Peter_Channing's Posts

Looking at the VSAN concept with stretched data centers as a means for migrating customers into our hosting data vcenter without downtime for the customers virtual machines. Just wondering if any... See more...
Looking at the VSAN concept with stretched data centers as a means for migrating customers into our hosting data vcenter without downtime for the customers virtual machines. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with such a setup, either stretched data centers with VSAN or any other type of "stretched" storage that will allow for vmotion across physical data centers. Your input in appreciated. Peter
Does anyone have any information or direct experience of the events described in the following KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&ex... See more...
Does anyone have any information or direct experience of the events described in the following KB article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2051924
found this...Linked Mode Authentication gonna try it this morning and will post my results.
I have 2 vCenter 5.1 servers in linked mode with no firewall between them, connected via layer 2 connectivity, in two different data centers. They are both a member of the same domain, with DC's ... See more...
I have 2 vCenter 5.1 servers in linked mode with no firewall between them, connected via layer 2 connectivity, in two different data centers. They are both a member of the same domain, with DC's in each data center, each with their own SSO server at each location. Both vCenter servers are virtualized. The entire infrastructure is on a secure mangement network. We also have a management server outside the secure zone with teh virtual infrastructure with the required ports open to each vCenter server. Connecting to either vCenter server via Infrastructure Client works fine with the exception of an authentication error. When connecting to site 1 directly I can authenticate but get an error authenticating to site 2, and at that point can only manage site one. When connecting to site 2 directly I get teh same thing but in reverse. I can open and manage site 2 but get an authentication error for site 1. From vCenter server at either site I can authenticate to the and manage both sites without error. From the management server outside the secure zone I can RDP to the vCenter server at either site. This one is baffling me, as network connectivity seems to be there as per RDP and connecting to each site with teh infrastructure client. The only part that doesnt seem to work is the Linked Mode functionality. Anyone have thoughts on this one? i would appreciate any assitance. Peter
According tot he recommendations in the vCenter 5.1 Database Best Practices white paper, VMware recommends the following layout for disks of the SQL backend server:   SQL Server   It is re... See more...
According tot he recommendations in the vCenter 5.1 Database Best Practices white paper, VMware recommends the following layout for disks of the SQL backend server:   SQL Server   It is recommended to have 5 disks:  mssql01 - master and msdb databases(.mdf, .ldf) mssql02 - tempdb(.mdf, .ldf), also set the initial size to 10GB mssql03 - VCDB(.mdf, .ldf) mssql04 - VCDB Backup location If the SQL server is virtualized, wouldnt creating seperate virtual disks be pointless unless all the virtual disks were created on seperate VMFS volumes? I have 2 sites, one we just brought up with infrastruture chosen for a second site for SRM. The second site does not have multiple LUN's currently as at this point there is no requirement...except maybe because of this SQL database segrec=gation. Thoughts?
Looking for some insight on snapshots, in particular the effect on the OS time when a snapshot is removed. My team manages a shared environment and we recently recieved concerns from one of ou... See more...
Looking for some insight on snapshots, in particular the effect on the OS time when a snapshot is removed. My team manages a shared environment and we recently recieved concerns from one of our customers about time sync errors in the event logs of their Windows 2008 server. The server is not a DC but is running some time senstive database software. Previously I do believe the time sync events have been recorded in event logs of other machines but because the other systems didnt have time sensitive applications running on them, the customer's havent noticed them. Our Operations team has narrowed the time sync events down to the removal of snapshots, specifically when backups are finished and the snapshots are removed. Can anyone confirm that this is a know issue or if it is something inherent to the snapshot procedure? Is there anythign we can do to mitigate the problem? Oh, I forgot to mention that the these events occured on a machine that is set to sync its time with an internet source. VMware Tools is not configured for time sync with the host. We will be opening a support call with VMware, but thought I would bounce the questions in the forums for some first hand experience. Thanks in advance. Peter
Looking to setup Remote Desktop Services on several Windows 208 R2 virtual machines in my environment. The end users will be connecting with clients using dual monitors. I want to ensure that the... See more...
Looking to setup Remote Desktop Services on several Windows 208 R2 virtual machines in my environment. The end users will be connecting with clients using dual monitors. I want to ensure that the virtual machine remote desktop server has enough memory assigned to the display for these requirements. The default value is 4 MB. Any suggestions on a more appropriate value? There is a warning on the Display Memory Properties page that says "The memory required for multiple displays is not a simple multiple of the memory required for a single display". We do plan on upgrading the environment to 5.1 in the near future where, as i understand it, there are more options available for monitor memory settings. Any assitance would be muchly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Peter
So here is another updating vCenter question... As part of our upgrade path we want to move the vCenter SQL database from the default SQL Express installation to a full version of SQL. I have... See more...
So here is another updating vCenter question... As part of our upgrade path we want to move the vCenter SQL database from the default SQL Express installation to a full version of SQL. I have found the following kb article with instrauctions for this migration, http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028601, however, my question is regarding step 10. We are going from 4.1.0 to 5.1, can we at Step 10 install vCenter 5.1 or will the database only work after restoring into SQL Server if we re-install 4.1.0 and then do the upgrade to 5.1? Hopefully I have explained the circumstances correctly. Thanks in advance. Peter
Thanks for the response Sparrow. Thats what I figured, but wanted a second opinion. Cheers.
I have a quick upgrade question...according to the vSphere Upgrade pdf document (table 4.1) it states that an in place upgrade from 4.1.x is supported but an in place upgrade from 4.1 is not. ... See more...
I have a quick upgrade question...according to the vSphere Upgrade pdf document (table 4.1) it states that an in place upgrade from 4.1.x is supported but an in place upgrade from 4.1 is not. My vSphere client shows 4.1.0 so is that the same as 4.1.x or 4.1.... thanks Peter
I know the issue is more likely MS related, but wanted to see if anyone out there has experienced the same issues and if so if there was anything that they did to fix or suppress the prompts or i... See more...
I know the issue is more likely MS related, but wanted to see if anyone out there has experienced the same issues and if so if there was anything that they did to fix or suppress the prompts or if they could be safely ignored. After deploying Microsoft Server 2003 or 2008 virtual servers from our golden image, patching and completeing the license activation procedure, some machines begin to prompt for windows license re-activation. I havent determined a patern as of yet, but I suspect that it occurs after a VMware Tools upgrade. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Peter
Thank you very much. It is as I thought, but I needed confirmation. much appreciated. any thoughts as to whether that may be a feature in any upcoming versions or updates to srm? Or do you ... See more...
Thank you very much. It is as I thought, but I needed confirmation. much appreciated. any thoughts as to whether that may be a feature in any upcoming versions or updates to srm? Or do you believe that the human element should always be part of the equation....gosh that sounded like something from Star Trek! Lol
It's been a while since posting anything the forums as I am not in an operations role anymore in my organization, however I have recently been tasked with designing and building a second site for... See more...
It's been a while since posting anything the forums as I am not in an operations role anymore in my organization, however I have recently been tasked with designing and building a second site for our primary vsphere site, and using srm for site recovery, i have what maybe a dumb question, but with srm 5.1 is failover automated, ie does he system determine when to failover protected virtual machines or does there have to be human intervention for at least that part, initiating that failover. thanks to all for their input. peter
We recently upgraded from Netbackup 6MP5 to 6.5.4. Before the upgrade, using the config.js script, any snapshots on the VMs being backed up were removed before the job started. My backups were ... See more...
We recently upgraded from Netbackup 6MP5 to 6.5.4. Before the upgrade, using the config.js script, any snapshots on the VMs being backed up were removed before the job started. My backups were very clean and stable. Now that we are using the integrated scripts with 6.5.3 my backups have become very unreliable. Snapshots are not cleaned up when a backup fails (and the vcbcleanup.bat doesnt cleanup the mounted folders under mnt and doesnt remove the snapshots on the VMs) and I cant figure out how to get the backups to use those options in the config.js to keep things clean; there arent many options to configure in the policy and the ones there dont have anything to do with the type of stuff that was used in the config.js. First, has anyone come accross this before, and if so how did you fix it. If this is something new, or perhaps something to be addressed by Veritas, I would welcome any suggestions,,, Thanks in advance. PeterC
I'm sure this question has been asking a hundred times but I cant seem to find the answer so here we go...I'd like to see if anyone has a script (powershell?) already put together that will dis... See more...
I'm sure this question has been asking a hundred times but I cant seem to find the answer so here we go...I'd like to see if anyone has a script (powershell?) already put together that will disable the screen saver on all the virtual machines registered to our vCenter server. Has anyone come accross this before? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Has anyone else run ino this issue or have any idea how to resolve it? I plan on getting a trouble opened with Mcafee on it but wanted to know if anyone else has come accross this issue. ... See more...
Has anyone else run ino this issue or have any idea how to resolve it? I plan on getting a trouble opened with Mcafee on it but wanted to know if anyone else has come accross this issue. Thanks. Peter
Excellent!! I'll give that a try this afternoon. One quick question though, any idea if I can use something like c:\mnt\servername\letters\* or do I have to break it down for each drive l... See more...
Excellent!! I'll give that a try this afternoon. One quick question though, any idea if I can use something like c:\mnt\servername\letters\* or do I have to break it down for each drive letter per VM? Thanks again.
They look like normal files but I will check thescripts as well.
Thank you for your reply. The path I use to to backup the VM is c:\mnt\servername\letters I assume that this is the file level mount. Any other thoughts?
My Veritas VCB backups seem to be very large. I typical Differential backup, as I understand it, is based off your last full backup. Every backup after that backs up everything that has changed... See more...
My Veritas VCB backups seem to be very large. I typical Differential backup, as I understand it, is based off your last full backup. Every backup after that backs up everything that has changed since the last full. So I would expect, depending on the amount of data that has actually changed day to day, each sequetial differential backup would be less than the original full but would grow in size each day until the next full takes place. The problem I seem to have is that every backup is essential the same size (give or take a few hundred meg) as the full. I have confirmed the client settings for the VCB proxy to use Time Stamps instead of Archive Bits. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. peter