COS's Accepted Solutions

Looks like the workaround is again to grant the universe read only access to the vCenter server.... VMware KB: Cannot view advanced performance data charts in VMware vCenter Server 6.0 Boooo...... We did not have this problem in the thick Client!!!

OK, after working with VMware on this issue, I think I figured it out. All my hosts are DL360 G6 Servers. All my hosts are run the same build ESX from "VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-HP-600.9.2.38-Mar2015.iso". Downloaded from HP. All builds are in Evaluation mode. After placing a call to VMware, they had me build some ESX VM's, platform services and vcenter VM's on an ESX host. We hung up because it took all day to spin up. Once I got all the pieces (sql server, esx vm's, platform server & vcenter) up in the nested virtualization, I created my Datacenter, then Cluster then added the ESX hosts. The hosts added fine, no errors. Then I remembered when I installed ESX inside a VM, I got upset that the iso I used from HP wouldn't work in my nested VM because of the virtualized hardware. Then a the light came on in my head. Let's rebuild the entire physical cluster but NOT use the HP provided iso file but use the VMware provided iso file "VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0-2159203.x86_64.iso". I did that today. I rebuilt all the ESX hosts with the VMware provided iso file..... Spun up all the required VM's SQL Server, Platform Services VM, vCenter VM. My AD & DNS VM's are on another server so it's been up the whole time. Logged into the web interface (Yuck!). Created my Datacenter.... Created My Cluster.... Added all the hosts to my Cluster. It all worked!!!! So, if you are experiencing the same issue I am, consider building your ESX hosts with the VMware provided iso file and try it. In my case, the HP provided iso file did not function properly for me. I also downloaded the HP iso file 2 other times to make sure and do a sanity check and it did the same thing. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Did you find this helpful? Let us know by completing this survey (takes 1 minute!)"

Your cluster inventory is in a backend SQL Database, you can directly query the SQL DB.... --Get RAW data for all VM's... SELECT     v.NAME, v.DNS_NAME, v.IP_ADDRESS, v.MEM_SIZE_MB, v.NUM_VCPU, v.GUEST_OS, v.DESCRIPTION, v.ANNOTATION, v.VMID, f.FIELDVALUE FROM         VPXV_VMS AS v LEFT OUTER JOIN                       VPXV_VM_FIELDS AS f ON v.VMID = f.VMID AND f.FIELDID = 142 ORDER BY v.NAME Anyone correct me if I'm wrong but, normally vCenter will show the VM's grey'd out.

You can use both. Flatfile vmdk disks will require some tweaking to the disk config via the .vmx file to allow it to be used as shared disk resources. This config will allow you to use the snapshot feature in ESX. At least that what I last saw, please correct me if I'm wrong anyone. RAW disk is a little simpler in that you just present your LUN to both Guest OS's and MSCS will handle all the disk SCSI reservation and disk "Handles". This method can NOT use the snapshot feature in ESX. So best practice is to use your SAN solutions features for snapshotting.

I concur. Buy a single Dual Quad Core CPU DL380G5 with redundant fibre HBA's and a quad port NIC (Or multiple physical NIC's) and use a good fibre SAN. Config RAID for best performance. You really don't need three new physical servers. Isolate each VM to their own NIC. You'll see the same performance because file servers are not CPU or Memory intensive. But if you need the excuse to get more hardware, sure, say you need three DL380G5's. :op