S’)) OR o.type = ‘U’) AND (OBJECTPROPERTY(i.id, ‘IsMSShipped’) = 0) WHERE indid IN (0, 1, 255) GROUP BY QUOTENAME(USER_NAME(o.uid)) + ‘.’ + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(i.id))

) as a
ORDER BY [Total space used (MB)] DESC

vCenter Server Services Not Starting / Stopping

Recently came across an issue where a customers vCenter Server Services wouldn’t start.  I read up on a few KB article stating to Start / Restart the SSO Service, this didn’t fix the problem.  Even a couple of reboots of the vCenter Server failed.

After looking in the logs, found at  C:\ ProgramData\VMWare\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs the latest Log Entry contained this:

Image

 

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