VMWARE 5

Virtual machines show two datastores in the summary tab

Posted on by Imran Rashid
Reading Time: < 1 minute

You have migrated your virtual machines to new storage but find that the summary tab of the virtual machines shows two datastores within the vSphere Web Client and vSphere Client. You have checked the datastore and no data resides on the LUN.

Here are a couple of things you want to check,

1) The most obvious is to check whether there are ISO’s mounted to your servers

2) vSwap file. Does a vSwap file exist on the data store? browse the datastore and check if any vSwap files exist. If yes, a VMotion of the Virtual Machine migrates the vswap to the new location. If you’re moving VM’s to new storage, don’t forget to check your vSwap configuration, especially if you originally configured the vSwap location to reside on a different LUN. Ensure the vSwap file location has been reconfigured to point to new storage.

3) Check if any VMWare snapshots exist. If a VMWare snapshot was taken whilst an ISO was attached to the VM, this could be the issue. Remove the snapshot


Create a VMWare Cluster Step by Step

Posted on by Imran Rashid
Reading Time: 3 minutes

1) Login to your VCenter server

2) Right click your data centre, or create a new data centre if one does not already exist, and then right click and select Create New Cluster

3) Click ‘Turn On vSphere HA’ and ‘Turn On vSphere DRS’ if you’re license covers both options. I prefer both options when I configure a VMWare environment. If it’s a production environment, DRS is a must.

4) Click next, I leave the default settings but requirements may be different depending on the solution

5) Again, I leave the defaults but requirements may be different depending on the solution

6) Click next, and again I leave the defaults unless there is a requirement to change. The below settings can also depend on the size of the VMWare environment. you may prefer the VMWare Solution to continue operating with more then one host failure.

7) Click next, and select your requirements for HA

8) Click next, and enable VM Monitoring Status if required. I leave this disabled due it not always being consistent. For example, if VMWare tools stops responding for some reason but the Virtual Machine was still up, the server could reboot if VMware Monitoring did not receive a response from VMWare tools. The feature may have been improved on in later versions of VMWare.

9) Click next and select EVC options.

10) Click next and configure vSwap location. I have already specified the vSwap file at the ESXi level.

11) Confirm your settings and click finish

12) Finally. go through the settings after the cluster has been created and configure Datastore heartbeat and any DRS rules you wish to apply. For example, you may prefer for a pair of clustered virtual servers to always remain on different ESXi hosts. This is where DRS rules would help.

Reset administrator@vsphere.local password

Posted on by Imran Rashid

Reading Time: < 1 minute1) Open the vdcadmintool service tool with the below command:

cd c:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VMware\CIS\vmdird

2) Type vdcadmintool.exe

3) Press enter and you will see the below menu

===============================
Please select:
0. exit
1. Test LDAP connectivity
2. Force start replication cycle
3. Reset account password
4. Set log level and mask
5. Set vmdir state
===============================
4) Press 3 to enter the Reset account password option
5) When prompted for the Account DN, type:

cn=Administrator,cn=users,dc=vSphere,dc=local

6) Press Enter and a random password will be generated

Unable to connect to vcenter, an unknown connection error occurred

Posted on by Imran Rashid

Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhen attempting to connect to vshpere you receive error ‘Unable to connect to vcenter, an unknown connection error occurred’

The most common issue which causes this is when the Vcenter service is not running.

Check the required services are started

VMware vCenter Server Appliance: Error: VPXD must be stopped to perform this operation

Posted on by Imran Rashid

Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhilst attempting to enable SSO within Virtual Center Appliance 5.5, you recieve the below error:

Error: VPXD must be stopped to perform this operation.

There are two options available to you, with option 1 being the quickest:

Option 1:
1) Click the summary tab
2) Click the stop button by the side of Server, wait for service to stop. Start the service when work is completed

Option 2:
1) SSH to the vCenter Server Appliance and type chkconfig (Press Enter)
2) The service name you are after is:

vmware-vpxd              on

3) Check that the vmware-vpxd service is on
4) Type chkconfig vmware-vpxd off
5) When done, turn the service on by typing vmware-vpxd on