Hello all,

I have a some what isolated virtual environment (16 ESXi blades, vCenter Server, vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client, VM's) and was wondering if it is beneficial to install Update Manager if I am going to have to install any/all patch updates manually? Will Update Manager aide in distributing the patches or will I have to update my ESXi hosts manually through the CLI anyway? There are certain VM's that have an internet connection but my ESXi hosts and vCenter Server do not (separated by vlan's).

Any guidance would be appreciated!

I need to get notified when a virtual machine leaves the VMware environment via vCenter export or datastore download.  Is it reasonable that this can this be fully / accurately / reliably accomplished with alerts from vCenter or syslog and a tool that collects these alerts? 

Or Do I need to address this problem on the front end instead with more control over permissions and actions taken in vSphere?

Ciao a tutti,

stamane è apparsa la necessità di controllare le performance di alcune VM nella giornata di ieri, ma nel tab "performance", cambiando il "time range" mi appare "no data available".

Vale per tutti i miei 4 nodi.

Ho riavviato il servizio vpxa del host dove risiedono i server virtuali che mi interessa controllare, ma non sono ancora disponibili i dati.

come indicato in questo vecchio post

vCenter 5.1 performance tab "no data available"

Mi sapete dare un consiglio? Mi sono perso i dati delle perfomance e inizierà a raccoglierli?

2015年7月8日開催の、VMware vCloud Conference 2015 （東京会場）に行ってみました。

なんと vCloud Air オンリーイベントです。

だいたいの内容は、下記のような感じだったと思います。

• 現状の vCloud Air の概要の説明 / Demo
• ユーザ事例
• 最近（2015年6月）に発表されたサービス拡張の説明
  （主に Advanced Networking Service、VPC OnDemand、DR の機能拡張）
• これからのロードマップ
• ハンズオン（盛況すぎて行けませんでしたが）
• Air の詳しい人に色々と質問できる（Ask the Expert ブースなど）

個人的には、VPC OnDemand が気になりました。

VM に対して分単位課金のサービスらしいので、AWS 的な感覚で
「ためしに」で使えるのではないかと期待しています。

そして VPC OnDemand の「OnDemand 料金計算ツール」も用意されています。

http://vcloud.vmware.com/jp/service-offering/pricing-calculator/on-demand

ちなみに無償キャンペーンがありますが、

日本ロケーションはもうすぐ（7月中に？）オープンする予定とのことです。

http://vcloud.vmware.com/jp/service-offering/special-offer

それとは別に、今回参加して印象に残った話を 3つほど。（新情報というわけではないですが）

• Air への移行では、移行元の vSphere（vCenter / ESXi）バージョンよりも
  仮想マシンバージョンを気にすべし。バージョン4（vmx-04）であれば Air に移行できる。
  バージョン4 は、ESX 3.0 の頃に登場したものなので、けっこう前の VM でもいけるはず。
• DR（Disaster Recovery / 災害復旧サービス）では vSphere Replication が使われる。
  （vR はこれからもっと流行るのでは？）
• VMware Workstation 11 で、vCenter だけでなく Air にも接続できるらしい。
  「本番環境の障害 VM を Workstation で解析」とかのユースケースがあるそうな。

このイベントは、大阪でも 2015年7月14日に開催するようです。

そして来年もやる予定らしい・・・

以上、vCloud Conference の話でした。

最近リリースされた ESXi のパッチで、

esxtop がわずかに機能拡張されて、NFS でも DAVG（デバイス遅延時間）が表示されるようになりました。

ESXi 5.5 U2 の Build 2718055 で、

パッチのファイル名だと、ESXi550-201505002.zip です。

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi-5.5.0-20150504001-standard (2114251)

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2114251

To debug performance issues related to NFS datastores, DAVG has been added to the esxtop utility.

そこで、ためしに見てみました。

esxtop を起動後、「u」をクリックすると

「u:disk device」（ストレージ デバイス パネル）が表示できます。

ストレージのパフォーマンスに関する問題を識別するために、esxtop を使用 (2014768)

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2014768

関係するカウンタは、下記のようです。

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.monitoring.doc/GUID-A27C3166-DBD1-4E0B-917B-67EF56864F9B.html

※これまで NFS データストアでは表示されてませんでした。

• DAVG/cmd
  コマンドあたりのミリ秒単位の平均デバイス遅延。
• DAVG/rd
  読み取り処理あたりのミリ秒単位の平均デバイス読み取り遅延。
• DAVG/wr
  書き込み処理あたりのミリ秒単位の平均デバイス書き込み遅延。

少し前の ESXi では、こう見えていたのですが・・・

（ESXi のバージョン）

~ # vmware -vl

VMware ESXi 5.5.0 build-2456374

VMware ESXi 5.5.0 Update 2

※自宅環境なので、遅延時間はあまり気にしないでください。

NFS でも DAVG カウンタが表示されるようになりました。

（ESXi のバージョン）

~ # vmware -vl

VMware ESXi 5.5.0 build-2718055

VMware ESXi 5.5.0 Update 2

さらに、esxtop のフィールド表示を変更してみました。

esxtop を起動後、「f」をクリックして、デフォルトで表示される「i」（コマンド全体）のほかに、

「j」（Read）と 「k」（Write）フィールドも表示してみます。

• I:  LATSTATS/cmd = Overall Latency Stats (ms)
• J:  LATSTATS/rd = Read Latency Stats (ms)
• K:  LATSTATS/wr = Write Latency Stats (ms)

下記のようなフィールド表示にしてみました。

※Latency 系以外のフィールドは、いくつか OFF にしました。

Current Field order: ABcdefghIJKlmnop

 

 

* A:  DEVICE = Device Name

* B:  ID = Path/World/Partition Id

  C:  NUM = Num of Objects

  D:  SHARES = Shares

  E:  BLKSZ = Block Size (bytes)

  F:  QSTATS = Queue Stats

  G:  IOSTATS = I/O Stats

  H:  RESVSTATS = Reserve Stats

* I:  LATSTATS/cmd = Overall Latency Stats (ms)

* J:  LATSTATS/rd = Read Latency Stats (ms)

* K:  LATSTATS/wr = Write Latency Stats (ms)

  L:  ERRSTATS/s = Error Stats

  M:  PAESTATS/s = PAE Stats

  N:  SPLTSTATS/s = SPLIT Stats

  O:  VAAISTATS= VAAI Stats

  P:  VAAILATSTATS/cmd = VAAI Latency Stats (ms)

 

 

Toggle fields with a-p, any other key to return:

以前のリリースでは、NFS の DAVG/rd、DAVG/wr が表示されていませんでしたが・・・

5.5.0 build-2718055 では、

DAVG/rd、DAVG/wr どちらも（Read / Write 両方とも） NFS の平均遅延時間が表示されるようになりました。

NFS データストアが好きな人にはうれしい機能拡張だと思います。

ちなみに、ストレージの DAVG と 他の遅延時間との関係は、

下記ブログあたり（特に絵）などが参考になると思います。

Troubleshooting Storage Performance in vSphere – Part 1 - The Basics

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/05/troubleshooting-storage-performance-in-vsphere-part-1-the-basics.html

以上、esxtop の機能拡張についてでした。

The VMware Workstation team is very excited to announce the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2015 release! This release includes many great new features that we’ve been working on and we would love to hear your feedback.

What’s New

Windows 10 Insider Preview Support - With Microsoft Windows 10 general availability just around the corner, we’ve been working hard on providing top level support for this brand new operating system. You can run the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build in VMware Workstation Tech Preview 2015, when you create a Windows 10 Insider Preview virtual machine, Workstation is now able to recognize the operating system based on the ISO file, and complete the Easy Install for you.

Other New OS Support - Workstation Tech Preview 2015 supports a variety of new operating systems including Ubuntu 15.04 and Fedora 22. If you are running these latest operating systems, we would like to hear your feedback on how they perform within this Tech Preview release.

DirectX 10 Support - DirectX 10.0 is a high sought-after feature that we are excited to deliver it in this Tech Preview release. With DX10, you can run more 3D applications, notice better performance, and use advanced features like Power Map in Microsoft Excel 2013. DirectX 10 is enabled for virtual machines that run hardware version Tech Preview 2015, which is the default hardware version when you create a new virtual machine with Workstation Tech Preview 2015.

DirectX 10 is supported for the following GPUs:

- Intel: HD 4000 or newer

- NVidia: GeForce 400 series or newer

- AMD: Radeon 4000 series or newer

OpenGL 3.3 Support - For Windows virtual machine with the latest hardware version, OpenGL 3.3 is now supported. This support for Windows guests extends from Windows Vista to Windows 10 Insider Preview.

vCloud Air VM Power Operation - We introduced vCloud Air integration back in December 2014, which lets you connect to vCloud Air from Workstation, view all your remote virtual machines, upload a virtual machine from local to the cloud, and remotely access virtual machines in the cloud. In Workstation Tech Preview 2015, you can also perform the power operations on these virtual machines, including power on, power off, suspend, and resume. Virtual machines on the cloud feel just like local virtual machines now.

Performance Improvement for VM Suspend, Resume, and Snapshot - In Workstation Tech Preview 2015, we significantly improved virtual machine suspend and resume performance. Our testing continuously shows these operations to be 4-5 times faster than before, and now we would like to hear your feedback. These improvements are enabled by default for all encrypted virtual machines with hardware version Tech Preview 2015. For non-encrypted virtual machines, you can add the following two lines to the VMX file to enable the feature

mainMem.save.vmem = "FALSE"

checkpoint.compressDumper = "TRUE"

IPv6 NAT Support - We are very excited about our improvements around IP networking, with added support for IPv6 Network Address Translation (IPv6 NAT). You can set up an IPv6 network between multiple virtual machines regardless of whether the external network is IPv4 or IPv6. You can also set the prefix of the IPv6 address for each IPv6 NAT network in the Virtual Network Editor.

Performance Improvement for Voice Calls within the Guest - More and more customers are making voice and video calls with conference call software such as Lync and Skype within a virtual machine, we have made many improvements to make sure that calls perform well so you don’t have to hang up and call in from your host.

High DPI Display Support - If you are using a 4K monitor or a laptop with a high DPI screen, the entire UI of this Tech Preview release has been optimized for a better user experience on these great displays.

Support for Multiple Monitors with Different DPIs - While more users are using 4K monitors, we also see many people using a mixed setup, with 4K monitors and regular monitors like 1080p. We have made some improvements to give a better user experience when you have such a setup, with Windows 8.1 or 10 as your host operating system.

Tear Away Tabs - You can tear away a virtual machine tab to run it in a new Workstation window. This will help you easily set up a working environment if you are constantly running multiple virtual machines. And yes, you can also merge a tab back.

Automatic VM Suspend Upon Host Shutdown - All your running virtual machines will be automatically suspended when your host operating system is about to shutdown. Please notice that this works only with local virtual machines at the moment.

New Standard Installer - Workstation Tech Preview 2015 for Windows uses a standard Microsoft installer, which will be easier if you need to deploy Workstation to multiple endpoints by using distribution systems such as SCCM.

NAT Network Configuration through the Virtual Network Editor - With Workstation Tech Preview 2015 for Linux, you can configure a NAT network in the Virtual Network Editor.

Virtual Machines Respects Left-handed Mouse Setting On the Host

General Stability, Application Compatibility and Usability

Installation Notice

To run this Technology Preview, you must uninstall previous versions of Workstation before installing this software.  Please note that the drivers included in this preview have NOT been signed and Windows will prompt you accordingly during installation.

The system requirements for this Technology Preview remain the same as VMware Workstation 11. See this VMware Workstation Document for more detailed system requirements.

In rare circumstances, it might be necessary to recreate a virtual machine that was created in this Technology Preview in a subsequent version of the product. This Technology Preview includes changes to the underlying virtualization platform, which is under active development. There are no guarantees that changes in this preview will be forward-compatible with other VMware software, nor that these changes will be present in future supported releases of VMware Workstation.

Uninstallation Notice

To uninstall the VMware Workstation Technology Preview:

1. Uninstall VMware Tools from each virtual machine used with the Technology Preview

2. Ensure that all virtual machines are downgraded to be compatible with an earlier version of VMware Workstation (VM > Manage > Change Hardware Compatibility...)

3. Exit the VMware Workstation Technology Preview

4. Remove VMware Workstation Technology Preview via the standard application uninstallation procedure

Known Issues

- For Workstation on Linux, license key entered during installation can NOT be stored, you need to enter the key when launch the application for the first time.

- The Tech Preview release uses a beta build with debugging mode on, the performance will be slower than the normal release build.

- Unity may be crashed when running an old Windows 10 Insider Preview build as a guest.

- There is an issue when mapping a virtual disk for a Windows virtual machine on a Windows host.

- Upgrading a virtual machine from hardware version 10 to hardware version Tech Preview 2015 without upgrading the VMware Tools may cause black screen in fullscreen mode. Make sure you install the latest VMware Tools.

- 3D Acceleration will be automatically turned on after upgrading to hardware version Tech Preview 2015, even if it was turned off before the upgrade.

- Upload a local virtual machine to ESXi host by drag-and-drop may cause UI crash.

- Online help doesn’t contain helps about the latest features.

- Virtual Printer doesn’t work on Linux host.

We really appreciate your help testing this software. Please post all of your feedback in the VMware Workstation Technology Preview 2015 communities forum.  We will try to answer any questions that you have and will investigate any issues that you find. Please also post any other comments you may have on how we can improve these currently implemented features or enhancements that you would like to see in future releases.

Thank you!

The VMware Workstation Team

I am trying to use the add disk to vm workflow but keep getting this error

any idea?

I have my AutoProtect Settings set this way, listed below right out of the AutoProtect Settings dialog. However, the oldest snapshots are not being deleted, they just keep adding up. I first became aware of this when my hard disk started filling up. There were over 100 snapshots in the list. I had to manually delete most of them. Now, I have to periodically go in and manually delete the snapshots so they don't fill up my hard drive. Is this a known problem? How can I fix it. Thanks for your answers!

Enable AutoProtect checked

Take an AutoProtect snapshot every 1 hour

Maximum number of snapshots to keep: 4

AutoProtect keeps:

• Snapshots taken every hour: 2

• Snapshots taken every day: 1

• Snapshots taken every week: 1

The oldest snapshots are deleted when the maximum number of snapshots is reached.

My machine:

Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,3

  Processor Name: Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 16 GB

  Boot ROM Version: MBP112.0138.B15

  SMC Version (system): 2.19f12

System Version: OS X 10.10.4 (14E46)

  Kernel Version: Darwin 14.4.0

  Boot Volume: Macintosh HD

  Boot Mode: Normal

HI All,

  I would like to know whether its possible for us to pull the report for no of concurrent session on hourly basis from VDI.  Thanks in advance.

thanks

vmk2014.

We recently updated our vSphere Server 5.5 to 6.0 and the NetApp VSC Plugin from 5.0 to 6.0.

Now the Plugin won't show up in the WebClient as it did before the upgrade.

Has anyone the same issue? Is there a solution for it?

The backup jobs defined before the upgrade are running.

Thanks

Hi,

I am trying to update view agent on remote computer (virtual machine) with Powercli 6.0 with the below Script, on the remote VM both the EXE and batch file is copying to, but exe is not executing. On the powercli its also not showing any error but also not giving any output.

$server_names = Get-Content "C:\Servers_list.txt"

$agentpath = "\\xxxx.abc.com\ViewAgent\VMware-viewagent-x86_64-6.1.0-2509441.exe"

$installagentbatpath = "\\xxxx.abc.com\ViewAgent\installagent.bat"

$runinstall= "C:\installagent.bat"

$desktopGuestUser = "xxx"

$desktopGuestPassword = "xxx"

# copy installbat file and exe

Foreach ($server in $server_names){

             Copy-Item -Path $agentpath -Destination \\$server\c$

}

Foreach ($server in $server_names){

             Copy-Item -Path $installagentbatpath -Destination \\$server\c$

}

# run the installagent.bat

Foreach ($server in $server_names){

             Invoke-VMScript -ScriptText $runinstall –VM $server -guestuser $desktopGuestUser -guestpassword $desktopGuestPassword

}

catch { if ($error[0]-match“the guest operations agent”) { “View Agent kicked off a reboot”} else { $error[0] } }

find batch file (installagent.bat) content below

start /d "C:\" VMware-viewagent-x86_64-6.1.0-2509441.exe /s /v"/qn VDM_VC_MANAGED_AGENT=1 ADDLOCAL=ALL"

Please help me I am new to scripting

Thanks

Raju

I have vSphere esxi 6.0 installed on a 2013 Mac Pro hosting two Yosemite 10.10.4 vm's. The problem that Im having is that I can't run them both at the same time. If I do, they lose connection to the host and I have to reboot the server.

The VM's are only using 2GB Ram, 2 processors and 128MB Graphics memory.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

I have 11 exchange 2010s all hosted as VM on VMware. ( I have no idea who did the original install and there is no docs on the current setup)

6 mailboxes and the remaining are HT/CAS.

I would like to move these servers from the current  SAN to a new SAN with new disks, how do I do this?

At a later date I  will change the layout of the databases and log files.

Thanks.

Workflows to help facilitate OS imaging.

FlowGrab: View Project

Extend vRealize Automation for Third-Party Imaging Technologies | VMware Cloud Management - VMware Blogs

General use workflows are:

• Apply a Customization Specification from vCenter to a VM.
• Update a VM's network with a static IP, while applying a Customization Specification.
• Wait for VMware Tools to start running.

vRA-specific workflows are:

• Facilitate 3rd party imaging tools/processes, end-to-end, from within a Blueprint.

  • Blog article detailing how to setup the this workflow:

    Extend vRealize Automation for Third-Party Imaging Technologies | VMware Cloud Management - VMware Blogs
  • Will apply static IP info, if present, from a Network Profile or IPAM integration.
  • I tested 3rd party imaging mostly with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 and, and briefly with Windows Deployment Services (WDS).
  • This workflow *should* work with any imaging tool that uses a boot image and can be configured so that no user-interaction needed.
• Use an Imaging network.
  • Let you use switch the VM's network to an Imaging network during OS imaging, then switch it back to the VM Network assigned by vRA as soon as imaging is done.
  • DHCP is required to be present on the Imaging network.  However, PXE is not required, since you can use vRA's Image.ISO.Location and Image.ISO.Name custom properties to attach a boot ISO to the target VM to image.
  • I have yet to test using this Imaging Network workflow in conjunction with the other one (3rd party imaging).  Feel free to test yourself - directions to do so are included in the workflow Descriptions.
  • If you use this with a vRA-supported imaging technology like SCCM, BladeLogic, or HP Server Automation, please let me know how it goes, and if any adjustments/changes are needed!

We are preparing to update 4 hosts from 5.1 U1 to 5.5 U1. Is the update-from-esxi5.5-5.5_update02-2068190.zip bundle the correct one to use?

I plan on copying the bundle to the local datastore on each host, moving all VM's off host, putting host in maintenance mode, and running the command "esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/update-from-esxi5.5-5.5_update02-2068190.zip"

I'm seeing in some places that I should use the command "esxcli software profile update -d..." instead of just "esxcli software vib update..." what's the difference?

Also, is this the correct offline bundle for 5.1 U1 to 5.5 U2 update?

TIA!

I have recently tested installing an embedded deployment of vcenter 6.0 using the vPosgres database on a Windows 2012 R2 server. Initially everything went well with the install and all the services ran after installation but once I rebooted the server the VMware component manager service hangs at starting and eventually times out, thus all of the services with a dependency on that service do not start. Any idea where I am going wrong with my installation?

We are permitting administrators access to the console of their VM's using VMRC. Our Unix admins get access to their VM's, and Windows admins likewise, but they should not have the ability to access each others consoles.

We have set up a "VMRC Console" role and have permitted only "Virtual machine/Interaction/Console Interaction" for this role. When we apply this role to the AD user group for Unix admins (for example) on the ESXi host objects, they are not able to connect unless we set the propagate option. When we do that, they now have access to ALL consoles, not just theirs.  As soon as we uncheck the propagate, they can only see their VM's again, but cannot access the consoles.

What is the secret sauce here to limit them to their own consoles? I can see why this is happening, but I was hoping the VM Folder permissions would have limited their access. Apparently the Host permissions are overriding the VM Folder permissions (and that's not surprising, really).

I know, I know, no official support for nested.

Physical gear, runs ESXi5.5.  Upstream switches send in trunked VLANs into the vDS, no issues.

We have ESXi6.0 as a guest/nested host.  The vDS (5.5) sends a comma-separated list of VLANs down to the ESXi6.0 guests, who receives them on standard switches.  We've done the promiscuous and forged things.  The ESXi6.0 'hosts' run, no issues.

On the ESXi6.0 nested hosts, we run sub-nested guests.  Those guests run fine, but here's the catch.  If we power cycle the sub-nested guests off, we lose connectivity to the trunk line, and thus lose the nested ESXi6.0 hosts.  If we break open the trunk and run N-many individual interfaces, everything runs perfectly.

I've not found discussion of this issue, and that things run normally make me think we've set the trunks up correctly.  Any ideas on what might cause a guest powering off to kill its host's networking?

Hello,

Last week we upgraded our vsphere servers to version 6. Today I notice that on our RDS server, there are a lot of events from VMware Tools, like every couple of seconds (see below). VMware Tools is up to date on this server, and all vsphere updates are installed on the host as well. The RDS server is Windows Server 2012, with about 10 clients active on it. The only thing I can find on the net, is this: VMware KB: Installing VMware Tools 5.1/5.5 on a Windows virtual machine reports Unity warnings in Windows Event logs…, but that doesn't help. I hope someone here has any other ideas? Thanks !!

Logboeknaam:   Application

Bron:          VMware Tools

Datum:         1/06/2015 12:09:17

Gebeurtenis-id:1000

Taakcategorie: Geen

Niveau:        Warning

Trefwoorden:   Classic

Gebruiker:     <domain user>

Computer:      <servername>

Beschrijving:

[ warning] [vmusr:vmusr] SimpleSock: Socket 564 closed by peer.

Gebeurtenis-XML:

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">

  <System>

    <Provider Name="VMware Tools" />

    <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>

    <Level>3</Level>

    <Task>0</Task>

    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>

    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-06-01T10:09:17.000000000Z" />

    <EventRecordID>91063</EventRecordID>

    <Channel>Application</Channel>

    <Computer>SRVRD1.server.vmv.lan</Computer>

    <Security UserID="S-1-5-21-1955156641-1582828314-1617787245-4268" />

  </System>

  <EventData>

    <Data>[ warning] [vmusr:vmusr] SimpleSock: Socket 564 closed by peer.

</Data>

  </EventData>

</Event>