Just an FYI, one of those rare Windows open source gems that are getting increasingly hard to find on the web these days, amidst a see of downloader payloads.

I've found Rufus to be very handy for quick creation of USB flash drive you can boot from, then install to, for ESXi, no command line stuff to memorize needed, and very quick:

TinkerTry.com/rufus-takes-2-minutes-to-create-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive-for-esxi-installation

works great with ESXi 5.5 too:

TinkerTry.com/download-vsphere-5-lab

and when done with that flash drive and you want to use it for something else (but normal reformatting doesn't work), it handles that too, even on Windows 8.1:

TinkerTry.com/rufus-lets-you-quickly-and-easily-reformat-an-esxi-usb-flash-drive-back-to-full-capacity

Particularly handy for folks getting started who shy away from VMware's Linux procedure:

Format a USB Flash Drive to Boot the ESXi Installation or Upgrade

vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center

or potentially dangerous Windows diskpart commands. Really just fast and useful for pretty much everybody.

Thoughts/opinions?

I have few queries for which I am finding answers.

My Environment:

Protected Site

vCenter 5.5

SRM 5.8

EMC Recovery Point for Replication

EMC VNX as Storage Array

EMC SRA configured in SRM to talk to EMC Recovery Point

Recovery Site

vCenter 5.5

SRM 5.8

EMC Recovery Point for Replication

EMC VNX as Storage Array.

EMC SRA configured in SRM to talk to EMC Recovery Point

I have a cloud solution running, as I onboard a customer.

- Customer is a resource group on vCenter.

- Datastore Cluster for that Customer with set of Datastore as per the Quota is also provisioned

- Same set of provisioning is performed automatically at Recovery Site.

- Dedicated Protection Group and Recovery Plan is created for the Customer with attached Datastore Cluster in SRM configuration.

This is happening normally with EMC VNX as Storage Array.

We are planning to introduce another Storage Array (all flash/high IOPs) which will be integrated with EMC Recovery Point as well.

I want to provide the customer both options together for which I am confused how SRM will behave as SRA will detect LUNs from both Arrays which will be visible to SRM.

The datastore cluster will have mixture of datastores for different array.

Just wondering if there is any challenge in the following situation or it will be straight forward? as for myself all I want is a replicated LUN/Datastore from Storage and to be visible by SRM through SRA adopter.

I have an odd situation. Data Collection is of, but I use the Force Data Collection workflow from Orchestrator:

Now I cant re enable the Inventory Data Collection. What can I solve this?

Thanks

The button for creating a content library is grayed out.  When I hover my mouse over the button, I get a popup balloon message that says: "Create a New Library (not available)".

I have no content libraries deployed at all in this freshly installed vCenter 6 environment.  I am using the vCenter appliance with the PSC deployed separately (they're both part of the new environment).  

When I investigate this issue, the only message I see says "you probably don't have the right permissions", but I have the ADMINISTRATOR role for the whole environment (set at the vCenter level, propagating down to all children objects enabled). 

So, any ideas, why I cannot create a content library??  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!!!!

Hi all

I'm running in a strange issue. When trying to create a Content Library through vSphere Web Client, I'm always getting an error that states that The operation failed because "this method requires authentication”. I'm creating a Content Library without marking the authentication checkbox.

Furthermore, the error always pops up no matter what Content Library type I try to create (Local, subscription, etc...)

Anyone has run into similar issue?

Thanks

Hi all....

I've used an standalone Yosemite 10.10.5 installer many times with Fusion 7.x to install OS X, but when i try now i get the following

Any idea what i am doing wrong ? I have checked "Synchronize Time" under Settings, Advanced, but this didn't do any good. And host time is correct. The installer is not corrupted as i used it several times.

Hello All,

I am using ESXi 6.0.0 and I am having an (anti) problem. My target OS is Ubuntu 14.04.

I have a mix of virtual machines and native servers, i.e. I am using the same hardware platform (a number of 24 core systems with 32GB and SSD) but some systems run Ubuntu directly and some run ESXi with a VM running Ububtu.

My users reported that the software we run is faster on the VM than on the "native" Ubuntu,

You could say "Great, ESXi is wonderful", but I would like to know why, simply because I would like the "native" software to be fast too!

I boiled it down to having disk writes faster by something like 10% on the VM (I use the dd command to benchmark this).

But the VM and the "native" use the exact same hardware (and BIOS config).

I have read a bunch of postings where people state that the VM is slower than the native but I saw nothing about it being faster.

Anybody has an idea of why this would be?

Just updated from 8.0.1 to 8.1.

Now, the image of the virtual machine that displays in the Virtual Machine Library window no longer updates.

Is this a known problem with 8.1?

Thanks

We are building a new server that will be used to remotely kick off Orchestrator workflows using the web service (https://<servername>:8281/vco/vmware-vmo-webcontrol/webservice).  We ran Windows Update on the new server so that we are fully up to date.  Now when we try to access the URL to our Orchestrator server, we cannot connect.  If we open the URL in Internet Explorer, it returns with "This page can't be displayed".  If we open the URL with Google Chrome, we receive a bit more info stating that "This site can't provide a secure connection".  More details provided from Chrome state "The client and server don't support a common SSL protocol version or cipher suite".

The Orchestrator environments that have this issue are running on 5.5 and 6.0.  We also have a new environment running on 6.0.3 that was accessible from the new server.  We found another article on here saying to change the cipher value in the server.xml file, but that did not fix our issue. Does anyone know of any other fixes or workarounds for this issue other than to upgrade to 6.0.3?

Thanks,

Dan

Each time I create a VM (using  Workstation 11.1.0 build-2496824), I regularly get a stuck key while typing. It is always the 'c' key.

This never happens on my base OS, which is Windows 8, but only on the VMs that I create in Workstation.

Any ideas as to what causes this?...or how I can get this fixed?

Hi,

I have VCSA 6 deployed on my infrastructure, with 4 hosts (ESXi 6.0). The network configuration is done using vDS, with separate traffic for management, vSAN, vMotion+DRS and for VMs. Both HA and also FT enabled for some VMs too.

Currently the VCSA is on VLAN 100, with IP 10.10.100.200, I want to move this vCenter to another VLAN, thus to change the IP network to 10.10.10.x. I need to know how to complete this part, including the whole vCenter setup with HA, FT.

Heard on vCenter/VCSA 6 it is not possible to change the network, I need to do redeploy a new VCSA. If there is no way at all, can I deploy a new VCSA first before terminating the existing VCSA and move all its configuration regarding hosts, clusters, vSAN, vDS, HA, FT and everything else to the new VCSA? Any guide, link to help step by step procedure?

Also, regarding vMotion, I am having an issues, my first host has a CPU and RAM load around 97%, second host around 90%, but the third and fourth hosts are below 20%. So it looks like the load balancing and vMotion not working as desired. I want to distribute load equally on all the hosts, do I need to manually migrate VMs using vMotion or there is any way to automate it so that the VMs are load balanced equally or almost equally on all the four hosts?

Hello:
We are using View 6.1.1 in our environment and having issues getting audio/video streaming to work well with USB headsets, with zero clients.  The headsets are Jabra Link 360 and the zero clients are Samsung NC241.  The headsets are used both for phones in Jabber, and also as the default audio device.   We started by using the Teradici audio driver and everything seemed to work well except that users could not answer calls on the headset itself with the button on the headset.  They were able to answer calls from within Windows however and that part worked fine.  In order to get the physical button working, we had to first bridge the USB receiver that they use on the zero clients so Windows would see it as the Jabra 360 device and not the Teradici audio device.  Then we had to enable EHCI mode for USB on them as well, and after that it started working fine.  However, the headsets are also used as the primary audio device as well as the communication device (phone), with audio streaming continuously throughout the day.  With the current setup, the audio streaming will cut in and out during the day, and audio/video is not always staying in sync either.

I have also applied the registry hack in this KB, VMware KB: Improving audio quality when using USB headsets or speakers with a VMware Horizon View 5.2 desktop , which helped clear up crackling that we initially had with the phone part of the headsets.  But the issue of audio streaming persists.

I am wondering if the efficiency of bridging USB is not as efficient, and also is there a way to make this work better?  I have read that using the Teradici driver is supposed to help with audio/video problems, but not sure how that may apply to USB devices like we are using.  I have been reading up on the audio/video Teradici settings, but am not sure where to go from there.  I was hoping that there were some best practices to using USB headsets with View, but so far I'm not finding anything helpful.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

I am just starting to work with App Volumes and I thought I read there was a limit to the number of App Volumes you can assign to a vdi.

My thought was to create an App Volume for each of my apps to better manage the applications but that would mean a lot of App Volumes.

If I put a lot of applications in one App Volume than I defeating the purpose of app separation.

Any thoughts from those who have figured it all out?

I recently moved from a Windows based vcenter 5.1 install on a physical server to the virtual appliance for 6.0. In the past if I wanted to use a plugin, I'd either install it right on the Windows vcenter server, or on it's own server and connect to vcenter via the install settings. But now that I'm on version 6 and the appliance, I'm not exactly sure how the whole plugin set up works. I found this in the docs about deploying a plugin package, but it was a bit confusing. Any help would be appreciated.

This wasn't even what I started working on to get here. I was looking for documentation on updating Qlogic FC HBA's via command line from vib as I did in earlier versions, but couldn't find much information on it. The one thing I did find was to install the Qlogic vcenter plugin and update them via he GUI, but then I realized I had no idea how to connect a third party plugin to this appliance.

And here I am.

I am trying to script it so that when vCenter sends an SNMP trap that Orchestrator will pull the VM Name and send it to a workflow. I've been trying to make this using examples online, but it seems I have messed something up and I"m not sure where. The error I get is syntax error (no infos#17). Please help.

System.log("SNMP Trap Received");

System.log("Agent: " + event.getValue("agent"));

var key = event.getValue("key");

var snmpResult = SnmpService.retrievePolicyData(key);

// Get data as Array of Properties

var data = System.getModule("com.vmware.library.snmp").processSnmpResult(snmpResult);

System.log("Enterprise: " + snmpResult.enterprise);

// Log data

System.getModule("com.vmware.library.snmp").logResult(data);

//Custom to call Workflow to add vCPU

for (var i=0; i< data.length; i++) {

  var elem = data[i];

  var oid = elem.get("oid");

  var value = elem.get("value");

  if(oid = ="1.3.6.1.4.1.6876.4.3.307.0"){

  System.log("Launching workflow to add vCPU...");

  var params = new Properties();

  params.put("vmName", value);

  Server.getWorkflowWithID("f3c718f6-61a6-47d7-ad2b-2957ed02cf6e").execute(params);

  break;

  }

  else {

  System.log("VM name not found!!!");

  }

  }

Хочу импортировать готовую машину из vmware workstation в vmware esxi 5.0. Никак не получается. Помогите. Важно что бы машина была без изменений но работала в esxi.

Дома стоит комп подключенный к роутеру. На нем esxi 5.0 ssd 120 gb 16 gb оперативки и amd phenom прецессор. Я в этом новичок но подскажите как мне импортировать машину с другого компа через который я собственно управляю гипервизором через vmclient. Заранее спасибо.

ПС планируется клонирование до 10 машин. Как распределить диск или это не важно при создании. SSD только один. Или его надо разбить на тома и в каждый том клонировать?

Файл конфигурации самой машины прикреплен

Hey all,

I was once again wondering which metric to use for memory capacity planning. Since informations from different sources (e.g. Your ESXi Host needs more RAM from Iwan Rahabok or VMworld 2012: Session VSP1729 - Understanding Virtualized Memory Performance Management - Eric Sloof - NTPRO.NL from Kit Colbert) all pointing to Active (Demand in vROPS), I was expecting that when we have high memory consumption / usage in vCenter there will be no ballooning / compression / swapping.

Also the metric active/demand shouldnt be used for all workloads (e.g. Java / DB), why is that? I didnt find the reason for that anywhere, only the fact.

Other sources like Mark Achtemichuk suggest to use consumed/usage, thats the opposite (Understanding vSphere Active Memory - VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs).

So I thought I go with active/demand as metric and ignoring the warnings inside vCenter.

But last time we patched the half of our cluster we had high consumed/usage of memory and the vCenter started to balloon, compress and finally swap. Not much but I wasnt expecting that, because active memory was only a small percentage of consumed.

Can someone explain me, why this happened and who is right regarding this questions.

Kind regards,

jengl

Hi People,

Can anyone here please share some script to find the VMFS datastore that is thin-provisioned and its empty space that can be reclaimed ?

Thanks,

Source VMware KB: Using esxcli in vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 to reclaim VMFS deleted blocks on thin-provisioned LUNs

Hey everyone.

I hope this is ok to post here, but was looking for some help on some servers I am looking for.

I need a 1U low power server to run ESXi on. Ideally, it would be able to support 8-10vms on it. Most of what i will be running is not two CPU intensive as it will be more memory and IO intensive.

I started to look around and came across some SuperMicro Servers. Specifically, I was looking at this model:

Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | 1U | 5018A-MHN4

It is a 1U server, up to 64gigs of memory, 8 core Atom processor and is low power.

I would probably buy or or two for my own lab environment. I can hook up some external storage via NFS or iSCSI. (has Quad NIC and builtin IMPI so now need for KVM)

My question to the community is, has anyone used these before? I am concerned about reliability.

If it works out, i could by a few of these for my work.

Appreciate it friends.

Cheers

TCG

Ok, so I'm "new" to SRM, even though I've been working on this project for a considerable amount of time. It seems straightforward, but there are lots of gotchas I'm learning about. My goal is to test SRM as it was set up by consultants a few years ago, but has not gone through a proof of concept, and I've been given that task.

We only have eight critical servers on our Recovery site, out of 50 or so that aren't protected. If there is a disaster, we will be running a bare-bones environment. Just a few app servers, a db server and View so people can remote in, assuming our Protected site is unavailable. I'm in LA, so I'm assuming an earthquake, for instance.

In any event, I've been trying to plan for an actual test that is the least disruptive as possible, over a weekend, and am at the point where I've been running a test of the recovery plan, but it is pretty restrictive and not very representative of an actual DR situation. For instance, I bring up the VMs, usually all of them report the error of VMWare Tools timing out. Then I try to test our db server by consoling in (MSSQL) and can open the SQL Management console, but can't actually get into any of the databases. We run SnapDrive, which doesn't mount the LUNs, but they are mounted in Storage Manager and are presented.

Since the Test environment uses an isolated network, I was wanting to use IP customization to bring the VMs up so they could talk to the AD server that already resides in production on the Recovery Site (it's a small branch office with a vCenter server, AD server, SRM server and a couple others). I'd like to create NAT rules for the connection servers that will be spun up, and be able to test those.

Another issue is the VMs are old. We SnapMirror multiple times a day, but I didn't understand the explanation from the VMWare engineer of why the latest image/snapmirror isn't being used when I run the Test Recovery Plan. It was explained that in Test, everything is brought up as read only, so every time I run a new test, it reverts back to the same (old) image.

I'm doing all this to have a more solid feeling before the ACTUAL test of a Planned Migration. That's what VMWare advised me to do to run a more realistic, robust test.

Am I on the right track? I know this is kind of long winded and not very detailed about our environment, and I'm being asked to write up a detailed project plan, but I don't know what I don't know and frankly the documentation is not the clearest.

I realize I'm not asking this in the clearest terms either, mostly because I'm a bit confused and somewhat wary that I'm going to miss some critical setup items, and will hit potentially damaging snags when doing the "real" test.

Any good documentation for best practices would be helpful, or some clarification on the items I mentioned would be great. And yes, I have been searching the community and The Google.

TIA!

Steve