Vmware released a new vCenter Converter Standalone version which is now fully compatible with vSphere 4.1.

 

What’s New

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3 includes the following new functionality:

• Support for VMware vSphere 4.1 as source and destination targets
• Support for importing powered-off Microsoft Hyper-V R1 and Hyper-V R2 virtual machines
• Public API and sample code for submitting and monitoring Converter jobs
• Support for importing Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 sources
• Ability to throttle the data transfer from source to destination based on network bandwidth or CPU
• IPv6 support

Discontinued Support

• Support of the following operating systems is discontinued:
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows NT
• Support for OVF format is discontinued
• Support for VCB image sources is discontinued
• Linux installation support is discontinued

Check out the release notes after the jump and download it here

One of my colleagues was migrating vCenter 4.0 database to vCenter 4.1 by using the Datamigration Tool located at the vCenter Installation CD. After running the Backup.bat script he received the following error:

DB logs: Msg. 3013, Level 16, State 1, Server <name> , Line 1 BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally

Sqlcmd: Error: Microsoft SQL Native Client : An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections..

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Nothing more to say

New Features in VMware Workstation and VMware Player

 
Highlights:

 

• VMware vSphere 4.1 is now supported as a guest operating system ;
• Resolves issue preventing USB service to fail to start causing USB devices to not work in a virtual machine;
• Corrects the error message displayed after a host crash occurs while working with the virtual machine;
• Enables mapping multiple partitions of a VMDK to your host machine with write access;

• OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests — Improves the ability to run graphics-based applications in virtual machines.
• Improved Graphics Performance — Enhanced performance with better benchmarks, frame rates, and improved rendering on Windows 7 and Windows Vista guests allows you to run various graphics-based applications. In addition, major improvements in video playback enable you to play high-resolution videos in virtual machines.
• Automatic Software Updates — Download and install VMware Tools, new, and maintenance release updates when available.

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After upgrading the datacenter from vSphere 4.0 to 4.1 I was unable to connect with my service account “esxuser” by putty or console or Veeam to make some backups, warning message: Access denied

I changed my password a few times.. maybe it was changed, I restarted the SSH service.. no luck.. I created a new account with shell access but still the same deny!

Solution:

Connect direct your ESX console by VI client, go to Permissions tab and add your service account with Administrator rights:

Yeah, I was able to connect again with my service account..

Last weekend I installed a new Windows 2008 R2 Standard server for my new planned vCenter 4.1 server. There are a few ways to migrate your old vCenter database to your new destination.

The reason I want to migrate my old database to my new vCenter server is to keep my datacenter information, cluster configuration: HA/DRS, performance stats, recourse pools and distributed switches.

Why a new server? Because my present vCenter 4.0 server is Windows 2003 R2 32-bit. vCenter Server 4.1 can only be installed on a 64-bit host.

New vCenter Server specs:

Operating System:

- Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard + all Windows Updates

Hardware:

- Disk C: – : 30 GB (RAID 10) – OS

- Disk D: – : 40 GB (RAID 10) – SQL + Data

- Disk E: – : 10 GB – Swap

- Memory: 6 GB

Software:

- Microsoft SQL 2005 Enterprise; (Created empty databases: vCenter41 + VUM)

- Veeam Backup Enterprise;

ODBC DSN:

- vCenter41 – 32-bit DSN

- VUM – 64-bit DSN

Network:

- Standalone in workgroup, no domain member or something

VLAN:

- Yes, management VLAN. Can only reach ESX hosts and storage and tape library

Database backup:

Login to your present vCenter 4.0 server, stop the following services:

- VMware VirtualCenter Server

- VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices

- VMware vCenter Update Manager Service

Mount the new VMware vCenter Server 4.1 and modules disk and copy the Datamigration folder to C:\

Open CMD:

Navigate to C:\Datamigration\ and run backup.bat , the script will backup all configuration settings from your recent vCenter installation and database. (Software builds, used ports, database information, server names and VUM Settings/Patches etc.).. once finished all the important data is stored in C:\Datamigration\Data\

If there are any errors while making the backup… check this and fix before you go further!

Now you need to copy the C:\Databasemigration\ folder to your new planned vCenter 4.1 server. You can do this by share, copy this on USB stick or whatever.

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After receiving some emails from vCenter that my heartbeat is incorrect I decided to troubleshooting this issue, but after some time but didn’t found a good answer to solve this issue so I called VMware..

[VMware vCenter - Alarm Host error] Error detected on esx51 in [clustername]: Agent can’t send heartbeats.msg size: 1014, sendto() returned: Operation not permitted

Solution:

- Upgrade your ESX Host firmware;

- You need to reset the default sensors once, goto:

ESX Host > Hardware Status > Select: “System event” log and click Reset Sensor. This will clear the sensor status and recheck the hardware sensors again. If there still some errors please check your hardware, if not.. your fake/hanging warning disappears.

Duncan Epping wrote July 22nd:

I received multiple questions around this so decided to ask around internally. I managed to get ahold of the VMware Update Manager (aka VUM) Product Manager and after exchanging a couple of emails this is the outcome:

VMware vSphere Compatibility Matrixes

Table 13 on page 14 of the above linked document states that VUM doesn’t support MS SQL 2008 Standard. This is however untrue and should be considered as a document bug. It is supported and the document will be modified soon to reflect these changes.

 Oke, it’s a document bug, you can install it safely!

Since vSphere 4.1 there’s a possibility to connect your ESX server into Microsoft Active Directory, how do you configure this:

- Connect directly to your ESX host

- Make sure your DNS servers are correct configured on the host + add the host by FQDN in your DNS server in your domain;

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