afokkema VMware

Syslog gone mad after vSphere upgrade to vSphere 5.1 update 1


After upgrading a vSphere 5.0 update 2 host to vSphere 5.1 update 1 we noticed an issue with the lsassd daemon. Right after update manager finished with the upgrade the lsassd starts to write a lot of messages. Within the last 5 minutes the syslog server received 170K log messages from the upgraded host alone.

See the screenshot below:

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The following message keeps popping up in the logs:

esxihost.domain.loc lsassd[9297]: 0x6eb11b90:Terminating on fatal IPC exception

To work around this issue you need to leave the Windows domain. Select the host – Configuration – Authentication Services – Properties. Click on Leave Domain… The excessive logging hast stopped immediately.

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After that you can rejoin to the Windows domain again.

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afokkema VMware

PowerCLI: Upgrading vHardware to vSphere Part 2: VM’s


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Disclaimer: use this script at your own risk 😉

In part 1 you could find a script to upgrade your templates to hardware version 7. In this post you’ll find a script that will upgrade your VM’s to hardware version 7.

Note: This script will upgrade the VMware Tools if necessary and will shutdown the VM!!!!!

You can download the script here: upgrade-vhardware_vm and here: http://poshcode.org/1217

The script will perform the following actions:

  • Connect to vCenter
  • Get all the VM’s in the folder you need to specify
  • Create a CSV file with some info about the VM. I will post the content later.
  • Update the VMware Tools if necessary (The VM will restart after the installation)
  • Shutdown the VM
  • Upgrade the vHardware to version 7
  • Start the VM
  • Create an Excel sheet with an overview of the VM’s and their IP settings

During the process of the script, the VM will be unavailable for 5 minutes or less. So be sure that nobody uses the VM.

The beforeHWchange.csv will look like this:

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The script in action:

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The last step, the creation of an Excel sheet with an overview of the VM’s. Here you can see if the IP Address is changed or not.

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To do list:

  • Create a proper VM report function (export to csv) so I can capture multiple network adapters.
  • Create a before Excel sheet with a nice overview of the environment.
afokkema Random, VMware

Upgrade ESX3i to ESX4i with the vSphere Host Update Utility


 

In this post I will introduce a new VMware tool called VMware vSphere Host Update tool. With this tool you’re able to update an ESX host without VUM, just like the VMware Infrastructure Update utility. See my previous post here. An other interesting feature of the vSphere Host Update tool is the option to upgrade an existing ESX(i) Host to vSphere.  In this post I will guide you through the upgrade process of an ESXi host which runs from a memory stick.

Start the vSphere Host Update Utility from  Start – Programs – VMware – VMware vSphere Host Update Utility.  When you already accessed your ESXi host with the VI Client, The host are already added to the Host List. If this is not the case, you can add your host via the Add Host… link at the right corner.  So now we’re ready to upgrade. Select the host and press the upgrade button.

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The ESXi 4.0 Upgrade Wizard starts. You’ll have to add the upgrade zip file which you can download from VMware.com if you’re a Beta user.

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Enter the credentials for your host. In the screenshot below, you’ll see an error: The host must be in maintenance mode to perform an upgrade. So when the host is in maintenance mode, we can continue the upgrade process.

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After the Host Compatibility check, the host will be upgraded to vShere.

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After a couple of minutes the host is ready and is running ESXi 4.

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