marcelo_soares Tracker

vCenter 7.0 installation stuck at 80% (Waiting for RPM...)

marcelo_soares — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 11:06:00 GMT

I was trying to install a vCenter for a lab on top of a ESXi 6.7 using the FREE license. Have verified several things:

- NTP was in place

- DNS records all good

- Enough resources

- Etc...

I realized that when using the FREE license on the ESXi hosting the vCenter appliance, seems that the installer can´t set the IP of the VCSA remotely using the OVA features. I just added a trial license back to the ESX and the installation worked.

I could not find any documentation on this: Software Requirements for the vCenter Server Appliance

Hope this helps,

Marcelo

Re: VCSA installation stuck at 80%

marcelo_soares — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 11:01:40 GMT

It happened with me as well. It turns out to tbe the license on the ESX I was installing to (free one, it was for a lab). vCenter can´t be installed on a free ESXi - must be trial or licensed ESXi.

Re: VCSA 6.5 Update 1 - VUM Service will not start

marcelo_soares — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 22:25:38 GMT

After 3 days looking for a solution I found this, and it worked as expected. I believe you should include this to the KB 76298 VMware Knowledge Base

Thanks,

Marcelo

Re: VM stops pinging after vmotion

marcelo_soares — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 18:10:11 GMT

- On /var/log/vmkernel are you seeing any errors on vmnic4?

- VM1 and VM2 are both using the same VLAN (and you are sure VM2 is really working)?

Re: Is VMWare EXSI the right product for this requirements?

marcelo_soares — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 18:05:27 GMT

Hi HexDump,

Yes, ESXi can do all 4 topics you asked on your original request, as other hypervisors can also do (like hyper-v for example).

ESXi can be executed with a free license, you can download it from here: https://www.vmware.com/go/get-free-esxi

Don´t forget to check VMware HCL first if you will be purchasing hardware for that. You can also purchase servers on the cloud for it, like from Hetzner or OVH.

Hope this helps you.

VCP 6 - new format and actual tips of the REAL EXAMS

marcelo_soares — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 21:44:00 GMT

Thatś right, you read correctly: now VCP 6 is composed of TWO exams, and you need to get a minimum score of 300 on each one. Check here‌ the requirements, proces and details to do the test.

Two tests now. The 2V0-620 (vSphere 6 Foundations) is needed for any VCP 6 level certification (DCV – Data Center Virtualization, Cloud, Desktop and NX – NSX and networking). If you are planning some certification besides DCV, you ony need to do this exam once. It have 65 questions, and is simmilar to the VCA test but with more technical questions, specifically about the new products of the vSphere 6 family (VSAN 6.x, vRealize, VVOLs) and new features (Content Catalog, long distance vMotion, etc). There is a exam simulator (click here‌)that can be useful to understand the level of the questions present on the exam. Detailed information about the exam can be found in vSphere 6 Foundations Exam.

The 2V0-621 test, Data Center Virtualization, is more complex and have 85 questions. Is a good test as it require a good practical knowledge in VMware environments - you can't only make the vSphere ICM course. There is also a simulate test, which you can find it here.

Some tips about the exam content, as I have passed both BETA (few months ago) and also the actual exam yesterday:

A ot of questions about resource pools (shares and reservations). Check exactly what are the default values of the shares high, medium and low because some questions needs mathematical calculations over these values and don't provide them.
A lot of questions about permissions, some about COntent Libreries permissions. Check exactly what kind of permission each vCenter predefined role have. There are also questions about the ESXi integration with AD.
Some questions aboutVSAN, what happen if there is a failure, fault domaisn, and new features on version 6.1.
Check the new traffic types enabled on vmkernel interfaces and what each one does.
Some questions about VMware Converter, how to change/add disks during the conversion, advanced options, etc.
Know how to operate a VM from command line, using SSH or DCUI, and also how to use esxcli.
Know what are and how the native multipathing policies work (MRU, Fixed, RR).
Know PSC/SSO. A ot of questions were regarding Identity Sources, how to configure it and what types are.
There were no questions about maximuns, just indirect questions about it (i.e. is it possible to create a VM with 150 vCPUs?)

Some other tips:

Read the blueprint, now directly availabe on the links provided above. There are some questions that are referenced on the most hidden paces fro the blueprint content.
Some questions from the simulate tests are on the actual test, but slightly different (usually with different answers options).
Read all questions CAREFULLY, mostly if english is not your native language.

These tips were related to MY TEST, each one is different and there is a big number of possible questions. Your test may be different from mine.

Hope this helps, if you need any other information, don't hesitate in contacting me over the comments or twitter (@mtsoares42).

Re: Vsan License Liftetime?

marcelo_soares — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:44:31 GMT

The license for VSAN have no expiration. You may have a date limit for support subscription (SnS) from 1 to 3 years,but you can renew it.

As the license is purchased per processor (or per VM in case of a VDI deployment) you can have as much ESX servers in a cluster your license supports, does not matter what hosts are these - so yes, you can use the license code in any hosts,never having more CPUs on the cluster than the VSAN CPU count have.

Re: Identify/match physical disks with disks present in VSAN disk group

marcelo_soares — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 18:33:46 GMT

You can try with

esxcli storage core device list

Although I would love to get this output and also the output you are seeing on hpssacli so we can try to get to it.

Marcelo

Re: vSAN - Fault Domains Error

marcelo_soares — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 01:29:12 GMT

Hi MartinKerr,

Fault domais, as mentioned before, are only used if you have mutiple racks/chassis and want to separate your ESXi servers on this kind of organization - if you loose one entire rack, VMs are still available on the other. Fault domains must have at least 3 hosts each (or 2 hosts and a witness host in case of VSAN 6.1).

In your case, having only 3 ESX server in the cluster, you CAN'T use fault domains. You must remove all domains you created,leaving your ESX servers not associated with any domain. That way each one of them will be considered a fault domain themselves.

Let me know if this helps you on your configuration.

Marcelo

Re: Upgrade from ESX 4.1U1 to ESXI 5.5

marcelo_soares — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:53:50 GMT

Yes you can. You can also add all VMs back with a simple command line, you can find it on my blog: How to register all VMs on all datastores with one command

Re: VM wants disk consolidation, but no snapshots are listed in the Snapshot Manager

marcelo_soares — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:05:57 GMT

This is the "Consolidatio needed" alarm funcion - tell you when there is a snapshot but it is not listed on the Snap Manager. You can safely consolidate the snapshots, it will try to delete all without touching the actual state of your VM.

Re: vSphere Client could not connect to Host. An unknown connection error occurred.

marcelo_soares — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:04:09 GMT

To check if it is network related or not, enter on ESX over SSH and type the following command:

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

It should give you a list of your VMs, and if it does, it means your hostd is alive and the problem should be network related. If not, we may need to check hostd logs. Let's see what the output will be.

Re: Esxi 5.5 unable to create VM (A general system error...)

marcelo_soares — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 16:01:38 GMT

In what part of the New VM wizard are you getting this error? Can you provide a screenshot?

Re: VSS backup and security when converting over the network

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 13:19:20 GMT

Yes it does, the copy goes anyway on the 443 and 902 port, even if you connect to the ESXi or vCenter as Conversion destination.

Re: VSS backup and security when converting over the network

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 12:59:21 GMT

All transfers between the Converter Agent/Converter Standalone Server to the vCenter server are encrypted. In fact, when you convert a physical machine to a vSphere environment, the connection is made directly to the destination ESXi, vCenter does not participate on this - and is also encripted (being sent to ESXi 443 and 902 ports - encrypted with SSL).

You can check this on KB http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1012382

Converter 5.x

443, 902

TCP

Powered-on Source Windows machine

ESXi/ESX Host

Required for data transfer to destination ESXi/ESX host

Hope this helps.

Marcelo

Re: Steps for cold conversion

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 12:53:36 GMT

If the machine you want to convert is a physical one, you can't use Converter for a cold migration (not supported anymore). You can do the hot conversion, and usually it works just fine.

You can also use Symantec Ghost, for example, to create an offline image of your machine and then convert it to vSphere. Check the manual, page 20, for supported source types: https://www.vmware.com/pdf/convsa_55_guide.pdf

Good luck with your conversion, let us know if it worked.

Marcelo

Re: cant create array manager [ vSRM 5.8 + VNXe 3150 ]

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 12:50:20 GMT

Check for the SRA logs, they should be at:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\scripts\SAN\<SRA Vendor Name>\log\
C:\Program Files\<SRA Vendor Name>\

According to the KB article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021802

Good luck with your implementation.

Re: Which build patch to download from the download portal??

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 03:06:08 GMT

Yes, right. The last update for 4.1 is U3, and then you can apply all the subsequent patches.

Re: ESX 5.5 raid5 9TB

marcelo_soares — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 03:00:21 GMT

Is this 9TB array a external storage? Why would you want a opensource NAS if you seem to already have a external storage?

Re: Network questions: Managment Network, NIC allocation and High Availability

marcelo_soares — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 21:33:00 GMT

About the broadcast of vMotion, you are right - that's why you need to, at least, separate the management network and vmotion network on VLANs.