- Press [Enter] to continue

Read more…

Upgrade VMware Tools, all virtual machines in cluster:

Get-Cluster "Productie" | Get-VM | Update-Tools –NoReboot

Upgrade VMware Tools, located in folder:

Get-Cluster "Productie" | Get-Folder "Beheer servers" | Get-VM | Update-Tools –NoReboot

Upgrade VMware Tools, selected virtual machine:

Get-Cluster "Productie" | Get-VM "BHR-SVR11" | Update-Tools –NoReboot

Get VMware-Tools versions:

Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine | select Name, @{ Name=”ToolsVersion”;
Expression={$_.config.tools.toolsVersion}}

More information: VMware , VMware

Last night I did an upgrade from vSphere ESXi 4.1 to ESXi 5.0 using the ESXi 5 installation CD. The upgrade process was very easy.. elapsed time: 10 minutes!

^ Current installed OS: VMware ESXi 4.1.0 build 260247

- Mount the vSphere 5.0 cd-rom in the host
- Boot from CD-Rom drive

.

- Choose: ESX-5.0.0 Installer in the menu

Read more…

Today I did some maintenance in the datacenter. I upgraded last month to vCenter 4.1 and the ESX hosts from 4.0 to 4.1. Today was planned to update some virtual hardware from 4 to 7 but after I upgraded and started some Windows 2008 SP2 VM’s I can’t connect mappings and receiving some errors from the loginscript. After some troubleshooting I saw that some local disks (.VMDK) are offline!

Solution:

Goto Disk Management > Right click on the offline disk, select: Online 

Okay, the disk is online.. my data is back without any dataloss but my shares are gone. You only need to restart the VM again to resolve this issue.

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..

I was upgrading my ESXi 4.0 Update 2 host to ESXi 4.1 with “VMware vSphere Host Update Utility”, I downloaded the “ESXi 4.1 (upgrade ZIP from ESXi 4.0)” file and selected this package to upgrade the host. After validating the upgrade package I received this error:

Failed to read the upgrade package metadata: Could not find file metadata.xml

I’ve checked the MD5 checksum.. it was correct.. I downloaded again the upgrade package from the VMware site.. still this warning..

Read more…

Today VMware released the newest version of vSphere, version 4.1

Whats new:

Scripted Install for ESXi. Scripted installation of ESXi to local and remote disks allows rapid deployment of ESXi to many machines. You can start the scripted installation with a CD-ROM drive or over the network by using PXE booting.

vSphere Client Removal from ESX/ESXi Builds. For ESX and ESXi, the vSphere Client is available for download from the VMware Web site. It is no longer packaged with builds of ESX and ESXi.

Boot from SAN. vSphere 4.1 enables ESXi boot from SAN (BFN). iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported.

Hardware Acceleration with vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). ESX can offload specific storage operations to compliant storage hardware. With storage hardware assistance, ESX performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.

Storage Performance Statistics. vSphere 4.1 offers enhanced visibility into storage throughput and latency of hosts and virtual machines, and aids in troubleshooting storage performance issues. NFS statistics are now available in vCenter Server performance charts, as well as esxtop. New VMDK and datastore statistics are included. All statistics are available through the vSphere SDK.

Storage I/O Control. This feature provides quality-of-service capabilities for storage I/O in the form of I/O shares and limits that are enforced across all virtual machines accessing a datastore, regardless of which host they are running on. Using Storage I/O Control, vSphere administrators can ensure that the most important virtual machines get adequate I/O resources even in times of congestion.

Read more…

Today I started with upgrading my production Windows 2008 PDC’s to the R2 release. After mounting the Windows 2008 R2 DVD I received two warnings:

- You must have 15 GB of free space (it’s VMware.. so what’s the problem?)

- Prepare a Windows Server 2003 Forest Schema for a Domain Controller that runs Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2

To do step 2 you need to do a few things:

- Mount Windows Server 2008 R2 cd-rom

- Start CMD with Administrator rights (run as Administrator)

- Type: D:\Support\adprep\adprep /forestprep [Enter]

Read more…

VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (Localized version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227640
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227671

VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 29 Jan 2010 (English only version)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 6 | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637
Virtual Infrastructure Client | 29 Jan 2010 | Build 227637

What’s New

Guest Operating Systems Customization Improvements

Customization support for the following guest operating systems has been added in this release:
For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.

• Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)

Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web  Access

This release adds support for Firefox 3.x browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access. Firefox 3.x is not a supported browser for ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Web Access with this release

Note: In many public documents, VMware ESX Server 3.5 is now known as VMware ESX 3.5, and VMware ESX Server 3i version 3.5 as VMware ESXi 3.5. These release notes continue to use the earlier convention to match the product interfaces and documentation. A future release will update the product names.

Source information: VMware 

Information: VMware vCenter Upgrade Guide