Kris Nijs @ Business IT Solutions

When upgrading from VI3.5 to vSphere, the last step to do is upgrading the virtual hardware from 4 to 7 of the existing VM’s. This is the most important step to get benefit from p.ex. VMXNET3 and paravirtual SCSI. This can be done by richt-clicking the VMs when they’re powered off, and choose “Upgrade Virtual Hardware”.

After this step, you can delete the old network adapter and add a new one from type VMXNET3.

To add a Paravirtual SCSI disk, you have to take some additional steps:

1. Ensure a guest operating system that supports PVSCSI is installed on the virtual machine. Currently:
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2003
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5

Note: Booting from a disk attached to a PVSCSI adapter is not supported. The system software must be installed on a disk attached to an adapter that does support bootable disk.

2. In the vSphere Client, right-click on the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
3. Click the Hardware tab.
4. Click Add.
5. Select Hard Disk.
6. Click Next.
7. Choose any one of the available options.
8. Click Next.
9. Specify the options your require. Options vary depending on which type of disk you chose.
10. Choose a Virtual Device Node between SCSI (1:0) to SCSI (3:15) and specify whether you want to use Independent mode.
11. Click Next.
12. Click Finish to finish the process and exit the Add Hardware wizard. A new disk and controller are created.
13. Select the newly created controller and click Change Type.
14. Click VMware Paravirtual and click OK.
15. Click OK to exit the Virtual Machine Properties dialog.
16. Power on the virtual machine.
17. Install VMware Tools. VMware Tools includes the PVSCSI driver.
18. Scan and format the hard disk.

Kris Nijs Geen categorie

When making Windows clones in ESX/vSphere, the customization option based on sysprep, doesn’t change the WSUS client ID. This means that the new virtual machine will have the same WSUS ID as the original one, and only one, the one that connects as last, will appear in the WSUS management console.

Solution:

Delete this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\SusClientId

and reboot the new machine.

A new WSUS client ID will be created during the next reboot… 

After that run the command wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow
After this, both machines, the original one and the clone, will appear in WSUS management console.

Kris Nijs Vmware

I had a problem with our Labmanager host.  In Labmanager I got the error that the labmanager agent wasn’t responding anymore…
I restarted the Labmanager service with command “service vsla-agent restart ” but no solution…

A reinstall of the agent resolved this issue for me:

* Go to Service Console and run uninstall-labmanager
* Copy agent-install.bin from c:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Lab Manager\Agent of the Labmanager Server to the ESX host (tmp directory)
* In Secrvice Console: Go to the tmp-directory and run chmod 755 agent-install.bin to set the rights
* Reinstall Labmanager agent by this command:  ./agent-install.bin

Ready!

Kris Nijs Labmanager, Vmware

I recreated a Pool in Vmware View with the same desktop names given to the Virtual Desktops as an older “deleted” Desktop Pool.

During provisioning, I got this error:
Desktop composer fault: virtual machine with input specifications already exists

I went into SQL Management Studio, and deleted the rows with the VMname from the next tables:

SVI_VM_COMPUTER_NAME
SVI_SIM_CLONE
SVI_VM_NAME

Seemed that those rows weren’t deleted automatically during deletion of the Desktop Pool.

Kris Nijs View

VMware Data Recovery is a Linux appliance from Vmware which is imported into your vSphere cluster. VDR has a GUI interface which will integrate into the vSphere client. VDR backup works by creating restore points for each of your VM virtual disks you wish to backup. A Restore point is a kind of full copy of your virtual machine state at that current point in time when backup was created. VDR utilizes de-duplication on backup storage and it is very efficient to save backup storage space. VDR can use CIFS shares or virtual disks as backup medium, that makes restoring data very quick. There is no support for tape backups (at the moment).

The File Level Restore client works by mounting a restore point into a Windows VM as read only disk, and from that disk you can restore invidual files or whole directories by copying them with Windows explorer.

You first have to download and copy vdrFileRestore.exe into your Windows VM, place it into some directory and make sure it is in the PATH environment.

Make sure you have some restore points available for you VM and execute vdrFileRestore.exe -a “IP-address” (DNS doesn’t work!) on Windows command line. The FLR client uses unique BIOS id to identify which restore points it should make available for mounting for each VM.

The FLR client will query which restore point in time you wish to mount

After you selected a restore point, the FLR client will show the backup-Windows drives in your Windows Explorer, and the client will tell you which drive backup is available at which drive letter.

After you copied files you need, type “unmount” and press enter. This will close restore point mounts and FLR client will exit.

Nice feature, isn’t it??!!

Kris Nijs Vmware

I had an issue with the time configured in the Vmware Datarecovery Appliance.
Backups started in the morning at 9, while I set in vCenter that backup window is in the night between 23h and 4h…

So, the clock of the appliance itself must be the problem!
In the webinterface, there’s no option to set the time, so you need the commandline.

As a non-Linux expert, I solved it with the command hwclock:

hwclock –show to get date/time

hwclock –set –date “15 Sep 2009 10:15:00 AM” to sync it to the vCenter time

Everything works fine now!

Ohh…after this, I saw the option Set timezone in the virtual appliance itself. I put the right timezone there too…

Kris Nijs Vmware

In Vmware Datarecovery I got the next error during the night:

Failed to create snapshot for VMxxx, error -3902 ( file access error)

I saw that the CIFS share for the backup jobs was not mounted anymore. This can be done by the vSphere client, or simply rebooting the virtual appliance…

Kris Nijs Vmware

It’s a known issue for system engineers: Outlook profiles in office 2003!
Microsoft has the parameter /importprf, but this is not the most ideal solution when people like to use their own signature…You have to find a way to run this parameter only once…

I implemented the next cmd-file in 2xApplicationServer for Outlook as a published Application:

IF EXIST “\\profile-path/%username%/application data\Microsoft\OUTPRF.SET” GOTO :Next
SET KEY1=HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Setup
REG ADD %KEY1% /v FirstRun /d – /-Y
REG ADD %KEY1% /v First-Run /d – /-Y
REG ADD %KEY1% /v ImportPRF /d \\outlook-prfpath\outlook.prf /-Y
ECHO “Done!” >>”profile-path from user\OUTPRF.SET”
:Next
start “” “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE”

As you can see, I use start “” “program“ because the dos-box will close immediatly instead of staying open until my application closes…

With this script: outlook uses the importprf file 1 time, and after that all settings (signature, opening extra mailbox) are saved in the users’s profile.

Kris Nijs Terminal server

Here are the steps to increase the amount of Simultaneous VMotion Migrations per Host.

1. RDP to your vCenter Server.
2. Locate the vpdx.cfg (Default location “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter”)
3. Make a Backup of the vpdx.cfg before making any changes
4. Edit the file in using WordPad and insert the following lines between the <vpdx></vpdx> tags;

<ResourceManager>
<maxCostPerHost>16</maxCostPerHost>
</ResourceManager>

5. Now you need to decide what value to give “maxCostPerHost”.

A Cold Migration has a cost of 1 and a Hot Migration (VMotion) has a cost of 4.
p.ex if it’s set to 16 I will have 4 simultaneous VMotions per Host (4×4 = 16).

Kris Nijs Vmware, vCenter

At one of my customers, I had to install an extra server, SBS2008 as DC, DNS, DHCP.
I removed the old domain from SBS2003 server (demoted) and this server will get the new role as Terminal Server now (using TerminalServerPro from Elusiva).

A few days after installation, the old 2003SBS server was shut down automatically, and in the logfiles I found the error:

” This computer must be configured as a domain controller. It will be shutdown in 60 minutes. To prevent this computer from shutting down, run setup on the disk you used to install to operating system to configure the computer as a domain controller ”

To solve this issue, I disabled the SBScore services:

As you probably know, you have a service called SBCore or “SBS Core Services”, which executes the following process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe
If you kill it, it just restarts and if you try and stop it you are told Access Denied.

1. If you fire up Process Explorer, you can select the process and Suspend it, now we can start to disable the thing.

2. Run RegEdit32.exe and expand the nodes until you reach the following hive / key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SBCore
Right click this, hit permissions and give the “Administrators” group on the local machine full access ( don’t forget to replace permissions on child nodes ). F5 in regedit and you’ll see all of the values and data under this key.

3. Select the “Start” DWORD and change it from 2 to 4. This basically sets the service to the “Disabled” state as far as the MMC services snap-in (and windows for that matter) is concerned.

4. Next, adjust the permissions on the file C:\WINDOWS\system32\sbscrexe.exe so that EVERYONE account is denied any sort of access to this file.

5. Then go back to process explorer, and kill the sbscrexe.exe process, if it doesn’t restart: congratulations!

Load up the services MMC snap-in and you should find that “SBS Core Services” is stopped and marked as Disabled.”

Kris Nijs Terminal server, Windows 2008