What HA Datastore Heartbeating and how to use it? When the master host in a vSphere HA cluster can not communicate with a slave host over the management network, the master host uses datastore heartbeating to determine whether the slave host has failed, is in a network partition, or is Read more…
It is very important that you install VMware Tools in the guest operating system. With the VMware Tools installed VMs support significantly faster performance, time synchronization, and other enhanced features. Below are the steps to install the VMware Tools on CentOS. 1. Install the prerequisites into your CentOS. If asked Read more…
Recently, I ran a test of a SRM Recovery Plan for a new set of Linux VMs I inherited. The first test didn’t go so well and returned the error “Error – The guest operating system ‘centos64Guest’ is not supported”. After doing a cleanup of the test Recovery Plan, I Read more…
Recently I encountered some VM refresh issues in View I felt would be helpful to share. Using the View administrator I attempted to refresh a couple of linked clones manually. Some of the refresh operations completed successfully, but some did not. Upon investigating the recorded View events I found the Read more…
As of vSphere 5.5 when you create VMs the default hardware version is 8. However, there is an option to upgrade the virtual hardware to version 10. While I’m sure there are benefits to version 10 over 8, I’m only advising you that in upgrading VM hardware version you will Read more…
When you install ESXi on flash media you will likely see the error “System logs on host are stored on non-persistent storage” as shown below below. The fix is pretty easy. Browse to an attached datastore, and create a folder naming it as you see fit. If you are using Read more…
If you use the vCenter appliance, and also use the vSphere Web Client this is a must read. As of the latest vCenter appliance build 5.1.0.10000-1065184 there is a pretty big issue with certificate regeneration. The problem all starts once you turn it on, and reboot. If you do not Read more…
If you try to install an OEM branded Windows operating system you will likely have issues activating or installing because it cannot check the BIOS/hardware make. This is pretty common with HP, Dell, or IBM branded media. To resolve this issue you will need to add “smbios.reflecthost=”TRUE”.” to your .vmx Read more…
Recently I found myself looking back to a VMware View environment I setup to roll out another. I felt it would be helpful to take some of the general steps or considerations I used as a baseline to help others create View Environments. My recommendations are easy and helpful, but may Read more…
Out of the past 3 upgrades I performed to VMware vCenter Server Appliances services began to fail thereafter. The upgrade was to 5.1.0.5300 Build 947940. Periodically every few days, or hours the appliance is reachable, but you will not be able to login to it via the vSphere client. You will see the Read more…