I recently experienced an issue adding a vSphere 5.1 host to vCenter while using the Add-VMHost cmdlet in PowerCLI. I’m pretty sure the same problem would have occured if I was using the GUI, but this work was for part of some automated deployment work.
On a freshly baked ESXi 5.1 install one of the first tasks is to get it into vCenter. However, this was failing with what initially appeared to be a license issue, despite there being plenty of available licenses.
I needed to migrate some Email Alarm Actions between two vCenters; the target at version 5.1 being a replacement for an existing 5.0 vCenter. The first task was to identify which Alarm Definitions had been configured with an email alert. To do that I used the following PowerCLI command to export them to a CSV file:
Get-AlarmDefinition | Select Name,@{N="EmailAction";E={$\_ | Get-AlarmAction | Where {$\_.ActionType -eq "SendEmail"}}} | Export-Csv AlarmActions.csv -NoTypeInformation I could then easily identify those which needed to be migrated across.
While I was removing some ESXi 5.0 hosts from a 5.1 vCenter I encountered the following issue with a couple of them:
General system error: Invalid Fault
In the vCenter vpxd log file this message was accompanied by
msg = “vim.fault.AdminNotDisabled”
It turned out to be a known fault where Lockdown Mode was out of sync between vCenter and the ESXi host. In vCenter it showed as enabled:
However, in the ESXi host it was showing as disabled.
I sincerely hope this saves somebody else some time because I had a fair amount of head scratching with this today. Installed a Windows Server 2012 VM on vSphere 5.0 U2, pretty standard install with a C:\ drive for OS, Software etc and D:\ for data. This particular server needed to run SQL Server 2012, however the install kept repeatedly failing with the error “Could not find the Database Engine startup handle”.
Having passed the VCP5 exam last week, I thought I would write the obligatory study resources blog post. So below are the resources I found most useful in preparing for the exam:
1) TrainSignal VMware vSphere 5 Training
I’ve previously used the TrainSignal VMware vSphere 4 VCAP Training Package to begin preparations for the VCAP-DCA exam so was well accustomed with the style of the TrainSignal videos. Since I was in the position of needing to upgrade my VCP from 4 to 5 before February 29th 2012 to avoid needing to fulfill a class requirement again, I found this to be a great resource to quickly get up to speed on some of the new features in vSphere 5 and also provide a refresher for some of the topics that have been in the exam since the VCP 3 days.
As promised, here are my slides from this evening’s UK PowerShell UserGroup - What’s New in PowerCLI 5.0.
What’s New in PowerCLI 5.0
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The PowerCLI team publish very handy reference posters that will sit nicely by your desk and usually release a new version to accompany each product release. vSphere 5 is no different and if you weren’t lucky enough to attend the recent VMworld and collect a tangible copy then you can now download one to print out yourself.
The here.
OK, so there are already a ton of blog posts out there on this topic which cover the pros and cons of this change. A couple I found useful are below:
Understanding vSphere Licensing - Barry Coombs vSphere Licensing - the good, the bad and the ugly - Ed Grigson Initially I thought this licensing change might be a bit of a problem for us, but thought I would wait for the dust to settle and spend some time figuring out what the impact could be.