VMware Communities : Thread List - VMware vCenter™ Server

Change the name of the Windows Server

brenko — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:46:35 GMT

In our lab environment we changed the actual server name (windows 2003) from Lab1 to Lab2, and after a reboot we were unable to access the vCenter server using "localhost". Since this was in the lab, we simply reinstalled after playing with the Data Connections and having no success.

If anyone knows of a standard procedure for doing this it wouild be appreaciated if you could share your insight.

Ben

vCenter Licensing Issue

spraggab — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:09:21 GMT

Hello all, last night my vCenter server froze and I had no choice but to do a hard shutdown/power off. When I powered the server back on, the VirtualCenter service would not start. After poking around, I realized that something was listening on port 80 which was stopping the service from starting.

My big problem is that along the way I ran the wrong vpxd switch and re-created the database repository. I have no backup of the database and when I logged into the vCenter server with my client, nothing was there in the inventory, etc. However, vCenter still seems to know what licenses I have.

Luckily, this is a lab environment that noone is using yet.

So, when I try to re-add one of my hosts, it works, BUT, the host is in evaluation mode. I cannot apply any of my licenses to it as vCenter shows them as having 0 capacity.

How do I go about resetting the licenses back to normal? I know blowing away vCenter itself won't do the trick. Do I need to blow away the database? Do I need to blow away my hosts and set them up again from scratch?

Please help.

Vcenter upgrade problem 4.0 u1

Speedbmp — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:18:43 GMT

i'm trying to upgrade my vCenter right now and it is taking forever! about an hour so.

it says Registering product

the status bar is all blue

i am at 100% CPU

vpxd.exe is takinging 60%+

vmware-updatemgr.exe is taking the rest.

i'm not sure what the problem is yet.

Stephen

Reinstalling vCenter

brenko — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:27:29 GMT

I am looking for a little validation. If one has a single vCenter with say 2 hosts, it seems to me that the quickest way to recover vCenter should the hardware fail, would be to simply reinstall vCenter and add the hosts back in. Instead of the process of backing up the db, restoring it etc. especially if using the express version of SQL.

Install the server, add the license file, deploy the license, done.

Thoughts?

Ben

Performance Rollup with SQL Express

mclark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:30:41 GMT

I just upgraded from VirtualCenter 2.5 (on Windows 2003) and VI 3 (ESXi 3.5) to vCenter 4.0 (on Windows 2008 64-bit) and vSphere (ESXi 4). I copied the DBs from the old 2.5 vCenter (SQL 2005 Express) to the new 4.0 vCenter (SQL 2008 Express) before doing the install. Now, when Iook at the vCenter Health section, I see the following:

vCenter Database 3 warnings
Warning Performance statistics rollup from Past Day to Past Week is not occurring in the database
Warning Performance statistics rollup from Past Week to Past Month is not occurring in the database
Warning Performance statistics rollup from Past Month to Past Year is not occurring in the database

I'm looking for assistance on resolving these issues. I've done a search but haven't found anything that seems directly relevant. I'm wondering if there's possibly a DB issue (since I copied it from the old server) that a SQL script or something like that might clear up.

Thanks!

Licensing Question on vcenter

ximox — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:00:03 GMT

Hi All,
A friend showed me vcenter server and i really liked the features. I'd be interested in purchasing vcenter/vsphere (version TBD) but want to clarify some licensing questions.
We currently have a few 32bit hosts on Esx 3.5 and a couple of 64 bit hosts on Esx 4.
Each License for vcenter foundation allows me to add up to 3 hosts, so if I got 2 licenses I'd have up to 6 hosts or is there something else to consider?
These can be a combination of 4 & 3.5 hosts?
If I add 3.5 hosts do I need to have a licensing server just for that purpose? If yes does generating the ESX3.5 license files to put on the licensing server (while now its just a key you get at download) have an extra cost?

Thanks,
Antonio

VCenter 2.5 Networking advice

Hogwilde1 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:28:49 GMT

I'm Currently running VCenter Server 2.5 with 3 hosts. I am currently noticing that the VMKernal (ISCSI) even though the switch has 2 network adapters it seems to be only actually using one adapter. I have configured the storage paths to Round Robin to test it. I am just wondering if anyone would have any other suggestions for evening out the network card usage.

all of my host currently have the following network setup

Service Console on production network with 1 adapter

VM network with 3 adapters on the production network

Service Console (2nd) and VMKernel with 2 adapters on a separate isolated physical switch for ISCSI

Any helpful info would be greatly appreciated

Message was edited by: Hogwilde1
I should probably add that my ISCSI target has 3 network adapters attached to the physical ISCSI network switch and that VCenter sees 3 paths to each datastore

low memory usage numbers in performance charts

dnetz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:32:12 GMT

Hi,

I've noticed that the percent average of memory usage for my cluster is way below its actual value, it's currently showing "0,02%" as latest, max/min and average for the past week. The hosts presents a decent value and the cluster consumed, overhead and total values are fine too. The rollup jobs on the SQL servers are running fine according to SQL Agent. The only thing I can think of is that I created a new cluster a while ago with EVC turned on, migrated all machines to it, deleted the old cluster and reused the name, which might have confused the statistics?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

vCenter Server Virtual or Physical

jeffoutwest — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:50:15 GMT

While weighing the pros and cons of placing a vCenter server on a physical or virtual platform, the following design was proposed:
Build a stand-alone ESXi server and then install a virtual vCenter server on the standalone hypervisor. The stand-alone ESXi host would only use local storage. This way the managment server is outside of the virtual environment but has some portability and DR capabilities. Anyone see any potential problems with this approach?
Thanks, -Jeff

ESX4 host does not reconnect after reboot

Madrilleno21 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:43:56 GMT

I am using the latest versions (19th Nov 2009) of ESX4 and vCentre.
Whenever I reboot a host, vCentre server shows it as disconnected until I bounce the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service.
Any ideas why this is happening and how to fix it?

Madrilleno

Is it possible to have two vCenter Servers running at the same time?

773gb3003 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:43:43 GMT

Just checking to see if it's possible to have two vCenter Server installs running at the same time, connecting to the same database (on a different server).

If it is possible, we'd like to give it a try -- having one as a VM in our production farm and one as a VM on a different host altogether. We've had vcenter server service logon issues after power failures in our environment, where the service doesn't start when the server restarts. Then we have to logon to each host individually to determine where the vCenter Server is located to restart the service manually by reentering the password for the logon account. My manager is not happy about this, and I can't lock down access to the hosts if I have to keep logging into each host when this happens!

Anyway, is this possible and what would I have to do to have it work correctly?

Thanks.

Can't clone vm with customization

biohazard4 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:38:42 GMT

Hi,
I download the sysprep for win2k3 from MS website and extracted the deploy.cab into the c:\docoment and settings\all users\application data\vmware\vmware virtualcenter\sysprep\srv-2003\

After that I clone a windows2k3 enterprise VM with some customization settings following customization wizard and submit the job, the clone job always failed only with error message "can't complete customization" without any other information I can follow up.
The only single clone job can be done successfully.

My VC is vSpere4.0.

I saw there was some one submitted the same question before but no answer. Does anyone also encounter same problem? Or some one can give some suggestions?

vCenter shows 'Unable to retrieve health data from http://localhost/sms/smService-web/health.xml

Irduna — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:34:56 GMT

Hi,

Port was changed to 8080, but installation doesn't change in this item.

If I go to http://localhost:8080/sms/smService-web/health.xml I can see XML file.

What can I do to correct this?

Thanks.

View Manager - Active Directory??? HELP!

HALOTEQ — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:35:25 GMT

When trying to add entitlements to any of my pools, I select to search for accounts in AD but NOTHING populates????

As if it will not talk to AD at all - it once worked fine.

Any ideas??

Can't Link vCenter Servers

KGoch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:42:34 GMT

I am setting up a second vCenter Server for my envrionment. In the installation I set this vCenter to be linked to my current primary vCenter using the FQDN of the first vCenter. Now as installation nears completion I am hit with this error:

Error 28023. Setup failed to setup 'VMwareVCMSDS' Directory Services insatnce. " failed with an unknown error.

Found out where the log files are kept and noticed this:

2009-11-19 09:30:20 SEVERE Operation "Create replica instance VMwareVCMSDS" failed: : Action: Prepare for standalone instance creation
Action: Peer name validation
Action: Check connectivity to a remote LDAP instance
javax.naming.CommunicationException: Request: 3 cancelled; remaining name ''

2009-11-19 09:30:20 SEVERE Recovering from failed Operation "Create replica instance VMwareVCMSDS"

2009-11-19 09:30:20 SEVERE Recovery successful

2009-11-19 09:30:20 SEVERE Execution error.

The secondary vCenter host can ping the promary host, and vice versa

Any ideas?

Help with Event Log

drewdown — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:44:18 GMT

Running vCenter with roughly 6 hosts and 30 VM's. Every 3 seconds I get a Cannot login root@127.0.0.1 but have no idea for the life of me what is prompting it. Or which machine its generating from. Is there anywhere I can look to get a more accurate description or some hint as to how to figure what is going on?

Error 1920 installing VMware Licensing Server on Windows 2008 x64

mgaston — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:53:19 GMT

I recently (yesterday) upgraded Virtual Center 2.5 to vCenter 4.0. Since I still have ESX 3.5 U4 hosts in my DRS cluster I still need the licensing service.
When I try to install the licensing server on the new vCenter 4.0 server I get an error during setup.

The error is: Error 1920.Service VMware License Server (VMware License Server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

I am a local administrator on the server and ran the setup using the "Run as Administrator" option.

My server is Window 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 with SP2.
License Server Build is 2.5.0.64192.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any resolution?

vCenter Server v4.0 on Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition 64-bit

mattjk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:18:21 GMT

Hi all,

Page 15 of the vSphere Compatibility Matrix (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_compatibility_matrix.pdf) shows that vCenter Server v4.0 isn't compatible with Windows 2008 Datacenter Edition 64-bit as it's host OS (i.e., the OS of the machine vCenter Server runs on).

It seems really odd to us that vCenter Server v4.0 is compatible with Windows 2008 Standard and Enterprise 64-bit, and even Datacenter 32-bit, but not Datacenter 64-bit.

Does anyone have any clues as to why Windows 2008 Datacenter 64-bit is listed as incompatible?

Cheers,
Matt Kilham

Virtual Center 4 used to license VI3

GianMarco123 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:24:18 GMT

I am building a new enviroment, I just installed a Virtual Center4 server and ESX3.5 on my hosts (using VSphere 4 is not an option at this time). I would like to use this VC server to act as the license server for my ESX3.5 servers. But, I cannot find where to enter or save my VI3 lic file ? Can someone clarify how this clarify how this can be done.

Thanks.

Alarms not clearning

etieseler — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:38:54 GMT

ESX 3.0.2, VI 2.0.2

Hello all,

Has anyone else experienced the alarms triggering but not clearing? Since upgrading from ESX3.0.1 and VI 2.0.1 it seems to be that when an alarm is triggered it never seems to clear it self. I have to disable the alarm and then re-enable it so that is will clear. It there a setting now that tells VI to leave the alarm after the trigger is not longer valid?

As an example, the red alarm for CPU usage I have as default, but one of my VM's shows a red alarm for CPU usage, but it currently is 41% used, past hour average is 38%.

Any thoughts as to where I should look?

-Ed

Cannot access virtual center using web access

Eire09 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:28:34 GMT

Hi,
I can access my ESX hosts no problem using web access however I cannot access virtual center.

I'm putting in https://hostnamevCenter

I get as far as the homepage & once I click login to web access I get the following error:

"503 Service Unavailable"

Any suggestions? Is web access setup automatically for vCenter or do I need to do something extra?

Thanks in advance

mail from Alarm / Vcenter cannot be stop !

newcal687 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:39:45 GMT

Hello,

here by the alarm:

Stateless event alarm*

Alarm Definition:

(Event alarm expression: Lost Storage Connectivity OR Event alarm expression: Lost Storage Path Redundancy OR Event alarm expression: Degraded Storage Path Redundancy)

*Event details:

Lost connectivity to storage device mpx.vmhba34:C0:T0:L0. Path vmhba34:C0:T0:L0 is down. Affected datastores: Unknown.
"

Due to have not unmapped the DVDdrive from the VM before removing the DVD. After hav unampped the drive, I don't see any alarm in vcenter but i receive alarm from several hours now (with 5 minutes)

Rgds

how to install VMware vCenter Converter integrated (vCenter Server Plug-in).

itsexe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:22:36 GMT

Hi All,

I would like to use the vCenter Converter to do some P2V, but i am unable to find it.

When i go into the vCenter plugin its neither present in installed plugin nor in available.

So please help me how should i install it.

Regards,

Khurram Shahzad

Update manager - running out of storage space

lcfc — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:01:50 GMT

We have just had our virtual centre server installed with update manager on a 10GB partition, already we are down to 3.5GB of free space and update manager logs a message every 5 minutes stating that is running out of storage space.

It has been installed using SQL Express edition so the questions are:

a) just using update manager for VMWare updates will this suffice?

b) can we supress the message?

c) Can we uninstall and re-install update manager and SQL Express (cleanly) after we have presented a larger disk? (its a virtual machine)

Regards

cold migrating machines with snapshots and multiple disks

dnetz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:36:21 GMT

Hi,

I seem to have gotten myself into quite a pickle, when we started building our VM's I wanted to avoid having to backup and storage-snapshot temp data and swapfiles, so I instructed my colleagues to create a secondary virtual disk on a seperate NFS datastore to store OS swap and temp dirs. This proved to be a bad idea since by default, vCenter creates disks with identical names so when you create and remove a snapshot the disks are merged into new files on the same folder and datastore.

Since then we've avoided doing this but we still have some machines with two disks on two seperate datastores and these machines have snapshots that we're not ready to remove just yet. Now I need to migrate these machines to new storage but svMotion won't move a powered on machine with snapshots or a powered off machine with multiple disks and and snapshots. I also can't figure out how to move these machines outside of vCenter and still preserve the snapshots and disks.

Any and all ideas greatly appreciated!

vSphere Client - Port 903

Weite — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:23:11 GMT

Hello!

I've a test enviromet with 2 x ESX 4 Server and a vCenter Server. I connect with the vClient to the vCenter Server over a VPN tunnel. When I start the console of a VM, I become the error message "Unable to connect to the MKS: ..... :903.

From the PC with the vClient I can connect over telnet to Port 902, Port 903 doesn't work.

From the vCenter Server I can connect over telnet to Port 902 and 903.

All traffic on VPN will forward. What can I do do correct the problem? Hope you have some ideas.

how to change the display language of VI when connecting to vCenter?

linglong768 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:52:24 GMT

my display language of VI now is zh_CN,but how to change the display language of VI when connecting to vCenter?

the virtual machine swap file location

JuBa22 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:17:27 GMT

Hi,

I recently updated our vmware environment from esx 3.5 u4 and virtual center 2.5 u4 to esx 4 and vcenter 4.
Since then when we restart the virtual center service (I am pretty sure this is the cause of the issue), the virtual machine swap file location (on each esx host)which was set to a dedicated nfs datastore is back resetted to the default location with non specified.

Our HA cluser is set for the swap file location to "Store the swapfile in the datastore specified by the host".

Anyone any idea what is causing this issue?

Thanks very much.

Regards,
JB

Deploy Server 2008 from Template and Customize

mawillis — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:12:51 GMT

I am running a Virtual Center 2.5 and ESX server 3 environment. I have just created a new Windows Server 2008 RTM (32bit) Template and would like to deploy using the customization wizard within Virtual Center 2.5. When I get to the customization screen, I see the following message:

"Warning: Customization of the guest operating system 'winLonghornGuest' is not supported in this configuration. Microsoft Vista (TM) and Linux guests with Logical Volume Manager are supported only for recent ESX host and VMware Tools versions."

I have a Vista Template that I am able to use the customization wizard with. Has any body else seen this problem with a Server 2008 template?

Thanks.

ESX 3.5 U2 - Health status warning

jbusink — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:57:42 GMT

We just upgraded to 3.5U2 and VC2.5U2 and now we're getting server health warnings on all servers ("ProcHot for System Board 2 - Normal") for some reason. All machines are HP Proliant DL385G2 with the latest HP tools installed (v8.1). The HP tools don't show any hardware degradation and everything is running just fine, yet VC keeps complaining. Anyone else having the same issue?

Why does VC upgrade require dbo rights on MSDB?

JonRoderick — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:27:26 GMT

Our DBA would like to know exactly what permissions the VC install requires on MSDB - for 2 pretty good reasons:

1. They're not happy handing out MSDB dbo rights on a shared SQL server.

2. If we know what rights are required, we can set them without having to go for full dbo rights.

Anyone got any idea?

Cheers.

Host Profiles fails to create, license error.

newbski — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:10:38 GMT

I have tried to right-click on a host or just create a new profile and select a host and I get the same rror.

License not available to perform the operation.
The Vsphere 4 enterprise licen for host XXXXX does not include host profiles. Upgrade the license.

Then in the recent tasks it says: License not available to perform the operation?

I thought enterprise licenses came with host profiles? I didn't think the enterprise plus was required.

VI3 and VC License to Vsphere and Features......

upg3 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:48:08 GMT

Hi Guys,

I do have 3 VI3 Enterprise and one vCentre licenses but istead of using the old product (ESX3.5 VC2.5) I have installed the ESX4 with VC4 on 3 x3650 having 2cpu each, As I knew that this licenses can be used to use a upgrade to VSphere. My question is what exact features that I can use on these Server infrastructure???

Bcoz on the cofigure page I donot see the backup and server profile listed....whereas vMotion, FT, HA etc is there.

I do have Platinum Support subscription also for VMware Infrastructure Enterprise and Virtual Centre Server. Whether these support would be continued on VSphere aswell on ESX4 and VC4.

Please let me know if I am missing some thing which I have to take care of.........

Thanks for your reply......

CollectRemote database error

Gregboschman — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:48:23 GMT

Hi.

I am getting continual VpxdMoHost::CollectRemote database error while flushing stats data: "ODBC error: () - " is returned when executing SQL statement "BEGIN load_stats_proc(?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?); END;" and VpxdMoHost::CollectRemote database error while flushing stats data: "ODBC error: () - " is returned when executing SQL statement "BEGIN load_stats_proc(?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?); END;" error message types in the vpxd log files.

VirtualCenter 2.5 connecting to an Oracle DB hosted on a different server.

Upgraded Clustered (MSCS) Virtual Center server to vSphere4

mplewis2 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:04:55 GMT

I currently have Virtual Center 2.5 clustered across 2 physical machines using MSCS. SQL 2005 is also installed on this cluster and hosts the VC databases. I need to upgrade to vSphere 4. Has anyone gone through this? Per VMWare support there is no documentation for upgrading a VC cluster.

My thought was to run the vSphere4 upgrade on the active node, which would then upgrade the database. Then either fail the cluster over to the passive and re-run the install, OR run the install on the passive without failing the services over to it.

If I understand things correctly, the DB will get upgraded with the upgrade of the active node. Just not sure how to get the passive node upgraded.

Virtual Center 2.5 Service will not start even after the SQL services are running

rf1908 — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:55:37 GMT

The server running VC and SQL was rebooted this morning and the VC service will not start. The SQL services are running and I receive the following message in the evernt viewer :

The description for Event ID ( 1000 ) in Source ( VMware VirtualCenter Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Failed to intialize VMware VirtualCenter. Shutting down....

I read in an earlier post that the SQL services needed to be running before VC could start. I have not seen anything on why VC will not start after SQL has.

Cost and licensing of vCenter

jesszen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:53:54 GMT

We have 4 x ESX 3.5 host running standard licenses. I'd like to upgrade to vSphere and implement vCenter and use vMotion. Do I need to purchase advance licenses for all of my host and also purchase vCenter. Are there different licensed levels of vCenter or is it a single purchase and functionallity is based on your host license? Any info or suggestions on how to implement this are appreciated!

VC4: Overview performance could not be loaded

Anton V Zhbankov — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:36:08 GMT

Installed VC4 on clean Oracle DB, and can't now get overview performance, advanced works fine

"Perf Charts service experienced and internal error.
Message: Report application initialization is not completed successfully. Retry in 60 seconds. "

---
VMware vExpert '2009
http://blog.vadmin.ru

Problem after upgrade vCenter Server patch 1

uma_kits — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:52:03 GMT

I install vCenter Server 4 on Windows 2008 Standard x64 SP2. After I upgraded vCenter to patch 1. I found some issue on vCenter as below:

1. Can't use search function in VC
Error: "Could not acquire an authentication ticket for the query service: https://servername:8443/vws"

2. Can't show information in Hardware Status tab
Error: "Do not have permission for this command."

3. Can't show information in vCenter Service Status
Error: "Cannot access the health service"

I must uninstall vCenter and reinstall vCenter without patch 1 because it didn't have rollback function for vCenter patch 1.

Has anyone found issues like me?

Consolidation Tool in Virtual Center 4.0: consolidation analysis error

elleuch1983 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:54:45 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'm triying to use Vcenter guided consolidation tool and after lots of issues regarding
installation and configuration now I've 12 servers just
discovered by Active Directory. The problem is that after less than one hour
of starting work the results are very dissapointing and, off course, I
need to know what's happening with it. As a resume :

8 servers in the state of "Bad credentials or insufficient privileges"
4 servers in the state of "computer is unreachable or not supported "

Note : I'm using the same
account for all server that is "DOMAIN\username" and password.

I will appretiate some help or knowledge about the Consolidation
process that is not well documented in the manuals nor the online
helps on vcenter server 4.0. If someone did it completly and succesfully, please give me some
guidelines to understand how it works in general.

Thanks in advance.
Regards.

Med Morsi ELLEUCH

vMotion CPU compatibility issue

chris k — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:12:02 GMT

I've read through some of the discussions around CPU compatibility, but I think I have an odd situation. Sorry if this has been covered already.

I have 7 ESX servers (IBM x3550, Xeon E5345), all identical builds. For some VM's (not all) I get CPU compatibility errors when trying to do vMotion. The really silly thing is when I do this with Storage vMotion as the host (and CPU) stays exactly the same.

I've masked the NX bit from the VM's, I've enabled Enhance vMotion compatibility, and still get the error, but only with some VM's. For example, I have 3 identical 64bit Ubuntu machines, 1 of them migrates fine, the other 2 don't. I have 2 Windows 2003 - 32 bit domain controllers, one of them migrates, the other doesn't. It doesn't seem to be limited to any specific host either. The exact error is always the same.

"Host CPU is incompatible with the virtual machine's requirements at CPUID level 0x1 register 'ecx'.
Host bits: 0000:0000:0000:0000:0010:0010:0000:0001
Required: 1000:0000:0000:000x:xxx0:0x1x:xxx0:x001
Mismatch detected for these features:

General incompatibilities; refer to KB article 1993 for possible solutions"

I've read through the KB article, and read through the forums, but they appear to refer to different architectures, which I haven't got. I don't really want to modify the mask bits as ultimately there should be no problem in using Storage vMotion to migrate to itself!

Thanks in advance!

vCenter 4.0 lost connection with ESX 3.0.1 server

nicsys — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:00:31 GMT

We have two ESX 3.0.1 servers and one ESX 4.0 server all being managed by vCenter Server 4.0. For no apparent reason today, vCenter lost connection with one of the 3.0.1 servers. When I try to re-add it, it appears to see the server just fine, but on the last step I get this error:

A general system error occurred: internal error:
vmodl.fault.HostCommunication

I have tried uninstalling the agent, reinstalling it, re-adding the server, even tried rebooting both the vCenter server and the ESX server, but I continue to get the above error. However, I am still able to connect to the ESX server with the VI client.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. This was working just fine until today. The only change I can think of between it working and not working was I renamed all the datastores on all the ESX servers to make them easier to idenify (they all had storage1 and storage2, so when they got hooked into vCenter they were renamed storage1, storage1 (2), storage1 (3), etc, and I was adjusting those to be esx01-storage1, esx02-storage1, etc). This may sound silly, but is there any chance the hyphen in the datastore name is causing a problem? I only ask because during the build of the ESX 4.0 server I tried to name the datastore esx03-storage1 but kept getting install errors. I burned a new copy of the install ISO and also removed the hyphen from the datastore name and the install completed, but I can't be sure if removing the hyphen or the new ISO burn was what fixed it.

Vmotion options greyed out

gkhnyldrm — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:05:14 GMT

Hi,

We are trying to migrate a VM to another host on the same cluster but when we click migrate all options (change host,change datastore etc) are greyed out. I tried to disable and reenable vmotion on both two hosts but nothing changed. I uploaded the screenshot of the migration menu. host1->host2 migration fails but host2->host1 migration works successfully.

Hosts can ping their "VMkernel","Service Console" and "Service Console 2" ip adresses.

Thanks.

(Note: Both 2 hosts are EVC mode enabled.)

Orphaned datastore with templates

hklohr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:32:23 GMT

Running ESXi v3.5 with vCenter v2.5, when browsing my datastore in VIC, I have three datastores listed: datastore1, datastore1(1), datastore1(2).
datastore1 and datastore1(1) are orphaned and datastore1(2) is what is currently being used. This wouldn't be a problem and I could just remove
the orphaned datastores, but I have critical templates located on datastore1(1) that I can't move to datastore1(2). I don't know how this happened.
Can someone tell me how to move or somehow save the templates from the orphaned datastore1(1)?

Cannot install VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-English.iso

MTANG — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:05:57 GMT

Does someone tell me how to intall vcenter server? I downloaded VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-English.iso but could not intall at Win2003 server.

Thanks in advance.

Linked Mode with a Physical and Virtual Server

jeffoutwest — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:44:35 GMT

To continue the age old question of, "+Tis it better for a vCenter Server to be Physical or Virtual+?"

Is it possible to architect the vSphere environment to have one physical and one virtual vCenter server running in Linked Mode managing the same virtual datacenter? Thanks, -Jeff

New vCenter4 server

pearlyshells — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:59:03 GMT

We currently have VirtualCenter2.5 on a physical server. We are going to begin our upgrade to vSphere4. The first step is to upgrade or install vCenter4. However, our servers are all on lease and the VirtualCenter server is out of lease. We will receive a new server and I've pretty much decided to just install a fresh copy of vCenter on it instead recreating the VirtualCenter2.5 server and upgrading it.

We'll backup our VirtualCenter database as well as the license server file.

Since we will have both the VirtualCenter2.5 server and our replacement server for a few days, my thought is to install vCenter on the new server, attach the database and license server file to it. Then, I believe I'll need to recreate my environment again on the vCenter server to include presenting the FC LUNs again. is that correct? Or, is there a better way to do this?

Virtual Center 4 error

JESX35 — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:38:41 GMT

Hello all,

Just wondering if anyone has seen this before or could point me in the right direction.

We have a Virtual Center 4 systems installed and everything runs fine however it keeps giving the following error every few min the event logs:

+Active Directory Web
Services encountered an error while reading the settings for the
specified Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance.
Active Directory Web Services will retry this operation periodically.
In the mean time, this instance will be ignored.+

+ Instance name: ADAM_VMwareVCMSDS+

Active Directory Lightweight Servers are not installed as a role other then what vCenter put in.

Any help would be greatly appricated.

Replicating Folders/Permissions

nickmanderson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:13:18 GMT

I'm currently getting ready to upgrade our infrastructure from vCenter 2.5 and ESX 3.5 to vCenter 4 and ESX 4 (vSphere). One of the things I've been thinking about lately is all the folders we have and all the permissions we have applied to those folders and to various objects within vCenter. I'm doing a fresh install of vCenter and we'll be moving to a new database so we'll lose all of the folders and permissions.

How are some ways people are replicating folders/permissions after a fresh install of vCenter on a new database? Powershell scripts? Something else?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

VMware VirtualCenter Server V4.0 service crashes when connecting to ESX V3.5

JAMOS001 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:17:13 GMT

This is a little frustrating. I just built a new VCenter Server V4 and it connects to my ESX V4 host just fine. When I attempt to connect to an older ESX V3.5 the VCenter server service stops. This entry is logged in the event log:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VMware VirtualCenter Server
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 11/17/2009
Time: 8:13:42 AM
User: N/A
Computer: DCMSVSS001
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 1000 ) in Source ( VMware VirtualCenter Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: An unrecoverable problem has occurred, stopping the VMware VirtualCenter service. Error: ErrorVdbODBCError (-1) "ODBC error: (23000) - Microsoft SQL Native Client SQL ServerCannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.VPX_VM_FLE_SNAPSHOT_DISK' with unique index 'VPX_VM_FLE_SNAPSHOT_DISK_U1'." is returned when executing SQL statement "INSERT INTO VPX_VM_FLE_SNAPSHOT_DISK WITH (ROWLOCK) (ID, SNAPSHOT_ID, DISK_KEY, VM_ID, UPDATE_KEY) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)".

Then we get this information entry

Event Type: Information
Event Source: VMware VirtualCenter Server
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 11/17/2009
Time: 8:13:42 AM
User: N/A
Computer: DCMSVSS001
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 1000 ) in Source ( VMware VirtualCenter Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Forcing shutdown of VMware VirtualCenter now.

Any Ideas?

Restore vCenter Default Roles

NHessonSD21 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:12:34 GMT

Hi all,

Is it possible to restore the default vCenter Roles? I have some roles missing, and I would like to restore them, with out having to reinstall vCenter all over.

Thanks for any help,
Nick

How can you extend the timeout for servers returning from Standby?

TimPorreca — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:49:48 GMT

I have Dell 2950s as my vSphere 4.0 hosts and they take forever to boot. I am using DPM to shutdown unused hosts and every once in a while one will fail. When I console into it, I see it is running fine, but vCenter says it failed coming back from standby. I'm thinking it is just timing out waiting so long. Is there any way to increase the timeout in vCenter to making it wait longer for the machine to boot?

"Unable to apply DRS resource settings on host 'zzz' in yyy' (Reason: The name 'xxx' already exists.).This can significantly reduce the effectiveness of DRS"

dagn46 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:01:27 GMT

Hi all,

I've got this warning in my VC 2.5:

"Unable to apply DRS resource settings on host 'zzz' in yyy' (Reason: The name 'xxx' already exists.).This can significantly reduce the effectiveness of DRS"

I'm trying to delete the resource pool xxx directly on the host, but can't: "the request refers to an object that no longer exists or has never existed"

I've tried this too:
/etc/init.d/mgmt-vmware restart
/etc/init.d/vmware-vpxa restart

I don't want to remove my host from the VC

Info: ESX 3.5 U3 / VC 2.5 U4

Thanks for your help

Regards

Change IP Address o f the VCenter Server

tomtom1 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:16:17 GMT

This is my first post .

Hi, I need to change the IP Address of the VC Server. My VC server is part of the domain. It is VC 2.5 U2. I have also VDI Configured in my environment. Can, I just changer the IP Address and think DNS will take care of the rest of the issues OR do I need to do a fresh installation of VC Server ?

This is a big environment of more than 200 VMs.

Thanks

Tom

vMotion fails : Virtual Hard disk : is mapped direct-access LUN that is not Accessible

shatztal — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:28:26 GMT

hello
i would like to know why 2 virtaul machines cannot vMotion to other hosts because of this error?
both machines are on the same hots

Don't run 2 cluster nodes on same esx host

dagn46 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:34:47 GMT

Hi,

I'd like to know how is it possible for 2 VM (a application cluster) can't never run on the same esx (for example: just 2 esx in a cluster and a esx crash !)

Thanks

Regards

Upgrading SQL 2005 to SQL 2008

cbronsson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:29:12 GMT

I'm running a VM Win 2003 x64 with sql 2005 installed. For some reason I have to upgrade to sql 2008.
Can I just take a snapshot of the VM and then do the upgrade or should I make a complete clone of it?
Could there be a problem when I merge the snapshot file?

vsphere on an domain controller

hennm — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:14:20 GMT

Hello,

i have an vsphere domain controller running on an window 2003 server. now i will update the server to an domain controller.
after i upgrade the server to dc, the vmware services did not start.

so anybody knows what to do?

Kind regards

Password from Custom Specification not being applied to template

ouch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:02:55 GMT

I cloned an existing Windows 2003 VM to a template. Then I wrote a Cusomization Specification which contains a password for the Administrator account

When I deploy a new virtual machine from this template using that Customization Specification, it all appears to work, except the password on the Administrator account remains the password that was set in the original VM that I cloned. The new password from the Customization Spec is not applied.

vCenter/vSphere Setup Questions

dlchapman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:26:36 GMT

I apologize if this is the wrong community to post these questions in. I thought the vSphere community to be most appropriate however there is no generic vSphere category. The vCenter Server general category was the next appropriate.

Our company is in the process of purchasing hardware for the vSphere 4. We've budgeted the cost to purchase the vSphere 4 Essentials Plus bundle (~$5000) however I'm quite sure that I can convince our Exec Team to approve the purchase of the vSphere 4 Advanced Acceleration Kit (~$17000) once I've shown them vMotion Live Migration and Fault Tolerance. With that being said, I am still new to vmWare products and need a little advice. Here are some questions I have.

1) My plan is to have all three physical hosts boot their ESX/ESXi installation off our iSCSI SAN to avoid having to have local storage on each server. It this an acceptable practice or is this not preferred? Is there any performance penalty once the servers are up and running? Your guidance here would be greatly appreciated.

2) I understand I can choose between ESX and ESXi during my installation. I was under the assumption that ESXi was more of a lower-end product (hence the free version) however I've read on vmware.com that ESXi is the preferred product for new installations and that ESX is only available for legacy add-on products. Is this correct? Should I go with ESXi for all three servers?

3) Where does vCenter Server get installed? Is it run off of one of my three physical servers or does it need an additional server. I have zero experience with vCenter Server so I have no idea on this one.

4) Would it be advisable to install local disks on each server for the paging/swap file?

5) I will be purchasing Veeam Backup & Replication for backup. Does it make a difference on wether I choose ESX or ESXi?

Thanks in advance for all of your advice.

One physical server - vCenter or DC?

cweeklund — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:18:44 GMT

We're doing a new implementation and I have one physical non-vmware server to work with. Our plan was for it to act as a domain controller and vCenter server, but now I am finding that this is not possible. So, which role do I have my physical server run, and which one do I virtualize. We have 2 ESXi hosts and the Essentials bundle.

I know that we can run VC in a VM, but that seems to have its drawbacks. I also know we can run all of our DC's as VM's, but would like to have at least one physical DC.

Any advice? It sounds like virtualizing the VCenter but have a physical SQL database to connect to (would have to be on my DC) might work. Anyone have any experience doing this?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

vCenter won't start after reboot

mshorrosh — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:28:46 GMT

here's the errors I've collected from the vpx logs.

Logs are stored here
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs

Errors probably not preventing it from starting
~~2009-11-16 15:05:14.233 05860 error 'App'~~ OptionMgr Ignoring unknown entry from DB: templates.repository
~~2009-11-16 15:05:14.249 05860 error 'App'~~ OptionMgr Ignoring unknown entry from DB: VirtualCenter.PortNumber
~~2009-11-16 15:05:14.249 05860 error 'App'~~ OptionMgr Ignoring unknown entry from DB: WebService.CompatibleWith1x

~~2009-11-16 15:05:20.702 05860 error 'App'~~ VpxdInvtId::CheckIp detected IP ~~Shared 10.196.0-3:0.0.0.0~~ conflict between vm subversiontest (moId:vm-2899) nic:GuestInfo.net[0].ipAddress[0] and entity vpckbjames01 (moId:vm-134)

Error that is preventing it from starting (No idea what this error means)
~~2009-11-16 15:05:20.827 05860 error 'App'~~
Panic: NOT_IMPLEMENTED d:/build/ob/bora-162856/bora/vpx/vpxd/vpxdMoDatacenter.cpp:1401
Backtrace:
backtrace00 eip 0x019e88f0 ?AbortProcess@System@Vmacore@@YAXXZ
backtrace01 eip 0x019e9077 ?CreateBacktrace@SystemFactoryImpl@System@Vmacore@@UAEXAAV?$Ref@VBacktrace@System@Vmacore@@@3@@Z
backtrace02 eip 0x0192b863 ?PanicExit@Vmacore@@YAXABV?$basic_string@DU?$char_traits@D@std@@V?$allocator@D@2@@std@@@Z
backtrace03 eip 0x019570be ?Vpanic@Vmacore@@YAXPBDPAD@Z
backtrace04 eip 0x008055d1 (no symbol)
backtrace05 eip 0x00727bdb (no symbol)
backtrace06 eip 0x0058db67 (no symbol)
backtrace07 eip 0x0058dcc9 (no symbol)
backtrace08 eip 0x0058faf1 (no symbol)
backtrace09 eip 0x004ef983 (no symbol)
backtrace10 eip 0x004ea4e1 (no symbol)
backtrace11 eip 0x004e6950 (no symbol)
backtrace12 eip 0x7d1f5e91 LookupPrivilegeValueW
backtrace13 eip 0x77e6482f GetModuleHandleA
~~2009-11-16 15:05:24.233 05860 info 'App'~~ CoreDump: Writing minidump

vCenter upgrade from 2.5 U3 to U5 gone wrong!!

Eire09 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:51:59 GMT

Hi,
I just tried to do an upgrade of vCenter from 2.5 U3 to U5. The database is MS SQL & I just rolled back to the backup of the DB I took before the upgrade.
I took a backup of vCenter before the upgrade using VCB & backupexec however I cannot restore through backup exec.

Any suggestions on what I can do? I am unable to start the virtual center service.

Thanks in adance.

Collect all MAC addresses

IB_IT — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:00:53 GMT

All,
Looking for a script or app or anything useful to help me collect all MAC addresses in my virtual environment...anyone have any ideas? I am running Virtual Center 2.5 U4...thanks for any help.

Collector Service High CPU

imclaren — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:25:09 GMT

Hi,

I noticed my vCenter VM was showing unusually high CPU usage today, so I went in to check. The vCenter Collector Service (CollectorServerHost.exe) was running at close to 100% utilisation constantly, so I removed the one (and only) collection task and (when that made no difference) tried to restart the service (which got it stuck in the 'starting' state)

So, I rebooted the vCenter server, which made no difference either.

Guided Consolidation health status is all happy, and there was nothing untoward that I could spot in the GC log file (vmwarecp.log IIRC).

Any suggestions? Maybe it'll thrash itself out overnight and be ok in the morning....

Cheers,

Iain

Vsphere virtual machine incorrect memory usage report

kfkehua — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:34:14 GMT

Prior to last month everyone was complaining that vsphere is not reading the memeory usage correctly as all virtual machines spike to 90-95%.

Now after the patch that was released a couple of weeks ago, its reporting 5-10% usage. What the heck? thats not possible. Is anybody else seeing this?

Which is the best way to configure Virtual Center Server

Sherilj — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:21:18 GMT

Hi,

Which is the best way to configure Virtual Center Server? install it on a server out of vmware farm or install it on a VM in cluster?
please help

regards,

sheril

Cannot find license manager

ccwhite — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:12:35 GMT

We just bought vCenter Server and several vSphere licenses. When I put the codes into my trial vCenter server it tells me I need a license server. What I have not been able to find is the license server. I tried pointing it at itself, and that seem to take, but when I try to add hosts to my datacenter I now get

"Unable to acquire licenses because the license source is unavailable: The license manager has not been started yet, the wrong port@host or license file is being used, or the port or host name in the license file has been changed"

Is there documentation on how to set up the 'license manager'? Doing searches I found plenty of refrences to .lic files, and to an (I have forgotten the exact name) VM-License.exe. But neither were part of the 60-trial download, and the threads were often for version 2.5.

Inconsistencies in Vcenter

prutter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:21:33 GMT

I receently added my first 4.0 host and upgraded my VCenter server to the 4.0 client adn since then i seem to be getting a lot of mixed messages. One of the issues right now is that VCenter is reporting memory error on some vm's but when i go directly to the host adn look at those vm's on that host it all looks normal. i don't know which one to believe but i am inclined to believe the host over vcenter. The attachment below is an example. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Perry

Unable to manage datastore after upgrade Virtual center 2.5U4 to vCenter 4

Dready — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:52:50 GMT

Hello,

Recently we upgraded our Virual Center server 2.5 U4 to vCenter 4.
After upgrading I noticed that all my SAN volumes were placed in a new folder named "datastore-upgrade"
The same goes for my networking, all my switches are placed in a folder "network upgrade"

Problem is that I can't manage my datastores (and network) anymore.
A new volume (created after the upgrade) is not placed in this folder and can be managed.

The administrators group has the role 'administrator' assigned, my own account has the role 'Datastore/Network Access (upgrade)' role assigned.
Our admin accounts are not in the administrators group, since the domain admin account is known by to many users (yeah, I know......)

How can I regain control over my datastores ??

My setup:
ESX hosts running ESX 3.5 patch level 176894
Dell/Equallogic PS series SAN
Virtual Center running vCenter 4

Thanks,
Harry

performance overview tab and storage view tab is not available with Oracle Database

artist-06 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:40:10 GMT

Hi guys,

I have a fresh installation of vSphere 4 with VC4 in a VM connecting to a remote Oracle 11g(1.0.7) database.

I had the fun initially with 32bit DSN and resolved that by installing 32bit odbc driver. My Oracle client is X64.

When I click on performance tab I get this error " Perf Charts service experienced and internal error. Report application initialization is not completed successfully. Retry in 60 seconds."

I have been trying to resolve this "Perf Charts service experienced and internal error."

Then I found KB article 1010172.

Copied odbc5 and odbc14 jar files to these 3 locations. Shutdown VC, restarted DB, started VC still no luck.

<VirtualCenter Installation Directory>\tomcat\lib
<VirtualCenter Installation Directory<\tomcat\webapps\sms\WEB-INF\lib
<VirtualCenter Installation Directory<\tomcat\webapps\statsreport\WEB-INF\lib

Anyone experienced the same issue and received anything useful from support? (I am waiting for our new licenses to come through. I cannot contact support until then.)

Many thanks

Burak

Cannot insall infrastructure Management

MTANG — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:56:53 GMT

I download VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-English.iso from VMware website and extract to a CD. But when I click the autorun.exe inside CD, the computer doesn't do any thing.

Does someone here to help me how to install VIM 2.5?

Many thanks in advance

Slow deployment

Vitaly91 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:51:52 GMT

Guys,

A customer of mine is running vCenter 4.0. They have Windows Vista template that is 25GB in size.

Their ESX servers are running vSphere and are attached to an iSCSI storage.

When they try to deploy a VM from this template, it take a very long time. It takes them about an hour to deploy it!

I have tried to convert it to VM, clone it, convert the new one back and deploy but it did not help. VM was originally imported from Workstation 6 into vCenter.

Any ideas on why it takes so long and what I could check/tweak?

Thank you in advance for the advice!

vCenter Performance slowing to unusable.

nathanw — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:29:05 GMT

Here is an observation on vCenter thus far.

I am running v Center on VM Win2008 64bit (R1) Dual CPU 4GB RAM as per VM doc, MS SQL 2005 on TIN.
It's been ok but some times sluggish, today however the system slowed to the point of unusable, could not connect to VC via client or Web access.

Server restarted and after a few hours it came back in a fashion but terribly slow.

Looking at the system the CPU's were ticking along very nicely ~ 2-3 % on the MS counter.

Looking at processes however the Tomcat service is eating more than 1/2 gig. I have shut down the VMware Virtual Center Management Webservices (vctomcat) and this has dramatically increased the performance of the vCenter services, to better that just after install. I should note we have been running the new vCenter for about 5 ish weeks now.

This is not the only bug we have found but by far the most pressing and annoying.

Are there configuration items in tomcat we can change? is anyone else having these issues?

Stopping this service obviously prevents Web Access but I can live with that short term, and the Performance summary page which is nice is also Dependant upon this too.

Why can't vCenter use IIS? ok stupid question I guess but it comes with the OS and vCenter only installs on Windows anyhow....

I'm not used to TomCat config but will keep looking but if anyone has any pointers your advice would be greatly appreciated.

I hope if you are having trouble with performance this may help.

Edit - Have also discovered that the Search functionality in vCenter is also affected. error dialog pops up - Login to the query service failed. thisis a little more pressing now.

FT with a physical and a virutal machine

Samyboy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:46:58 GMT

I have a physical Windows 2003 server (ServerA) running application software. I have converted physical server (ServerA) in to Virtual Server (V-ServerA) running on ESXi 3.5 hosts. I have Vshpere 2.5 running on the same 2003 server (Server A). I have 3-more VM's running on ESXi 3.5 hosts. One of the VM's running on ESXi host is windows2003 server.(V-serverB). On this (V-ServerB) I have installed Vshpere 4.0 with site recovery manager. I am able to connect my ESXi 3.5 host on the vSphere 4.0 running on V-serverB. Now I want to FT (Physical Servera) with virtual (V-serverA). In case physical server goes down it should automatically go to virtual server. I need some configuration assistance and assistance doing FT with physical and virtual Machines.

Thanks

vmware converter server is not running

raghupal22 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:33:52 GMT

Hi,

I have installed VMware-converter-4.0.1-161434.tar.gz and VMware_Workstation-6.5.2 on Fedora 11 Operating System

when i am trying to open vmware-converter, it is giving error as:

Failed to connect server, Check if the converter server is running on this computer

if i run /etc/init.d/vmware-converter, it is saying server is started. but actually there is no process created for that.

even i don't know where i have to check the logs for this converter

Could you please tell me how to resolve this issue.

Thanks in advance

Trying to add an ESXi 3.5 host to vCenter 4.0 server. Missing license file.

OrlandoAmador — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:44:27 GMT

I'm trying to add an ESXi 3.5 host to the vCenter 4.0 server. We have the Foundation license for the VI agent for the ESXi host.

When trying to add the host is requesting to have a license server.

I downloaded the license server. During the install it ask for the location of the license file.

I do not have a license file. All the license I have for vSphere 4, vCenter, and ESXi 3.4 and ESXi 4 are keys.

Where can I retrieve this license file for the ESXi 3.5 host??

System resouce pools configuration

Ajay Nabh — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:38:27 GMT

Hi All

I want to know what are the best practies around seting up System Resources Allocation--> System Resources Pools. I looked at my esx farm servers and found these settings(screenshot attached) and I was not sure if this is normal.

Please help with best practices doc and suggestions

thanks
Aj

Virtual Center for Linux

tps800 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:15:07 GMT

Hi!

I have successfully downloaded Virtual Center Server, just to discover it not being available for Linux --- only for Windows.

Can you give me a timeline when Virtual Center will be available for Linux?
Is there some other recomendable product availabe running on a Linux/FreeBSD host?

vCenter Collector Service status: Unreachable

onishoushi — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:30:04 GMT

Hi all,

can any one help me?

I have installed a vCenter Server 4, two esx 4 and a Guided consolidation module.

when I check my Guided consolidation configuration status, I found that the vCenter Collector Service status is Unreachable, then I try to login to my vCenter server go to administrative tool > services and check for :

1. VMware vCenter Collector provider Service
2. VMware vCenter Collector Service

both services are stop, the I try to start it, but the services couldnot be started.

error message:

"Could not start the VMware vCenter Collector Service service on local computer. Error 1068: The dependency service or group failed to start"

can any one help me on this issues?

THX
-Mario-

Problem with vCenter Performance Overview page and vCenter Search function

mikkel-robin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:14:38 GMT

Hi!

I have just installed the newest vCenter on a Win2008 x64 server - everthing went fine, but i now got 2 issues:

1. When i try to use the search function, ill get a message that says: "Could not acquire an authentication ticket for the query serivce"
I have startet the Ochestra Service but it did not help.

2. The Performance page shows a IE page saying "Navigation to the webpage was canceled"

Can anybody help me with thees issues?

Error message while installing vCenter Server

imprise — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:38:52 GMT

Please look at the attachment image.

the vcenter user is a domain-based user that is also the Administrator of the computer. It has the following rights:

Replace a process level token
Logon as a service
Logon as batch job
Bypass travers checking
Adjust a memory quota for a process

But i encounter the error message that you can see in the attachment...

Can anyone help me?

Thanks

storage service is not initialized [solved]

jspilon — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:12:46 GMT

Hello,

I justed installed vCenter and joined a ESX 4 host to it and i get "stoirage service is not initialized" when opening the "Storage Views" tabs. I also see the Storage Management Service as an alert on the vCenter Service status page in th VIC.

vCenter 4.0.0 build 162856 (with Update manager and converter installed)

Any idea?

Traffic shaping on ESX4

RunLevelZero — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:34:13 GMT

Well I am not sure exactly how to ask this but what I need is to setup a VPN server that will throttle the traffic to equal the T1 we are going to route the traffic through. It appears on ESX 2.5 and older that it was a per VM setting. Now it has changed to the virtual switch. I don't have the foggiest idea how to start this setup . It appears I need to create a port group? I am hoping that you guys can stear me to docs or something because the help file just shows how to enable it. Not how to configure it per say. We have one DvSwitch and it has 24 vlans on it. That is the only way it's configured atm. I hope I have provided enough info to get started.

Database problem....

ISD Plc — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:01:19 GMT

Ok so we had a problem with our DB server MSSQL 2005 64bit and we have had to move our VC db to another server (32bit 2005). Now all that has been done but when launching the vsphere client there is no configuration there? THe db appears to have it all though....

any suggestions?

cheers

Harvey

Why Vsphere Hosts go in not responding state after sometime in Vcenter Server.????

itsexe — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:27:17 GMT

Hi All,

We have a vCenter Server 4.0 & we have added 3 vSphere host into it. The issue we are facing is that after a minute or so, all host go in not responding state and we have to reconnect these hosts to do our job.

If we access the host directly through VI client it works fine. For details please see the attached screenshot.

Regards,

Khurram Shahzad

Virtual Center 2.5 U2 & ESX 2.5.2

eapontevm — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:42:48 GMT

Hi,

I have this issue, I have a Vcenter 2.5 U2 and I want to connect a ESX 2.5.2 Build 16390, I can connect one ESX 2.5.2 but I am trying connect other one but it shows an error message: unable to connect to specific host, I did the instructions in http://communities.vmware.com/message/1096760#1096760 but it wasn't unsucesfull, what can I do? thanks for your help.

Use System Account option is disabled

imprise — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:20:15 GMT

Hi al;

When Installing vCenter Server 4.0, in the vCenter Server Service page, the Use System Account option is dimmed and I cannot select it. Why?

P.S. This option is availble when I use SQL Express, but when I use Use An Existing Supported Database, the mentioned option is disabled...

Can anyone help me?

Thanks

-Reza

vpxd.exe memory leak?

peetz — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:00:37 GMT

Hi all,

we recently re-installed out vCenter server with version 2.5 U4 and moved the database from a separate Oracle platform to a SQL2005 installation that is on the same machine now (a 4-core-server with 4 GB RAM running Windows 2003 -32bit).

Since then we notice that the vxpd.exe process continously uses more and more memory. It starts with about 120 MB (working set) which has raised to 340 MB now after about 60 hours. The first time we noticed that the process was consuming more than 1,5 GB RAM, finally failing with an "Out of memory" exception.

We have 16 hosts and about 400 VMs connected to the vCenter instance.

What vpxd.exe RAM usage are you seeing and do you also notice it increasing?

Thank you for any comments.

Andreas

Weekly performance chart can not be shown

xadox — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:15:54 GMT

I have installed the vCenter Server on Windows Server 2003 Standard. Everything has worked fine until today the weekly performance chart can not be show in the vSphere Client, in the graphs is show "Allgemeine Ausnahme bei Berichtgenerierung". All other charts for Day,Month,Year are shown.

Deployed VM is not getting added to the domain. "The network location cannot be reached" in guestcust.log

cleighto — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:55:34 GMT

running vSphere 4... deploying a VM to a ESX 3.5 host. The VM is a Windows 2003 Enterprise SP2 (32bit) OS.

The Customer spec I am using is pretty vanilla... basically adding the machine to the domain and not much else. The user account to add the user to the domain is valid, and privi'd enough to add machines to the domain. The same custom spec used to workjust fine.... but now, it doesn't everything except adding the machine to the domain properly.

I found a log in C:\WINDOWS\Temp\vmware-imc... in guestcust.log:

Returning value \\DEPTEST2\ROOT\CIMV2:Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration.Index=8 for system property
Joining domain <my lab's FQDN> using account <domain administrator> and password '*****'
The network location cannot be reached. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help.

That would appear to be a network connection issue.... but its not a permanent issue since the machine is on the network (albiet in WORKGROUP). I usually see that kind of error if I tried a unqualified domain name on a box that can't resolve the FQDN.. but I know all that seems OK. When I log into the machine, I can add the box to the domain using the same FQDN and user just fine.

I've tried using both the VMXNET 2 Enhanced adapter as well as the Flexible network adapter... no dice.

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

vCenter server 4.0 panic's very often on GetYearInCentury

dpandey — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:09:14 GMT

I keep seeing vCenter dump core periodically with this mini-trace. What could I be doing wrong? This vCenter Server is using the SQL Server Express 2005 bundled with the vCenter. I have installed vCenter Server on a VM running Microsoft Windows XP SP3.

--2009-11-02 00:59:18.120 01644 info 'App'-- VpxdHostSync Retrieved host update to 207
--2009-11-02 00:59:18.120 01644 error 'App'-- VpxdMoVm Invalid guest IP address for VM Mercury VM-1: fe80::20c:29ff:fec8:fcac/64
--2009-11-02 00:59:18.136 01644 info 'App'-- VpxdHostSync Completed host synchronization
--2009-11-02 00:59:18.136 01644 info 'App'-- VpxLRO -- FINISH task-internal-14 -- host-29 -- VpxdInvtHostSyncHostLRO.Synchronize --
--2009-11-02 00:59:34.589 03044 error 'App'--

Panic: Not Reached: @ d:/build/ob/bora-161137/bora/vim/lib/vmacore/system/TCPClientSocketMixin.cpp:413
Backtrace:
backtrace00 eip 0x019e88f0 ?AbortProcess@System@Vmacore@@YAXXZ
backtrace01 eip 0x019e9077 ?CreateBacktrace@SystemFactoryImpl@System@Vmacore@@UAEXAAV?$Ref@VBacktrace@System@Vmacore@@@3@@Z
backtrace02 eip 0x0192b863 ?PanicExit@Vmacore@@YAXABV?$basic_string@DU?$char_traits@D@std@@V?$allocator@D@2@@std@@@Z
backtrace03 eip 0x0192bac4 ?RunTimeFailure@Vmacore@@YAXPBD00HH@Z
backtrace04 eip 0x01a41be5 ?GetYearInCentury@DateTime@System@Vmacore@@QBEHXZ
backtrace05 eip 0x01a423b3 ?GetYearInCentury@DateTime@System@Vmacore@@QBEHXZ
backtrace06 eip 0x019f0b36 ?CreateNamedPipeServer@SystemFactoryImpl@System@Vmacore@@UAEXABV?$basic_string@DU?$char_traits@D@std@@V?$allocator@D@2@@std@@HAAV?$Ref@VNamedPipeServer@System@Vmacore@@@3@@Z
backtrace07 eip 0x019fa123 ?IsEnlisted@System@Vmacore@@YA_NXZ
backtrace08 eip 0x019fb132 ?IsEnlisted@System@Vmacore@@YA_NXZ
backtrace09 eip 0x019fd9cd ?IsEnlisted@System@Vmacore@@YA_NXZ
backtrace10 eip 0x019fe699 ?IsEnlisted@System@Vmacore@@YA_NXZ
backtrace11 eip 0x0190614f ?CreateHttpUserAgent@Http@Vmacore@@YAXPAVConnectionSpec@12@PAVCookieStore@12@PAVHttpConnectionPool@12@AAV?$Ref@VUserAgent@Http@Vmacore@@@2@@Z
backtrace12 eip 0x019f79e3 ?ThisThreadExists@System@Vmacore@@YA_NXZ
backtrace13 eip 0x781329bb _endthreadex
backtrace14 eip 0x78132a47 _endthreadex

--2009-11-02 00:59:34.589 03044 info 'App'-- CoreDump: Writing minidump
--2009-11-02 00:59:34.604 03164 warning 'ProxySvc Req19737'-- Connection to localhost:80 failed with error class Vmacore::SystemException(An operation on a socket could not be performed because the system lacked sufficient buffer space or because a queue was full. ).

Can't download vcenter 4.0 no license?

tom11011 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:45:34 GMT

Hello all. I am trying to understand the licensing.

Our company has 6 enterprise 2cpu licenses for ESX 3.5 server.

I see in the downloads that my licenses have converted over to the new 4.0 licensing. I was able to download vsphere 4.0 iso images. However, when I try to download the vcenter iso, it says I have no license?

I'm not sure what I am missing here? Doesn't vcenter come with ESX 3.5 enterprise?

Thanks.

Moving guest images on WMWare ESXi 4.0

hh905 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:30:28 GMT

I have installed WMWare ESXi 4.0 and VSphere Client 4.0. On the vm box, I installed a guest solaris os. I am wondering how I can copy or move this solaris image to anther WMWare ESXi 4.0 box.

Performance Overview Tab Errors

jdudmesh2 — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:08:36 GMT

I have vCenter server on a public IP address. Everything works fine except for the Performance Overview. After much fiddling I've made it work by adding a line to my drivers\etc\hosts file with the vCenter server IP address. It looks like the VI client is calling the webservices using the host name and not the FQDN. I've tried changing the web services URL in the vCenter server config (advanced settings) but this doesn't seem to make any difference.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Why isn't my 2008 template running sysprep when I deploy VM using template with customization manager?

davidb1234 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:19:48 GMT

I created a customization specification in the customization specification manager.

I created a windows 2008 vm, configured it, updated it, shut it down and converted it to a template.

I choose to deploy VM from template and I apply the customization specification I created.

When I boot up the newly created VM it goes to the logon screen and doesn't apply my customization and does not run sysprep. It's like I just converted the template back to a vm and booted it up.

How do i get this process to run sysprep and actually apply my customization?

VCB backup on P2V machine is extremely large

kfkehua — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:11:32 GMT

I do a monthly manual VCB backup on my virtual machines and I noticed that for the server that was P2V, the backup was extremely large.
There's only 20 gig worth of data and the VCB backup came up to be about 40gig.
For all other Virtual machines that are not P2V, the backup size is roughly about the size of the data. Any suggestions?

vCenter Server 4 crashed ESX 3.0.1 server

nicsys — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:10:59 GMT

We just installed vCenter Server 4 on a Windows 2008 server and tried to add our 2 ESX 3.0.1 servers to the datacenter. On the first attempt, we got an error:

Cannot install the vCenter agent service. Cannot prepare host for upgrade

Did some forum searches and they seemed to suggest reinstalling the agent was the way to go, so we followed the instructions on this page, under the Reinstalling the agents section:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003714

Immediately after issuing the command the ESX server starting shutting down all the virtual machines, which was unexpected. We rebooted the ESX server, it came back up normally, then we tried adding it to vCenter again. This time it got to 80%, then gave this error:

Cannot upgrade vCenter agent on esx01 in datastore. Agent not reachable

It also rendered the entire ESX server inoperable, we could not connect to it via VI Client and all the virtual machines became unreachable. The ESX server had to be power cycled.

Any help with this situation would be appreciated. Thank you.

unable to deploy ovf template of vSphere Management Assistant in vCenter version 4

russ_givens — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:25:00 GMT

I'm trying to deploy the vSphere Management Assistant. I've tried through the url and downloading and using the downloaded files and have had no success. I meet the hardware and software prerequisites to deploy the virtual machine. I'm trying to deploy it to a ESX 3.5 u3 host that is compatible with the hardware requirements. I get the following error: Error uploading the C:\path to ovf fle\vMA-ovf-4.0.0-161933-0.vmdk to server. Unable to write data to the transport connection: An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine. Any ideas?

Problem with group permissions in vcenter

wunix — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:43:12 GMT

Hi all,
i have a problem with group permissions in vcenter.
we have a windows domain group called org_vsphere_admins, where all the users who requres admin permissions in vcenter are placed.
this group has administrator privileges on the "root".
this works so far, but there a two account in this group, which get not the same permisssions as the other members of this group.
i tried to set the vcenter administrator permisssion directly to user, but with the same result.
a newly created account works fine.

Hope anyone can help me!

Thanks,
Oliver