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Posts from the ‘VMware’ Category

8
Jan

Migrating Buslogic to LSI Logic SCSI controller in a Virtual Machine

When you use convertor to migrate a physical machine to a virtual machine you get a BusLogic Controller as SCSI controller. Following is tested on vSphere 4.1 with a Virtual Machine hardware version 7

In the Virtual Machine Settings you see this.

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In your device manager it is present as a VMware SCSI controller

If you want to change this to a LSI Logic SCSI controller because some application may need it like Trend Micro Deep Security – vShield, you have to follow steps below to get it working

Steps to convert

  • Install the latest VMware Tools.
  • Power down the Virtual Machine (try to use the shutdown so your OS is closed correctly.)
  • Edit Settings of the Virtual Machine and add a new disk (can be small because this will be removed afterwards). We cannot add a new SCSI controller without adding a disk.
  • When you add a new disk select a different SCSI-id then the existing SCSI Controller. First number in the ID is the number of the SCSI controller.

     

  • When the disk is updated, the type of the SCSI controller must be changed.

     

  • When the configuration is updated, you can restart the VM
  • In your device manager you now see 2 types of SCSI controllers

     

  • When you see the LSI logic SCSI controller you can shut down the VM again. Then will remove the just added disk and change the type of SCSI Controller 0

     

  • When this is finished you can restart the Virtual Machine
  • After starting the Virtual Machine you see that new hardware is found, now you need to reboot once more. (Last time to reboot).
  • Now for best practices you need to remove all unused devices in you device manager. Therefor you need to start device manager using a special set parameter.
    • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    • devmgmt.msc

If you now select the SCSI and RAID Controllers, you will see some grayed-out devices. These devices should be uninstalled

  • Now you are done.
6
Jan

VSS issues when doing backups using VMware VDR

Hi,

During some consultancy projects @ SMB customers where we needed to install and configure VMware VDR to do some backups, we had some issues with Windows Machines and VSS. The result of the these errors with VSS was that the VDR backup jobs all failed.

Here some possible solutions (gonna try to keep the list up to date.)

  • VSS could not be started on a Windows 2003 server

We had to reregister all VSS DLL’s, restart the server and everything was working again. (check this)

VMware KB Articles about possible VDR / VSS issues.

Cannot create quieced snapshots if backup or system recovery applications are installed KB 1009558

Troubleshooting Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) quiesce related issues KB 1007696

A virtual machine can freeze under load when you take quiesced snapshots or use custom quiescing scripts KB 5962168

Because VDR is taking snapshots of your virtual machines this can also be a interesing KB

Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESX KB 1015180

9
Nov

P2V issues with old hardware & IP addresses

Doing a P2V is very easy using the VMware Converter (Standard / Enterprise).  But after the machine has been migrated the P2V is not yet finished, we need to do some extra stuff.

  • Remove all hardware related software via add / remove programs (if possible) or disable the service.
  • Old unused devices should be removed using device manager after setting a special SET parameter (set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1).  This can be done manually are using a script.
  • Update virtual hardware settings (CPU / Memory)
  • Enter the IP configuration on the new NIC.  (Can be automated)
  • Depending on the MS license you are using you maybe need to reactivate.
26
Oct

vCenter VPXD service stopped few second after start

In my home lab I have a setup with has 1 VC VM and 2 ESXi hosts (Dell PowerEdge T410) which are connected to a Equallogic PS5000 SAN.

The VC and the VC database are both on a different VM.

While I was debugging a powerCLI script for a customer I noticed that my vCenter Service stopped working (and tried to restart automaticaly) without success.

In the Eventviewer I saw following errors:

  • In the System Log

The VMware VirtualCenter Server service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 300000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

  • In the Application Log

An unrecoverable problem has occurred, stopping the VMware VirtualCenter service. Error: Error[VdbODBCError] (-1) “ODBC error: (42000) – [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]The transaction log for database ‘VC’ is full. To find out why space in the log cannot be reused, see the log_reuse_wait_desc column in sys.databases” is returned when executing SQL statement “UPDATE VPX_DATASTORE WITH (ROWLOCK) SET NAME = ? , STORAGE_URL = ? , CAPACITY = ? , FREE_SPACE = ? , TYPE = ? , DATACENTER_ID = ? , IORM_ENABLED = ? , IORM_CONGESTION_THRESHOLD = ? WHERE ID = ?”

  • In the C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs I saw erros like “Connection refused”

The answer to all this was lack of space on the drive the vCenter database was located. This because SQL Recovery option on the vCenter database was set to “Full Recovery” and there was NO maintenance plan active. This was the cause of a growing LOG file. After running the maintenance plan the log was emptied and a lot of disk space became available.

21
Oct

ESXi with settings to change Service Console Memory

At a customer site I have an ESXi server which give me the possibility in the Memory configuration to change the Service Console memory size.  But as you know in ESXi there is no more Service Console.

Before I changed something on this server I have put it in maintenance mode.  This is a server in Production.

Steps I did without result:

  • Restart of the management agents did not fix the issue
  • Restart of ESX did not change any thing, setting still available.
  • Disconnected the server from vCenter, still Service Console Memory available.
  • Reinstalled vpx Agent on the ESXi using VMware procedure (see VMware KB 1003714), still no fix.

This last step fixed the issue

Removed the ESXi from vCenter and added it again.  This fixed the issue.  Now it looks like a normal ESXi server.

27
Sep

View logs on VMware ESXi servers

Now we know ESXi is the way to go we need to start to trancition all our ESX servers to ESXi. This is said quicker then done. During a certain period we have build a lot of experiance managing these ESX servers. On of the biggest changes is that there is no more Service Console to login to to watch (using tail / less / more) the log files.

There are now some other possibilities to watch your log files.

  • Via the DCUI (Consolee of the ESXi). Press F2 (and the password to get to the different options

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Log files via ESXi webpage.

  • Using the vSphere Client direct to the ESXi

Log files in vSphere Client Direct tot ESXi

  • Using the vSphere client connected to the vCenter and then select the ESXi server you want to export logs from.

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  • Export the logs using PowerCLI using the cmdlet get-log
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