Last week I was migrating some servers from ESX 3.02 to a vSphere 5 cluster, after importing the the exported VM’s I received this error message:

The device or operation specified at index ’2′ is not supported for the current virtual machine version ‘vmx-04′.  A minimum version of ‘vmx-06′ is required for this operation to succeed.

A general system error occurred: Invalid fault

Solution:

The VMware Converter I used was version 4.3.0 build-292238

After installing VMware Converter 5.0.0 build-470252 I was able to start the import virtual machine in the new vSphere 5 cluster

The import finished successfully

Today I was importing some virtual machines (delivered by a 3rd party company) to the new vSphere 5 environment of a customer, the import was successful but after a vMotion I received this warning:

Module Migrate power on failed.
vMotion migration [168099940:1334234558581378] failed. The checkpoint data length (16384 bytes) or the offset (16776528 bytes) exceeds the maximum checkpoint data length (16777216 byte).

Solution:

The owner of the template installed the OS with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, after changing the resolution to 1280 x 1024 the GFX memory usage degraded to normal (under 30 MB).

After changing the resolution I was able to migrate the virtual machines,

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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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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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This week our backup server had to be replaced. So we installed the new server. Installed Backup EXEC 12.5 on the new server. But I want on the new server al my jobs, policies, selection lists and catalogs. After some google search I had found all the info I need to do this.

In the following article I’ll show you how you can do this.

SERVER01 the old backup server
SERVER02 the new backup server

To download the latest version check your “Your Symantec License Certificate” email you received from Symantec. Find the Backup EXEC  serial number and Enter the Serial Number from the Certificate to logon to the fileconnect site. Follow the link to the FileConnect User Guide for more info.

1. Install a fresh copy of Backup EXEC on the new server SERVER02. Run LiveUpdate to download the latest hotfix and service packs

2. Upgrade your old backup EXEC version to the latest version. If you are upgrading from 9.X first upgrade to 10.X and then upgrade to the latest version. On SERVER01 and SERVER02 should run the same BACKUP EXEC version. Also run LiveUpdate to download the latest hotfix and service packs.

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