Tag: vCenter

Migrate folder structure from old to new vSphere vCenter

Sometimes I find it easier to create a new vCenter server then migrate the old one, and it is a perfectly good solution in many cases.

But annoyingly there is a lot of manual work involved.

One problem is the VM’s and Templates folders. They do not follow the host, so you have to create the folder structure manually and move each VM into the correct folder. Well I am way to lazy to do that by hand, so it’s time to Automate!

Continue reading Migrate folder structure from old to new vSphere vCenter

VMware vCenter VCSA 6.5 Upgrade “Error: queryAaaa ENODATA”

During an upgrade I got the following error: “A problem occurred  while getting data from the source vCenter Server”

And the install log has the following information. Continue reading VMware vCenter VCSA 6.5 Upgrade “Error: queryAaaa ENODATA”

Assigning vCenter tags using vRealize Orchestrator

Today I needed to assign some vCenter tags to some VMs I was deploying using vRealize Automation.

The scenario was that the customer did not want backup of VMs deployed by the vRA test environment, and in production they wanted a specific backup tier.

They are using Veeam backup, so the vRA test environment needed to have a NoBackup Tag, and production needed some other tag, depending on the type of server being deployed.

vRO does not provide very extensive support for these operations out of the box, but vRO 7.2 does come with some sample workflows.

To get started with vCenter tagging you need to configure a vAPI endpoint and a vAPI metamodel.

Continue reading Assigning vCenter tags using vRealize Orchestrator

Cross SSO and vCenter VMotion using PowerCLI

http://cloudmaniac.net/using-powercli-to-vmotion-vm-between-different-sso-domains-vcenters/

Roman Decker wrote an article about how to move virtual machine between vCenters that are not part of the same SSO domain, using PowerCLI.

I felt like it needed some adjustments to be more dynamic and interactive, so many of the hard coded bits I decided to make the script ask for at runtime.

Continue reading Cross SSO and vCenter VMotion using PowerCLI

Should you enable Network health check for your Distributed Virtual Switches

Network health check is a very useful feature that was introduced with vSphere 5.1 vDS.

What does it do?

The purpose is to test if the VLANs, MTU and Load Balancing settings you defined are actually working. The old way of doing this would be to disconnect all port except one, by either doing a shutdown on the switch port, or pulling out the cable, and then testing, with a VM, if every VLAN still works. This can be a very lengthy process if you have many adapters, but also a necessary step if you want a stable environment.

If you want to know more about how it check the different settings, Joseph Griffiths did a good article on this you can read here: http://blog.jgriffiths.org/?p=877

So why would you ever disable this feature?

Well the health check feature generates a lot of mac table entries as explained in VMware KB 2034795.

An example given is that you have 35 Hosts with 2 Network Adapters each, and 60 VLANs. This will generate (35 * 2 * 60) 4200 mac table entries in your physical switches. And as you can see, this quickly increases. Some switches only has room for 32.000 records or less. Continue reading Should you enable Network health check for your Distributed Virtual Switches

Automating Windows Update

Tired of having to update all your servers manually, or with Microsoft WSUS, but without control?

Are you tired of wasting 1-2 hours, every time you deploy a template, for it to install all the latest patches?

Why not automate it the easy way?

Continue reading Automating Windows Update

vCenter 6.5 Upgrade fails with error: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294)

I just upgraded the vCenter in my test lab, and I got an error after the first part of the process. When it was about to migrate data from the old VCSA 6.0 Server.

I restarted to process but this time is was unable to get information from my source VCSA server. In the log I had the following errors:

2016-11-16T16:42:03.649Z - info: VM Identifier for Source VC: vm-108
2016-11-16T16:42:03.784Z - debug: initiateFileTransferFromGuest error: ServerFaultCode: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).
2016-11-16T16:42:03.785Z - debug: Failed to get fileTransferInfo:ServerFaultCode: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).
2016-11-16T16:42:03.785Z - debug: Failed to get url of file in guest vm:ServerFaultCode: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).
2016-11-16T16:42:03.785Z - error: Error in getting fileData for nodeType. Error: ServerFaultCode: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).
2016-11-16T16:42:03.785Z - error: Failed to read the nodetype, Error: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).
2016-11-16T16:42:03.786Z - error: sourcePrecheck: error in getting source Info: ServerFaultCode: A general system error occurred: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294).

I quickly discovered the reason. My root password was expired and it wanted me to create a new password for root.

Continue reading vCenter 6.5 Upgrade fails with error: vix error codes = (1, 4294967294)