Vmware esx3i, Update 4, Powershell

[4olle]

I use Powershell to backup some of my development servers once a week, after applying update 4 this does not work anymore, yes I’m certain it did work before update 4.

When I noticed that it didn’t work anymore I tested some of the commands manually, one of the first is to shutdown the guest. When I try to do that now I get this: "Operation 'Shutdown VMGuest' failed for VM 'my-happy-server' for the following reason: fault.RestrictedVersion.summary"

I did a few searches and there are some notes about licensing. I didn’t get what’s what… I registered to download and got a serial, so I’m a free user I guess using a user serial. I use VMware ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 158869

Ehhh… so what gives?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Welcome to the VMware Community forums. With update 4, the free version of ESXi went back to being read only for configuration changes. I was under the impression that it would impact items like changing the configuration of your host, but it appears to extend to managing VMs as well (i.e. I test with the RCLI to create a snapshot and it failed with the restricted version error).

[wila]

Hi,

I'm not sure on what line in your code that does the backup fails, but you are seeing a side effect of VMware closing up on an unintended ability to use the RCLI to use read/write operations as was released with update 3. So basically it is a restriction from using the free version. A very dumb restriction if you ask me.

The only "solution" you have for this problem is to go back to update 3.

See also:

http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=477

for more details on this.

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Wil

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Visit the VMware developers wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[4olle]

Thanks guys, now I know

So how do I go back to update 3? Is there a simple way to revert or do I have to start all over?

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

On the initial ESXi boot screen you can press shift+r to revert back to the prior version of ESXi that you were running.

[depping]

oops, were talking ESXi here and not ESX... i stand corrected.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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