For those who missed VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas hope this piece of info will trigger some excitement. Under the “Explore Technology & Architecture” category Breakout Session #TA3201 : Linux Strategy & Roadmap outline some interesting stuff for those pure Open Source or Linux house. It will definitely a good news if you plan or already virtualize with VMware. As most of us know the “legacy” VirtualCenter or the new name to be release vCenter required to have a AD or MS server in house to manage VI3 & ESX.
Beside OS dependancy it also require a database which currently so sad only work with Oracle or MSSQL. During TA3201 session under “Linux Initiatives“ mentioned vCenter will have a Linux appliance version as well as a Cross Platform Client. As follow are some highlight what’s is in the vCenter Linux appliance. The interesting part is there is no mention whether it will support OpenSource databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Read more »
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.
Read more »
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
Read more »
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.
Read more »
Today, something weird happen. 1 of my VM guest which is windows 2003 server suddenly hung up. When I try to reset it, the Console screen show blank after the bios screen. I try to attach the VMDK to another newly created VM and it still not functioning. To verify the vmdk is not corrupted, I mount the vmdk to another windows 2003 VM and I found that the VMDK is functioning.
After that, I try to check most of the setting and log file from putty and virtual center. Here is my finding. Due to some unknown reason, the .vmx file setting and the configuration on the virtual center show really different. I had to force restart the virtual center service, and reconfigure some of the resources setting in virtual center to ensure it had not reserve or limit any resources on CPU and memory, and I power up the VM again. This round, the VM able to power up and functioning. Originally, It shouldn’t reserve any resource as I had not configured that. For some unknown reason, the resources limit had been configured by the ESX itself. This had happened in the pass but it had not cause any issue.
Read more »
