Bruticusmaximus's Posts

Is there a log insight query I can use to see who shut down a VM? I don't use Log Insight a lot.  We have a VM that keeps shutting down. 
Does vSphere Replication pre-allocate disk space for replicated VMs? Here's my scenario.  I'm setting up replication for a VM that is 6TB.  At the recovery site I see datastore A has 8TB free,  I ... See more...
Does vSphere Replication pre-allocate disk space for replicated VMs? Here's my scenario.  I'm setting up replication for a VM that is 6TB.  At the recovery site I see datastore A has 8TB free,  I choose that datastore. VSR is happy. Someone else comes along a few minutes later and sets up replication for another VM that is 4TB.  They see datastore A has 8TB and they choose that. VSR is also happy. VSR doesn't seem to say "Hey, I have this 6TB replicating so you can't stick your 4TB VM there" when you setup replication for the second VM.  Now, throw on top of this DRS.  Before the 6TB VM finishes the initial sync, DRS comes along and throws a few TB of other VMs on datastore A so now, the 6TB replication fails. Am I doing something wrong?  Does VSR not communicate with DRS? If you're replicating a 6TB VM, shouldn't VSR set aside that space so other VMs don't end up on that datastore before replication finishes?
I'm using that command too.  I have a spreadsheet for 3 different virtual centers. The "RVToolsMergeExcelFiles" works great to put them all into one spreadsheet.  It's just getting rid of unneeded co... See more...
I'm using that command too.  I have a spreadsheet for 3 different virtual centers. The "RVToolsMergeExcelFiles" works great to put them all into one spreadsheet.  It's just getting rid of unneeded columns that I'm having an issue with.
That's actually one of the blogs that I was using.  My problem is that as soon as  I try to do Import-excel, it fails because the spreadsheet RvTools generates had duplicate headers.
Is there a way to run RVTools against a specific data center within Virtual Center? Also, is there a way to export just specific data to Excel? I basically need about 20 columns from the million th... See more...
Is there a way to run RVTools against a specific data center within Virtual Center? Also, is there a way to export just specific data to Excel? I basically need about 20 columns from the million that RVTools spits out.  I've also tried using Powershell to extract just the columns I need but, RVTools creates Excel files with two row 1's.  So I get "Duplicate Header" errors whenever I try to manipulate things with Powershell.  It's more like there's 2 copies of the whole spreadsheet. If you unfreeze the top row, when you expand it, it's two spreadsheets. (See screenshot)    
I had an old installation of Loginsight where I would get an email every time a VM was created or deleted. It gave me all of the info like VM name, host, cluster etc.  I also used to give me the user... See more...
I had an old installation of Loginsight where I would get an email every time a VM was created or deleted. It gave me all of the info like VM name, host, cluster etc.  I also used to give me the user name of the person that created it. I'm trying to re-create this alert in our new environment.  It's working except, I don't get the user name in the email alert.   How do I customize was info is sent in the emailed alert?
I managed to get this to work. There IS another ID for automated tasks buried in there in the new version.  None of the documentation mentions it. Even our Vmware TAM didn't know about it. Once I add... See more...
I managed to get this to work. There IS another ID for automated tasks buried in there in the new version.  None of the documentation mentions it. Even our Vmware TAM didn't know about it. Once I added the ID, everything worked fine. If I can find where you enter it again, I'll post a screenshot here.
I tried running a bash script on the SRM appliance that would call a Powershell script on a utility VM but, couldn't get it to go.  I was investing too much time into it and just gave up.  The simple... See more...
I tried running a bash script on the SRM appliance that would call a Powershell script on a utility VM but, couldn't get it to go.  I was investing too much time into it and just gave up.  The simple solution is to just go back to the Windows version of SRM.  So our DR test is automated now except for one manual step. It would have been cool to have it completely automated like it used to be before upgrading SRM.     I submitted a feature request so, we'll see how that goes.
This VM is 2TB. It would be down all day trying to restore it from backup if we needed to.
We have a static IP address on all our templates.  Changing the IP is part of the deployment of a VM. We time the convert from template to VM and power on with our patch window.  When SCCM or Sate... See more...
We have a static IP address on all our templates.  Changing the IP is part of the deployment of a VM. We time the convert from template to VM and power on with our patch window.  When SCCM or Satellite pushes patches, the VM is up and running. Then, power off and convert back to a template.  When things don't work correctly, it's usually on the SCCM or Satellite side.  
I've gotten a little further.  I removed the ID it was using from VC then, re-added it.  Now, in vRops, the task goes into a "Starting" state for about 5 minutes before it fails with the same error. ... See more...
I've gotten a little further.  I removed the ID it was using from VC then, re-added it.  Now, in vRops, the task goes into a "Starting" state for about 5 minutes before it fails with the same error.  Before, it would fail within seconds.
I've just started playing around with some of the tasks in vRops. Delete old snapshots, right size VM, etc.  The tasks fail right away with "Unable to establish VC connection. Cannot complete login d... See more...
I've just started playing around with some of the tasks in vRops. Delete old snapshots, right size VM, etc.  The tasks fail right away with "Unable to establish VC connection. Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password".  vRops is collecting data from VC fine.  The ID we use for that is an administrator of everything.  Is there a different ID buried in there somewhere that vRops uses for tasks?  The error message isn't all that helpful.
Is there a way to automatically delete a scheduled snapshot after x number of days.  There's a VM that has issues and, we're constantly restoring it from backup.  I can schedule a daily snapshot of t... See more...
Is there a way to automatically delete a scheduled snapshot after x number of days.  There's a VM that has issues and, we're constantly restoring it from backup.  I can schedule a daily snapshot of the VM but, I have to also remember to delete it every single day. Sure, i could do a power CLI script and schedule it to run with some scheduler but, I'd still have to check it every once in a while to make sure it's still running. I've put in a feature request to add "Delete snapshot after x days" when you schedule a snapshot. Way back, maybe 10 years ago when Vmware owned Shavlik for patching, you could apply Windows updates through Vmware Update Manager.  It worked great.  You could schedule it to take a snapshot of the VM before applying patches then, automatically delete the snapshot x number of days later.  We usually did it 2 days later. So I know the hooks are in there somewhere to do this.  Am I just missing something?
Unfortunately, we're not using vSphere Replication.  We're using Recover Point.  It lets you do the same point in time snapshots but, it's of a whole volume and not at the VM level.  We'd have to rev... See more...
Unfortunately, we're not using vSphere Replication.  We're using Recover Point.  It lets you do the same point in time snapshots but, it's of a whole volume and not at the VM level.  We'd have to revert about a dozen VMs at once.  We could do it but, it's a pain. My solution for now was to put a message in the recovery plan that pauses and says "Hey, go take a snapshot of xxx".  Not as elegant as I would have liked but, it works.
How many VMs do you need to move?  A down and dirty way to do it is to use the Vmware Converter P2V tool.  The one benefit of this is that you still have the original VM powered off in the old enviro... See more...
How many VMs do you need to move?  A down and dirty way to do it is to use the Vmware Converter P2V tool.  The one benefit of this is that you still have the original VM powered off in the old environment if something goes drastically wrong.  If you need to move 100 VMs, this might not be the best solution.
That's the thing though, our SD cards are 32GB.  I would have thought that was large enough to put the logs on. But it seems that Vmware sees it's an SD card and doesn't even bother.
Is it different if I were booting from HD?  
I guess we've been fortunate and haven't had to pull logs for Vmware tickets in a while.  We had an issue over the weekend where we had to hard boot hosts to resolve.  Afterwards, we pulled logs for ... See more...
I guess we've been fortunate and haven't had to pull logs for Vmware tickets in a while.  We had an issue over the weekend where we had to hard boot hosts to resolve.  Afterwards, we pulled logs for a vendor to look at but, they only went back to the reboot. It's been a while but, I seem to recall the syslogs just overwriting based on how much space was available regardless of reboots.  Has that changed?   One thing that we have changed is booting our hosts from SD cards rather than local disk or SAN.  Could this make a difference?  
Is the Syslog always in Ramdisk?  Does it always get wiped out when a host is rebooted?  Or, does that only happen when yo boot from SD cards? Years ago, we used to boot from a local HD.  I seem to ... See more...
Is the Syslog always in Ramdisk?  Does it always get wiped out when a host is rebooted?  Or, does that only happen when yo boot from SD cards? Years ago, we used to boot from a local HD.  I seem to recall the Syslogs not getting wiped out on reboots.  Now that we're on SD cards, they seem to get wiped out.
I understand that and I have recovery plan setup with the primary data node powering on first.  The problem is, the node that is primary can switch and I would never know it until I try to recover th... See more...
I understand that and I have recovery plan setup with the primary data node powering on first.  The problem is, the node that is primary can switch and I would never know it until I try to recover them at the DR site. Node 1 is primary right now and everything should work fine but, if node 2 becomes the primary down the road and we run the recovery plan, it's going to power on the wrong node first. I guess the other option would be to somehow have the app send an alert that triggers a script to edit the recovery plan each time the nodes fail over but, that seems like a lot more work than just creating a snapshot in the unlikely event we ever have to recover these VMs during a disaster.