After migrating the last Linux Suse Enterprise 32-bit physical machine with VMware Converter Standalone 4.3 I received a error:
FAILED: Unable to obtain the IP address of the helper virtual machine
Solution:
The solution is simple, by converting the physical machine to a virtual machine the VM will start directly. By starting the VM the mounted Converter ISO will boot with a VM HelperNetwork. In case you’re VLAN doesn’t have DHCP functionality you need to configure a static IP for the VM HelperNetwork.
To assign a static IP address to the Helper virtual machine, select Use the following IP address: and specify the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. Be sure the IP address you specify for the Helper virtual machine is not already in use on the network.
(Optional) To configure the DNS server address manually, select Use the following DNS server address: and type the preferred DNS server address. Optionally, type and alternate DNS server address.
Select another option to set or click Next to view a summary of the conversion task. Converter Standalone uses the IP address and DNS server you specified to copy data from the source Linux machine to the destination virtual machine during conversion.
The VM will boot with the configured network settings:
P2V status:
I need to find out witch firmware version is running on my HBA without rebooting the ESX host.. I thought this was possible by GUI but couldn’t find it, so I decided to check this by console. Give the following commands:
Navigate to:
- cd proc/scsi/qla or lpfc820
- ls –lia
To view the HBA information:
- cat 6
- cat 7
Result:
It wasn’t so difficult!
I never blogged about the ITQ Infrastrucute Client but this is also one of my favorite free tools to manage my vSphere environtment.
The author is Flores Eken from ITQ Consultancy in the Netherlands and wrote this application to manage your vSwitches, you can Add/Remove Portgroups on multiple hosts, Export/Import Portgroup configurations on/to multiple hosts, Excute shell command by SSH and many more
I installed today 4 new ESX 4.1 and exported te Portgroup configuration from an existing host and imported this configuration to my new one.. it’s really simple and fast!
Download: here
VMware VROOM released/updated a nice Performance Troubleshoot guide for vSphere 4.1
The hugely popular Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 guide is now updated for vSphere 4.1 . This document provides step-by-step approach for troubleshooting most common performance problems in vSphere-based virtual environments. The steps discussed in the document use performance data and charts readily available in the vSphere Client and esxtop to aid the troubleshooting flows. Each performance troubleshooting flow has two parts:
- How to identify the problem using specific performance counters.
- Possible causes of the problem and solutions to solve it.
New sections that were added to the document include troubleshooting performance problems in resource pools on standalone hosts and DRS clusters, additional troubleshooting steps for environments experiencing memory pressure (hosts with compressed and swapped memory), high CPU ready time in hosts that are not CPU saturated, environments sharing resources such as storage and network, and environments using snapshots.
This document by no means covers the entire breadth of performance-related problems. We request the readers of this document, including VMware performance community members and vSphere administrators, to help us enhance this document by letting us know about all the performance problems they encounter in their vSphere-based virtual environments, including those that require elaborate troubleshooting steps. We hope that the community will actively contribute by engaging in live discussions, providing feedback, and asking questions. All this input will serve as the topics for future updates
Download (PDF, 754.95KB)
The VMware Host Update Utility can’t “Upgrade Host” your system anymore since vSphere 4.1 with the download .zip files (in my case to upgrade to vSphere 4.1 Update 1 – update-from-esxi4.1-4.1_update01.zip ) …but you can still use the “Scan for Patches” option to apply the latest patches or even full Updates.
Today I updated my ESXi 4.1.0 server to Update 1 with the VMware Host Update Utility
Read more…
Couple of weeks ago I asked on Twitter “Can anyone explain this #VMware storage view? MP status: Partial/No Redundancy.. Same cluster, same Dell Eql. SAN” .. now I was reading the release notes of vSphere 4.1 update 1 and there’s the fix…
Multipathing status for datastores that have fully redundant paths might be reported as having Partial/No Redundancy:
In the Storage View tab of vSphere Client, under certain conditions, volumes that are reported as “Partial/No Redundancy” actually have fully redundant paths. This type of misreporting occurs on iSCSI volumes with hardware initiators. VMware support called this a display bug
Cool, this issue is solved in vSphere 4.1 update 1
Today I saw some warnings on all of the datastores by a customer, here some warnings:
Non-VI workload detected on the datastore
An external I/O activity is detected on datastore “datastore”, this is an unsupported configuration. Consult the Resource Management Guide or follow the Ask VMware Link for more information
Summary
The purpose of this informational event is to alert the user of a potential misconfiguration or I/O performance issue caused by a non-ESX workload. It is triggered when Storage I/O Control (SIOC) detects that a workload that is not managed by SIOC is contributing to I/O congestion on a datastore that is managed by SIOC. (Congestion is defined as a datastore’s response time being above the SIOC threshold.) Specific situations that can trigger this event include:
- The host is running in an unsupported configuration.
- The storage array is performing a system operation such as replication or RAID reconstruction.
- VMware Consolidated Backup or vStorage APIs for Data Protection are accessing a snapshot on the datastore for backup purposes.
- The storage media (spindles, SSD) on which this datastore is located is shared with volumes used by non-vSphere workloads
SIOC continues to work during these situations. This event can be ignored in many cases and you can disable the associated alarm once you have verified that none of the potential misconfigurations or serious performance issues are present in your environment. As explained in detail below, SIOC ensures that the ESX workloads it manages are able to compete for I/O resources on equal footing with external workloads. This event notifies the user of what is happening, provides the user with the opportunity to better understand what is going on, and highlights a potential opportunity to correct or optimize the infrastructure configuration.
This KB article will help you understand what is causing the event, and what, if any, action is required to address the cause.
Read more…
This release of VMware vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1 offers the following improvements:
- Additional Guest Operating System Customization Support: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
- Windows 7 SP1 (x32 and x64)
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 6.0 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL5.5 (x32 and x64)
- Additional vCenter Server Database Support: vCenter Server now supports the following databases:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3
- Oracle 11g Standard/Enterprise Release 2, 11.2.0.1.0 or later, (x32 and x64)
- IBM DB2 9.7.2 Express C (x32 and x64)
- IBM DB2 9.7.2 Enterprise (x32 and x64)
For more information about using IBM DB2 – 9.7.2 database with vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1, see KB 1033201.
- Resolved Issues: In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues
Download: VMware
