VMware Consultancy Services

vCloud Director supports MSSQL and Oracle as backend database. I am using MSSQL database for my Lab and this post will be covering the steps needed to configure the database prior to vCloud Director Installation. Setting up MSSQL database is very easy task. Vmware provides the SQL commands to configure the database on the vCloud Director Documentation page. Pre-requisite : Make sure your system meet following 2 pre-requisites before using the database setup script: 1: MSSQL database installed and running 2: SQL Server Management Studio installed The below script will be used in configuring the database. You have to make minor changes in the script to setup according to your infrastructure USE [master] GO CREATE DATABASE [vcloud] ON PRIMARY (NAME = N’vcloud’, FILENAME = N’C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.VIM_SQLEXP\MSSQL\DATA\vcloud.mdf’, SIZE = 100MB, FILEGROWTH = 10% ) LOG ON (NAME = N’vcdb_log’, FILENAME = N’C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL...

Prior to vCloud director installation you need to generate SSL certificates for your http and console-proxy connections. You can also you certificates purchased from certificate issuing company if you are planning to use your vCloud environment over the internet. I am using self-signed certificates in my Home Lab and instructions for how to generate the certificates I have covered in my earlier post When vCloud installer is run it invokes a script to configure the vCloud director and in the process it asks for the path to the certificates which will be used in securing the http and console-proxy connections. I have generated the certificate (vcd.ks) on my root partition as visible in below screenshot. Now when I executed the vCloud installer (vcloud-director.bin file) it invoked a script for configuring the vCloud setup and was asking for the path to the certificate. I entered /root/vcd.ks but the installer was throwing an error that “file could not be found”. This was su...

In my Last post  Troubleshooting vCloud SSL Certificates Issue  I have covered how to resolve the ssl certificates issue. Once the certificate is accepted by the vCloud director configuration script the next thing is that it will ask you for the database connection details so that it can connect to vcloud database and configure it. This was not end of life it seems as vCloud director has decided to test me one more time. This time I ran into database connection issue as the vCloud director server was unable to contact my database (MSSQL). I have covered the database preparation steps in my post  Configuring MSSQL Database for vCloud Director I was getting the error as shown in below screenshot I was getting a connection failure error as vCloud director setup was unable to reach my MSSQL database and I was getting socket timeout error. This was very annoying for me. I tried to telnet my server where MSSQL database is running (in my case it is running on same...

Purpose This article provides information on when to use and when not to use iSCSI port binding. For information on how to configure port binding, see the  storage guide  for your version of ESXi/ESX. Resolution Port Binding Port binding is used in iSCSI when multiple VMkernel ports for iSCSI reside in the same broadcast domain and IP subnet to allow multiple paths to an iSCSI array that broadcasts a single IP address. When using port binding, you must remember that: Array Target iSCSI ports must reside in the same broadcast domain and IP subnet as the VMkernel port. All VMkernel ports used for iSCSI connectivity must reside in the same broadcast domain and IP subnet. All VMkernel ports used for iSCSI connectivity must reside in the same vSwitch. Currently, port binding does not support network routing. When not to use port binding Port binding should not be used when: Array Target iSCSI ports are in a different broadcast domain and IP subnet. VMkernel po...

VMware vSphere 6 introduces many new features and enhancements. This article provides an overview of the new features and capabilites + links to other websites/blogs where you can read more about the individual topics. vSphere 6 ESXi and VM enhancements: Cluster now supports up to 64 nodes and 8.000 VMs VMs now support up to 128 vCPUs and 4 TB vRAM Hosts now support up to: 480 pCPUs 12 TB RAM datastores with 64 TB 1000 VMs added guest OS support for FreeBSD10.0 and Asianux 4 SP3 expanded support for the latest x86 chip sets Links: Summary of What’s New in vSphere 6  (vSphere-land.com) vSphere 6 – new virtual hardware version 11 (vHW11)  (Running-System.com) vSphere 6.0 blog – Configuration maximums  (VCDX56) What’s new in vSphere 6 Scalability  (VM Guru) vSphere 6 ESXi memory states and reclamation techniques  (Running-System.com) Storage: Virtual Volumes (VVol) improved Storage IO Control VVOLS – Improving Per VM Management  (IT Bloo...

Details When you try to connect to a virtual machine console from vCenter Server, you see these errors:  Error connecting: Host address lookup for server failed: The requested name is valid and was found in the database, but it does not have the correct associated data being resolved for Do you want to try again? Error connecting: cannot connect to host : A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond. Do you want to try again? Error connecting: You need execute access in order to connect with the VMware console. Access denied for config file. Unable to connect to MKS: failed to connect to server IP:903. Note : Looking at the virtual machine logs ( vmware.log ), errors with the console will appear as MKS (Mouse,Keyboard,Screen). You cannot open a remote console to a virtual machine. Virtual machine console is black (blank). The VMwar...

I hope this time most of the VMware administrators  will be busy with upgrading their infrastructure to vSphere 6. There are some rare situations in which your ESXi upgrade to 6.0 may fail due to some old firmware or drivers or may be whatever reasons. Most of the administrators will be aware  about rolling back vCenter or VM upgrade by reverting it to previous snapshot. Most of them may be unaware about the rolling back your ESXi upgrade. This post explains you the procedure to roll back your ESXi 6.0 upgrade to previous version i.e ESXi 5.5. Procedure to Downgrade or Rollback your ESXi 6.0 Upgrade: After the ESXi upgrade is failed or Hung, reboot your ESXi host. Durig ESXi host boot up, hit   Shift+R Recovery mode will display the ESXi build version which you were upgrading from. If you want to roll back to the previous version, hit  Y  to go back to the previous version of ESXi. In my case , I was upgrading my ESXi host from ESXI 5.5 to ESXi 6.0. So...