Virtual Center Server corrupted after 2.5 U3 upgrade

Posted on October 24th, 2008 in Virtualization | 8 Comments »

Many of you may trying to upgrade the Virtual Center Server 2.5 U3 which recently release from VMware. As usual, I always like to be the earlier bird to test out everything and be excited to implement to my environment. Here is what I discover during the after the upgrade.

During the upgrade, there is the SQL script at the backend which trying to upgrade your DB table for your virtual center database and update manager. It does show some error during the upgrade and the screen will dissapear. Once it complete, you will find that your virtual center are still functioning as usual. 2 days later, you will start realize the Virtual center services is not able to be started anymore. Now is the big problem come. If you have backup your DB before the upgrade, you should be good. Or else, you will lose whatever data previously you have. Always backup the DB before any upgrade. A good example, missing template posted by superman previously.

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Missing VM Template

Posted on October 20th, 2008 in Tips | 1 Comment »

Few days ago, one of my virtual center machine was crashed and my Microsoft SQL database was corrupted without backup(damm!).

Basically setting up a brand new Windows 2003 machine is pretty simple but setup a new Virtual Machine took me 2 days. The most important is my VM template is go missing. The quick solution is search for VM template and register (add to inventory) again.

SSH into my ESX server using putty and search for VM template file with extension “.vmtx”.

[root@malaysiavmesx01 vmfs]# find /vmfs -name *.vmtx
/vmfs/volumes/465eeddb-89b75750-a52d-011aa0289d15/W2K3STD/W2K3STD.vmtx
/vmfs/volumes/465eeda7-2a63d436-724b-011aa0289d15/RHEL5/RHEL5.vmtx

How to register a VM template using CLI:
[root@malaysiavmesx01 vmfs]# /usr/bin/vmware-cmd -s register

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How to backup Virtual Center Databases in SQL 2005

Posted on October 6th, 2008 in Tips, Virtualization | 2 Comments »

In order to keep your VMware environment up to date with the latest features and bug fixes, we all are not able to avoid to upgrade our virtual center server from time to time(check Virtual Center 2.5 Update 3). To minimize the impact on the previous data and record, you may want to backup the DB for your virtual center servers. Here is how I backup my DB in SQL 2005 in a very simple way.

Open the management studio in SQL 2005 and connect to the SQL server engine that manage the virtual center and update manager DB. right click and select stop the database engine. Follow by that, open you my computer and browse to the folder which contain the DB and DB log for your databse.

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