Category: General Information

Cannot export ISO from vLCM cluster image

When you try to export an ISO file in VMware vCenter from a cluster using single cluster image with vLCM. You will get the following error:

A general system error occurred: Error occurred while exporting ESXi image and/or image document.

The error is accompanied with an error in the vmware-vum-server-#.log file in /var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server catalog like the following:

2023-06-14T12:21:23.882Z error vmware-vum-server[09453] [Originator@6876 sub=VumVapi::Lib::Utils] [ExportTask 92] Failed to export cluster image from depot. errorCode: 99

In my case I was able to export it as a zip bundle and the corresponding json configuration file exported successfully as well.

The problem lies with vendor signatures, and vmware does not currently have a solution for this unfortunately except that it normally helps to remove the vendor packages attached to the cluster.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/91237

More information is available here: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/vCenter-Server-Discussions/Cannot-export-vLCM-image-if-you-use-a-custom-SSL-cert-Non/td-p/2881200/page/2

Nested or Native

Should you buy dedicated hardware or a OP workstation for you next testing environment. If you are not sharing it with others, this might be useful for you.

History

For many years now VMware Workstation has been my secret weapon an daily tool for just about everything in regards to customer remote connections, test environments as so on.

Recently I needed to do some advanced testing with NSX-V and NSX-T. This required a lot more power than what I normally use so I needed to upgrade my testing platform.

The consideration is always with these things. How much are you going to invest, and what are the benefits. For a long time I have been considering buying 4 Intel NUC PC’s for doing these tests, but the problem is that to get a real setup that is flexible you need to invest a lot. Also it is not very flexible as you need to maintain them, and reinstall them everytime you need to play with a newer or older version.

ESXi 6.7 PSOD with qfle3 driver version above 1.0.69.1

Had a ESXi PSOD today. That does not happened that often, so I was quite surprised to find out that it was not a hardware related issue that was the root cause.

VMware did an analysis of the memory dump, and it turned out to be a faulty driver. That made sense since the PSOD often comes from drivers og agents when it is not a hardware issue.

The PSOD i got was the following:

#PF Exception 14 in World xxxxxxx:vmnicX-pollw IP xxxxxxxxxx addr xxxxxxxx

Update Manager ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so driver conflict

Just provisioned the HPE ESXi 6.7 Update 3 custom OEM image onto some HP DL560 Gen10 servers.

After I updated the servers using update manager and the HPE vibsdepot I ran into problems. Turns out there is a conflict between the VMware provided driver and the HPE provided driver.

The result is that I cannot install all updates to satisfy compliance.

Checking the esxupdate.log file on the ESXi hosts I get the following error:

ValueError: VIBs ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 and ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 have unequal values of the 'payloads' attribute: '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1602.936 KB]' != '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1493.833 KB]'

vSAN – Downgrading NVMe driver in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

Recently ran into a HPE Proliant m510 server running vSAN, where vSAN complained that the controller driver for the NVMe disk where too new.

The health error said that the current driver nvme (1.2.2.17.-1vmw.670.1.28.10302608) was to new and the recommended driver was nvme (1.2.1.34-1vmw.670.0.08169922)

Downgrading is not always a breeze. When going to VMware compatibility guide, the NVMe disk is supported for vSAN 6.7 Update 1, and there are no download links to a specific driver, so how do you get the old driver? Continue reading vSAN – Downgrading NVMe driver in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

Award – VMware Technical Ambassador of the year 2017

I was very surprised to receive the Technical Ambassador 2017 award from VMware at the Nordic Partner Briefing on Sunday evening.

For those who don’t know my history, I have been implementing and promoting VMware and virtualization since 2002, and it is not often that you receive awards in this industry unless you are working with sales, so i really appreciate this.

I owe a big thank you to Michael Eskildsen from VMware for nominating me, to Atea and my team leader Flemming Westervang for giving me the opportunity to work with the biggest customers and most interesting cases in the Nordic, and of course to VMware for constantly raising the bar.