vmware

Thanks to everyone who came to my session today, always enjoy presenting here. Here are the slides: Save Time With PowerCLI View more presentations from jonathanmedd

The next London VMUG on 14th July 2011 is only a few weeks away and again looks like it will be a great event. This will be the second time it has been run as a full day event with split-track breakout sessions in the afternoon, so that there is more of a choice for those topics your are particularly interested in. There will also be a vCOPS focused lab and a Genius Bar staffed by VMware GSS to help deal with any issues you might bring along.

Whilst attemping to install the Dell ESXi Agent and upgrade the ESXi revision on a new VMware host, I hit the following issue. Dell Agent - Error encountered: Description - I/O Error (17) on file /var/tmp: [Errno 17] File exists: '/var/tmp' Message - Unable to create, write or read a file as expected.I/O Error (17) on file /var/tmp: [Errno 17] File exists: '/var/tmp' ESXi upgrade with Update Manager - The host returns esxupdate error codes: 10.

Using VMware Update Manager to upgrade ESXi from 4.0 to 4.1 is a pretty straightforward process, but what about if you need to complete other tasks as part of the upgrade. For instance, if you are running Dell Hardware then the ESXi agent also needs to be upgraded from version 6.2 supplied for ESXi 4.0 to 6.4 supplied for ESXi 4.1. You may also see some changes in advanced parameters between the two ESXi versions that you need to amend after the upgrade - I blogged about some of these before.

Most projects have to start somewhere as an idea, and this one was no different. When Sybex contacted us, our idea suddenly became a reality and now after quite a journey, our book has finally arrived. Because most of the content of this book is inspired by the PowerCLI community, we decided to give something back. To celebrate the release of our book, we’re organizing a book raffle. Read the instructions below and enter the draw for a chance to win a free copy of “VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration”.

Last year I was fortunate enough to be invited to help out Alan Renouf and Luc Dekens with their PowerCLI book project and write a few chapters to help them keep on schedule. I was also joined by two other well known PowerCLI community members Glenn Sizemore and Arnim van Lieshout. It is often said that ‘Virtualisation is a journey’ - well writing a book about virtualisation was definitely a journey!

In ESXi 4.0 the Advanced Software Setting UserVars.CIMOEMProvidersEnabled is used to enable an agent such as the Dell OpenManage offline bundle for ESXi which provides hardware management for Dell PowerEdge servers. This is supplied as a vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) and Alan Renouf has a great post on his blog on how to install a VIB like this one via PowerCLI. Whilst testing out getting the same Dell Agent installed into ESXi 4.

Following an upgrade of vCenter to 4.1 does your performance data look like this? or even emptier like this? Then you are probably suffering from the same issue I was after an upgrade of vCenter from 4.0 to 4.1. Initally a web search brought up the following KB article, kb.vmware.com/kb/1004382, but this did not resolve the issue. VMware Support then directed me to the following KB article which appeared to describe the issue more accurately, kb.

Depending on your environment you may find the ability to install ESXi from a USB stick, particularly if you do not have access to a PXE based deployment solution. With ESXi 4.0 I had used a USB stick with the install ISO on the stick. Whilst starting to test 4.1 I thought it would be a simple case of replacing the 4.0 ISO with 4.1. However, when I did this I was able to boot to the install, but when it got to the part of copying the files I received the error:

I had the following issue when upgrading vCenter from 4.0 to 4.1. Whilst the database upgrade and install appeared to complete successfully, the vCenter service would not start once the install was complete. In the vpxd.log located at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VirtualCenter\logs, you see errors similar to: [2010-07-27 13:42:26.837 03204 error ‘App’] [VpxdMain] Failed to initialize: Not initialized: boolean storageIORMSupported [2010-07-27 13:42:26.837 03204 error ‘App’] Failed to intialize VMware VirtualCenter.