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Posts from the ‘VMware’ Category

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.