virtualfish321's Posts

I have a vcenter 5.5 appliance I'm running, and I'm trying to use the builtin certificates and have them trusted on my client for the web client access (and xendesktop later on).  I've gotten the... See more...
I have a vcenter 5.5 appliance I'm running, and I'm trying to use the builtin certificates and have them trusted on my client for the web client access (and xendesktop later on).  I've gotten the .pem file downloaded from the server from /etc/vmware-vsphere-client/SerenityDB/keys/vsphere-client-ca-cert.pem.  Renamed the pen file to a .cer file and imported it into the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store. When I then go to the website for the vcenter server, it still prompts me with the certificate error.  When I look at the certificate I imported, it shows it's issued by vcenter01-lx.blah.blah CA 62798610. When I look at the certificate I get from the web browser when I go to the vcenter web page, that certificate says it's issued by vcenter01-lx.blah.blah CA e6ec1cb0.  I'm assuming that's hex, so when I convert that to decimal I get 3874233520 which isn't the same value as the other certificate. What gives?  Why would this be different?  What can I do to get this ca cert to be trusted on my client? Thanks!
Snapshots!  Right!  That was it. I can delete the snapshots to remedy that, but would there be a way to remove that without deleting the snapshot?  I'm guessing not. Thanks!
I have a few VMs that show they are attached to a datastore, but when you look at the settings both in the client and in the vmx file there is nothing that is referring to that datastore.  And, t... See more...
I have a few VMs that show they are attached to a datastore, but when you look at the settings both in the client and in the vmx file there is nothing that is referring to that datastore.  And, to top it off, the datastore is just a file-like repository that I only upload iso files to to mount to the cd roms.  I've made sure that the iso isn't mounted on the machine (of course) and have poured through every other part of the config, but yet it shows attached to that datastore, both through the client and through a powercli script. When you browse the datastore, there are no folders or files on there that are referring to that virtual machine.  I have about 10 machines all in this predicament.  Any ideas? Thanks!
ESXi 5.1 2000251 with vcenter 5.1 1123961 I've built some windows 7 SP1 machines for virtual desktop, and these particular machines are having a hard time shutting down, BUT only when you choo... See more...
ESXi 5.1 2000251 with vcenter 5.1 1123961 I've built some windows 7 SP1 machines for virtual desktop, and these particular machines are having a hard time shutting down, BUT only when you choose reboot.  If you choose to power off, they shut down fine.  When you choose to reboot, windows goes to shut down, and displays "Shutting Down" with the circle spinning.  It'll do that until it's done, but instead of the VM going to bios post, it hangs at the windows Shutting Down with a stuck spinning circle.  When you choose shut down, windows shuts down and powers off properly. Checking the event log, it appears windows is shutting all the way down, as there are no errors in the log to show a dirty shutdown.  So, I think that windows is shutting down all the way just fine, but the problem is when it tries to hand off control back to the bios so it can post, it can't do it.  Does anyone have any ideas or help? Let me know what other info or logs I can provide to help. Thanks!
Do you have the 2012 R2 option for the OS in your drop down list?  Or did you just choose the 2012 one? Thanks
Yes, any update on this?  I'm wondering the same thing.  Why the list says (in my case) esxi 5.1 U2 is supported for server 2012 R2, but it does not show up on the list of OS's.  I'm guessing it'... See more...
Yes, any update on this?  I'm wondering the same thing.  Why the list says (in my case) esxi 5.1 U2 is supported for server 2012 R2, but it does not show up on the list of OS's.  I'm guessing it'll be fine still, as VMWare Tools won't give it the R2 drivers, but I think the 2012 ones are probably going to be fine for R2 as well. Thanks
huh, i take that back.  I think this whole time I just wasn't getting the right combination of vcpu and coresPerSocket.  Now that I've set the vcpu's to 4 and cores to 2, XP is showing four CPUs.... See more...
huh, i take that back.  I think this whole time I just wasn't getting the right combination of vcpu and coresPerSocket.  Now that I've set the vcpu's to 4 and cores to 2, XP is showing four CPUs.  I know it's seeing cores now too, because XP technically only supports 2 CPUs.  Thanks for finally explaining that to me.  I kind of wish vmware support would've known how this works, so I didn't have to waste an hour and a half with them. Thanks
Thanks for your reply.  So, if I understand this right, this is more of a division thing instead of a multiplication thing like what we're used to on a physical machine.  So, if I wanted 2 quad c... See more...
Thanks for your reply.  So, if I understand this right, this is more of a division thing instead of a multiplication thing like what we're used to on a physical machine.  So, if I wanted 2 quad core processors in a vm, I would give it 8 vcpu's and set the coresPerSocket to 4?  If I wanted 4 dual core processors, i would have 8 vcpu's and coresPerSocket set to 2? If that's correct, I think I'm getting it now. but, one question I have is, if I want to do like your example above, and make two dual core cpu's in an OS like windows XP pro that only supports 2 CPU's that won't work.  Task manager only shows two CPU's.  XP only supports two CPUs, but will support multiple cores, so that's a way around the CPU limit.  But, it sounds like when it's a vm, I can't get around that limit... Thanks!
So, after spending and hour and a half on the phone with vmware support, they finally came back and said that the cores you enable per socket in this setting would not be visible to the guest OS ... See more...
So, after spending and hour and a half on the phone with vmware support, they finally came back and said that the cores you enable per socket in this setting would not be visible to the guest OS like they would be on a physical host.  Anyone familiar with this?  I'm not exactly convinced, and since the first support guy seemed to be fumbling around for so long without coming up with this makes me think that they didn't have an answer as to why this was happening, so they just said, "yeah, they're there, trust me.  The OS just won't see them" I'm not convinced...
That all depends.  When I add another vcpu, I'll see multiple processors in device manager.  I've tried setting 2 vcpus with 2 cores each in the advanced settings, which one would think you'd see... See more...
That all depends.  When I add another vcpu, I'll see multiple processors in device manager.  I've tried setting 2 vcpus with 2 cores each in the advanced settings, which one would think you'd see 4 processors in device manager and/or 4 graphs in task manager.  Also, in wmic / cpu, I would think that it would report the total number of cores (4), but it doesn't.  Only reports 2. So my thought is that windows just isn't picking up the changes to the vmx file, I think. Thanks!
I have an existing windows 7 x64 enterprise guest that I'd like to add more CPU cores to.  I've followed the document from http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd... See more...
I have an existing windows 7 x64 enterprise guest that I'd like to add more CPU cores to.  I've followed the document from http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1010184 and set the amount of cores to 2.  Right now I have a single vcpu, so I would expect to see two graphs in task manager, but I don't.  I only have one.  Also, device manager shows one cpu, and when I run wmic > cpu, I confirm that NumberOfCores is 1. I've triple checked to make sure that I've spelled cpuid.coresPerSocket is spelled correctly and everything else.  Any idea why is seems these extra cores won't enable in the guest OS? ESX 4.1.0 502767 Windows 7 Enterprise x64 SP1 (also tried on Windows XP Pro SP3) Thanks!
thanks!
Thanks for the reply.  So if I created the RDM to be 1.9tb it should work? Thanks!
I'm having a time trying to figure out what the largest RDM disk is that I can create for a VM.  At first, I created a 2.8tb volume on the san, and of course when I tried to add it, it was reject... See more...
I'm having a time trying to figure out what the largest RDM disk is that I can create for a VM.  At first, I created a 2.8tb volume on the san, and of course when I tried to add it, it was rejected saying that the vmdk is larger than the maximum size supported by the datastore.  So, I double-checked the datastore settings, and with some reading found that using an 8MB block size for your datastore should allow a maximum RDM of 2tb.  At that point I deleted the datastore, created it with 8MB block size (total size of the datastore is 56gb), and resized the RDM to 2tb.  I went back to readd the RDM and I still get the error that it is too big  for the datastore. So, what's the biggest I can use here?  I really want at least a 2tb volume, as this is for a storage NAS I'm building.  Seems silly that if you're using an RDM you're limited to the datastore that the machine is running on.  I understand why, but still seems silly. Anyways, if anyone can help I'd appreciate it.  Thanks!
My environment: 5 HP DL380 G6 servers, 60gb RAM, 8 network ports      - 4 onboard NICs                - vmnic0, vmnic1,vmnic2,vmnic3                - All NICs go to switch 1      - PCI car... See more...
My environment: 5 HP DL380 G6 servers, 60gb RAM, 8 network ports      - 4 onboard NICs                - vmnic0, vmnic1,vmnic2,vmnic3                - All NICs go to switch 1      - PCI card w/4 port NICs                - vmnic4, vmnic5, vmnic6, vmnic7                - All NICs go to switch 2 Fiber attached SAN through Emulex HBAs My network config as follows: vswitch0: Service Console Only      Contains vmnic0 and vmnic7 vswitch1: vmotion network, service console 2      Contains vmnic1 and vmnic 6 vdistributed switch: Production Server Network      Contains vmnic2 and vmnic5 So, as you can see, I have redundant network connections from each vswitch to each physical switch.  Physical switch layout is: Cisco 2350 in each server rack (hence switch 1 and switch 2 etc...) uplink to Cisco 6506 core via 20gb etherchannel from each 2350 one esx server, esx10 is connected to switch 1 and switch 2. other esx servers, esx01, 02, 03 , and 04 are connected to switches 3, 4, 5 and 6 I recently had one of my 2350 switches go down that connected esx10.  Instead of esx10 just failing to the other NICs on the server, the rest of the cluster saw esx10 as down and performed an HA failover of the guests that were on it, resulting in downtime of those servers as they rebooted on the other esx hosts. My question, maybe problem, is why didn't the connections failover instead of migrating the guests?  The failure in the switch was in the etherchannel uplink, not the switch itself, so the physical NIC connections were still live.  But shouldn't there be some kind of heartbeat to account for downstream network failures?  I put in all this network redundancy just for failures like this, but it all seems moot when I get downtime anyways from an HA migration with reboot. Any ideas are greatly appreciated.  Thanks!
Thanks for the reply.  Do have any idea why there's a disconnect between what the front panel is saying and what iLo is saying? Thanks!
I have a few DL 380 G5 servers running esx 4.1 that I'm getting ready to lock away at a remote site 300 miles away.  As I'm finishing up the install, I have a memory light flashing on the front p... See more...
I have a few DL 380 G5 servers running esx 4.1 that I'm getting ready to lock away at a remote site 300 miles away.  As I'm finishing up the install, I have a memory light flashing on the front panel of the server.  Ok, I have a bad DIMM or whatever, but it got me thinking how would I know about this from afar?  First, I went in to vcenter and looked at the hardware status of the server, and and the offending DIMM just reads the same as all the others, reporting what it is, so that's not going to work.  I have the iLo configured so I went in to that and looked at the memory tab in system health, and it just reports all the DIMMS in there and their specs.  That's not going to help.  I have Insight Manager installed, but my thought is that if the iLo isn't seeing a problem then Insight Manager isn't going to see it either. Does anyone have any experience with this?  Why is there a disconnect between what the front panel is reporting and what iLo says?  I don't get that. Also, reseating the DIMM makes the light go away for a few minutes, then comes back, so it's probably bad.  I'd just like to be able to find this out remotely. Thanks!
ok, so I'm thinking of a way I can back up my datastores.  My environment: 4 esx 4.1 servers vcenter 4.1 Compellent SAN Commvault Simpana 8.0 What I am currently doing with other luns on... See more...
ok, so I'm thinking of a way I can back up my datastores.  My environment: 4 esx 4.1 servers vcenter 4.1 Compellent SAN Commvault Simpana 8.0 What I am currently doing with other luns on my san is taking the latest snapshot of the desired Compellent volume and mounting it directly to my Commvault media agent.  Then I have a tape backup scheduled periodically that will back that snapshotted volume to tape, all without touching the actual client the volumes were coming from. I want to apply this to my vmware datastores as well, but with no way for linux to read the vmfs filesystem, I can make it happen.  So, my crazy idea was to build an ESXi 4.1 server, that's specifically just for mounting volumes and backing things up.  it wouldn't be part of any vcenter or cluster or anything.  I can have my shapshotted luns from the compellent mount to that server and it will read the vmfs file system.  Now, I still need to get those to tape through the media agent somehow.  So, I'm presented with a couple choices: 1.)  do a command similar to the following:          tar cvf - /vmfs/volumes/cml_os_datastore02/ | ssh user@cvmediaagent "cat > /vmbackup/test/testds1.tar.gz" Which will create a gzip file of all the machines in the datastore, copying it to the media agent server which can then back it up to tape.  This can work, but is not ideal because it has to copy all that data over the network and then the machines are all contained in the gzip file. 2.)  export the volume that has the snapshot to NFS, then mount that NFS share to the media agent server which can then back that mount point up to tape.  This is what I really want to do, but in looking at the ESXi /etc directory there's no export folder, which of course I'm not surprised. So...is there any way I can export volumes on ESXi to an NFS share?  If not, can it be done with regular ESX?  I'm sure this sounds ghetto, but I think it's a pretty neat idea to backup the snapshots of the datastore luns. Thanks for any ideas!
I have this exact same issue. I would've thought that more people would've seen this. I've had this issue on different flavors of vmware, too. I started seeing it on ESXi 3.5, and now I'm on E... See more...
I have this exact same issue. I would've thought that more people would've seen this. I've had this issue on different flavors of vmware, too. I started seeing it on ESXi 3.5, and now I'm on ESX 4 208167, and it's done it on both. It's funny, because if you do a reboot from within windows, it will reboot and stay in the loading bar forever. If I shut down the machine from within windows, and power it on, then it loads fine. If I kill it when it appears to be hanging during the loading bar, then turn it back on, then again it loads fine. It does this with windows 2003, 2008, whatever. (haven't tried it with linux, though). And, it's not consistent. Sometimes it will boot fine. Like I said, happens on so far two different platforms, different physical esx servers and different guests. My assumption is that it's a bug in vmware that hasn't been addressed from 3.5 to 4.0. Maybe? Any ideas? Thanks
Hello. So I have been using VMWare Server for a long while now, and I decided to get the free ESXi download and start trying to use that from now on. Using a red hat OS, server ran pretty sol... See more...
Hello. So I have been using VMWare Server for a long while now, and I decided to get the free ESXi download and start trying to use that from now on. Using a red hat OS, server ran pretty solid for me with few complaints. With esxi, I am having a few problems right out of the gate that I can't seem to find answers on by searching. I use RIS for all my server builds, and it's worked awesome up to now. With this esxi server, the first vm I built (Windows Server 2003 std) worked great. Completed in less than 15 minutes, I think. Awesome! So, I go to build the next server, and it blue screens when it's in text mode setup and is trying to start windows (the handoff between PXE to windows nic driver) and says that there's a duplicate IP address and shut it down to prevent damage. Once I power it off, when I turn it back on, I just get a flashing cursor and it goes nowhere. The event log then says that the CPU has been disabled by the gues operating system, and you need to power off or reset the machine... which I do, but it is forever doomed to only the cursor. It'll also drop an information bar saying error connecting to /bin/vmx process. So, I delete the machine, recreate it, and the same process all over again. I turned off the other machine that successfully installed, which did not make a difference. I am running VMWare ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 110271 (with the HP Management Components) on an HP DL380 G3 with 3GB ram. Any help is appreciated! Thanks!