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Posts by gertvangorp

31
Oct

Resizing a system or data disk in a virtual machine

I get a lot of questions of students and customers about resizing a virtual disk. This is the reason for this blog.

The following procedure will guide you step by step through the process of resizing (increasing) a disk of a virtual machine.

Before you make virtual hardware changes be sure you have taken a full backup of the virtual machine.

 

NOTE: If you do not want any troubles only increase the disk size. Decreasing can cause loss of data.

 

Flow

 

Increase Disk using diskpart

Step 1: Edit the virtual machine settings and increase the size of the disk (VMDK).

Step 2: Open the console of this virtual machine and start a command prompt.

Step 3: Start diskpart and execute following steps.

list volume
à this gives you a list of the available partitions

select volume x
à select the partition number you want to increase

extend
à this will add the empty disk space into the partition.

Now the partition has increased in size.

NOTE: On Windows 2008 this can be done via the Device Manager / Storage, but I have seen some weird things like showing incorrect partition sizes.

 

Increase Disk using Third Party tool

Since I have some great experiences with the Acronis Disk Director tool I will explain the steps to increase a disk using this tool. Another tool that can be used is e.g. GParted.

Step 1: Be sure you have a boot image (ISO) of the Acronis Disk Director Tool that supports your guest OS.

Step 2: Boot your virtual machine using the boot image ISO. Use the ESC button during booting your virtual machine to activate the “one time boo menu”

Step 3: Select the partition you want to increase and right mouse click on it. Then select “Resize Volume”

Step 4: Increase the disk space of the selected partitions by decreasing the unallocated space to 0

Step 5: After increasing the partition you have to commit the changes.

Step 6: Now you need to reboot your virtual machine after disconnecting the boot image.

12
Jul

VMware Cloud Infrastructure & Management

Today 12th of July VMware announced a new suite of products. Look here for news release.

I the near future I will blog about this new release in a sort of “How to” format to introduce the new feature.

 

The suite consists out of following products.

VMware vSphere 5.0

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0

VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0

vShield App 5.0 with Data Security

VMware vCloud Director 1.5

A new product most of the time means, a new set of licenses. VMware moved from 6 different licenses to 5, they removed the Advanced license. Lucky for the owners of this license (with a active subscription, they will be migrated to Enterprise. Look here for the license paper

 

Here a list of vSphere 5 introduction links

VMware Cloud Infrastructure: http://www.vmware.com/cloud-infrastructure/

The Console Blog: VMware Unveils vSphere 5 and the Cloud Infrastructure Suite

NTPRO: http://www.ntpro.nl/blog/

Kendrickcolemand: vCenter 5 – To Appliance or Not?, Using VMware AutoDeploy for ESXi

YellowBricks.com Live BLogging, vSphere 5.0 Clustering technical deepdive

UP2V: http://up2v.nl/

VmwareTips: VMware 2011 Mega Launch

Virtual Geek: Raising the Bar V = vSphere 5!

CRN VMware Adds Virtual Machine-Based Licensing In vSphere 5

vTexan: really cool things in vSphere5

27
Jun

VMware vCenter Error Call “PropertyCollector.RetrieveContents” for object “propertyCollector” on vCenter Server failed

A customer of mine called me with a weird problem with a Template which was converted back to a Virtual Machine. See here the problem which occurs when the customer wanted to edit the settings of this VM.

The cause of this problem is that an ISO was mounted from a datastore which does not exist anymore.

To solve this problem, just connect to the ESX host where the VM is registered on. Edit the setting here and put the CDROM on “Client Device”.

Then check on which datastore the VM is located. Then unregister and register the VM again in the ESX host. Now you are able again to edit jthe setting of this VM via vCenter

30
May

Unable to remove VMware ESXi host in VMware vCenter

During a migration process from ESX to ESXi at a customer site we had a problem removing a server from the vCenter inventory.

We checked the permissions on this server and we saw that the user who wanted to remove the server was admin on datacenter level. Here the screen we got.

Knowing there is a PowerCLI command to remove a ESXi host from the vCenter, we walked that way with success.

I used this
PowerCLI script to remove this server from the inventory after moving the
server out of the cluster to the datacenter level.


Connect-VIServer vCenterServer

Remove-VMHost “HostThatCannotBeRemovedViaGui” –confirm:$false

Disconnect-VIServer –confirm:$false

26
May

How to recover SA password on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

When you are using MS SQL Server in mixed mode, it is very important that you know your SA password.

There can be different reasons you lost the password

  • Person who installed the SQL Server knows the password but has left the building.
  • You did not write down the password in your password file
  • Password file is lost
  • …

Steps to recover the SA password

  • Start SQL Server Configuration Manager

  • Stop the SQL services

  • Edit the properties of the SQL Service

  • Change the startup parameters of the SQL service by adding a –m; in front of the existing parameters

  • Start the SQL services. These are now running in Single User Mode.
  • Start CMD on tthe SQL server
  • Start the SQLCMD command. Now you will see following screen

  • Now we create a new user. Enter following commands
    • CREATE LOGIN recovery WITH PASSWORD = ‘TopSecret 1′ (Remember SQL server has default strong password policy
    • Go
      • Now this user is created
  • Now we grant the user a SYSADMIN roles using the same SQLCMD window.
    • sp_addsrvrolemember ‘recovery’, ‘sysadmin’
    • go
  • Stop the SQL service again
  • Change the SQL service properties back to the default settings

  • Start the SQL service again and use the new created login (recovery in my example)
  • Go via the security panel to the properties and change the password of the SA account.

  • Now write down the new SA password.
18
Mar

VMware vSphere Client for Ipad now avaible

Since VMworld San Francisco 2010 we are waiting for this nice app for the Ipad. VMware today released this app via the iTunes store for FREE (Direct Link), just as the VMware View Client for IPAD (Direct Link).

 What are the features available in this app?

  • Search for vSphere hosts and virtual machines in your vSphere environment
  • Monitor the performance of vSphere hosts and virtual machines
  • Manage virtual machines with the ability to start, stop and suspend
  • View and restore your virtual machines’ snapshots
  • Reboot vSphere hosts or put them into maintenance mode
  • Diagnose vSphere hosts and virtual machines using built-in ping and traceroute tools

 

 

 

 

 

What is required for this app to be able to manage your vCenter?

  • vCenter Mobile Access (vCMA) virtual appliance available from the VMware Labs: http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vcma (Now supports SSL)

    NOTE: This app is available as is, with community support.

  • Network connection to the vCMA virtual appliance; can use built-in VPN client
  • VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server

Look at my blog entry to see how to setup the vCMA : limited-vsphere-management-using-a-mobile-device

An overview of the architecture

Some interesting links

22
Feb

(Limited) vSphere management using a mobile device

On the VMware Labs website you can find a free appliance that can give you limited access to the management tools available in vSphere vCenter. The appliance is called vCMA or vCenter Mobile Access.

How to install?

  • Go to the vmware.com/labs website and download vCMA as a OVF. Jump to site
  • Extract the zip file that contains the OVF.
  • In vCenter, go File – Deploy from OVF and point to the extracted OVF file.
  • Once deployed, you can start the VM.
  • After the VM is started, there are 3 options to change settings
    • Using the menus on the console (to set network, timezone, login in to the command console)

    • Using the web interface https://vcma-host-or-ip:5480

       

    • Or using the command console. (use login in first screen)

       

      • By default the root account has as password vmware (remember the console is by default in qwerty)

 

Special configuration settings to thing about!

  • Set the IP to a fixed address
  • Enter the DNS servers
  • Change the default hostname and domainname. (http://communities.vmware.com/message/1335001)
  • Change the root default password using the passwd, in the command console

How to use?

  • It is very easy to start using this app.
  • Open a browser (on you PC or mobile device)
  • Point to http:// vcma-host-or-ip/vim (the folder /vim is needed and I hope VMware will change this in a next release)
  • Enter the vCenter server name and the userID and password you normally use in the vcenter.
  • Now you can do some functions like
    • vMotion
    • Edit settings of a VM
    • Change Powerstates of a VM
    • Etc, install and discover.

 

Alternative apps you need to buy!

vManage : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmanage/id318737136?mt=8

iDatacenter http://nym.se/idatacenter/ (iPAD)

iVMControl : http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ivmcontrol-control-vmware/id404263941?mt=8 (iPAD, iPhone)

18
Feb

Website was gone for some hours

The upgrade to wordpress 3.05 did go as smooth as it should be.  Website was completely corrupt.  and as each good IT guy I had a backup (NOT).  Copied all files that were still available, copied the WP 3.05 sources to my web host, then the config file back and everything in the contect dir (database was still ok) and lucky everything came up again.  Only updating the plugins and finished I was.

I also added the WPTOUCH plugin so the website has a nice view on the mobilephones as iPhone and Android.

Any good backup plugis available?   please recommend….

24
Jan

vCenter service (VPXD) configuration and commandline options

In my previous post about fixing a administrator issue on the vCenter Server, Eric Sloof mentioned in his post and options that needs to be set in the vpxd.cfg. To give you a complete overview here a nice blog from Boche.net

 

Overview of vcxd.cfg options and commandline parameters

 

Thanks Eric and Boche for sharing.

24
Jan

How to fix lost administrator rights in vCenter

During Vmware vSphere ICM classess it has happened that during the “Access Control” labs students are locked out of their vCenter.

 

Thanks to a blog of Eric Sloof we can fix this problem? Follow me

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