Recently I had to troubleshooting a storage issue in a VMware vSphere environment. It turned out that the situation could be defused when the ESXi host enters Maintenance Mode automatically when a certain error log entry is generated. So I set to work and automated the task. To do so, VMware Aira Suite is quite useful. The process actually requires most of the products of […]
How to remove a vCenter from Enhanced Linked Mode
Sounds like a simple task to remove a vCenter from Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM). Basically ELM enables more vCenter instances to use a single SSO-domain. Most solutions I found talked about offline respectively dead vCenter instances. But I was looking for a solution to get a running vCenter out of ELM. And it should stay online after the removal! Fortunately, there is a simple way […]
vCenter 7 update fails with error
Recently I wanted to update my VMware vSphere vCenter in my lab environment from vSphere 7 U1 to U3 latest release. Unfortunately each vCenter 7 update try fails with “install hook failed” error at 80 %. Since this troubleshooting and trial and error was very time consuming, I thought it was a good idea to share the solution. Hoping this post will save you the […]
Options for Updating VMware Tools at Scale
Recently I wrote a detailed blog post about VMware Tools and the options available to update them at scale. Because this post was published on VMware’s blog Customer Experience and Success, I cannot publish the same post here. Therefore, I am summarizing my article here and providing the link to it. The first part deals with understanding VMware Tools Updates. It focuses on compatibility, what […]
Does Microsoft KB5021131 break vCenter login?
Microsoft published a security update for Windows. If you see my blog posts, you will see, I am no Microsoft-guy. But there are some rumors about KB5021131. Does it break VMware vCenter login? What is KB5021131 about Microsoft will enforce applications to use the more secure AES algorithm for Kerberos encryption instead of the unsecure RC4-HMAC. For sure a good idea! Statement from KB5021131: This […]
vCenter does not start after changing DNS servers
Recently I had to change DNS server in a VMware vSphere vCenter Appliance (VCSA). Normally this works without further issues. This time it was different. vCenter services did not start after changing DNS servers. I describe in this short post what went wrong and how I could fixed it.
VMs are shown with absolute path to vmx file in vCenter
These days I had to troubleshoot a problem in a vCenter environment. A few VMs shown with absolute path to vmx file in vCenter inventory. Normally this occurs when a ESXi boots with no connection to its previous mounted storage volumes. VMs located on these volumes are shown like this in inventory. But this wasn’t the case here: VMs were running and no host was […]
Error in vCenter Update Manager 6.7
These days I had to update a ESXi host using vCenter Update Manager (VUM). Environment is managed by a vCenter 6.7 appliance with embedded VUM. The host I got the error is managed by vCenter but not member of any cluster. After attaching a upgrade-baseline and running the compatibility check, I got the error that vCenter Update Manager cannot copy files to the host.
vCenter warning during guest quiescing for snapshots
In an environment I saw this error when backup creates VMware snapshots of three VMs: Warning message on VM on host in datacenter. The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing. The error code was: 5. The error message was: ‘VssSyncStart’ operation failed. IDispatch error #8723 (0x80042413) Facts about the environment: Versions: ESXi version: 6.7.0, 13981272. Guest: Windows Server 2019. VMware tools: 10346 (10.3.10). […]
Using PowerCLI to set mail recipient for a bulk of alarms
In this post I will describe how to use PowerCLI to add a trigger and a mail recipient to selected vSphere alarms. This is an excellent example of how PowerCLI can easily be used to do a task in a few moments while needing maybe hours when doing in GUI. A use-case for assigning a trigger and recipient to many alerts can be the implementation […]
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