Thanks to VMguy.com for the write up. Workstation 7.1 has been released and can be downloaded here. VMware ACE and Player have been updated as well. Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:
Thanks to VMguy.com for the write up. Workstation 7.1 has been released and can be downloaded here. VMware ACE and Player have been updated as well. Here’s the what’s new section from the release notes:
Thanks to VMguy.com for the great write up. Fusion 3.1 has been released. You can download it here. There’s tons of great information in the what’s new section of the release notes.
Back before vSphere, some very creative people/companies created utilities to backup all of the host configuration on your ESX servers. Things like Networking configuration, vSwitch configuration, Port groups, etc. Now with vSphere, how do you protect this information in case of a host failure/reinstall? Answer: Host Profiles.
vSphere 4 requires your processor to be 64 bit. This lesson will show you how to check your existing ESX server to see if it supports 64 bit and the required CPU features in order to run vSphere.
On your existing VMware ESX server, you can use a simple command to see if the CPU supports 64 bit and the required "flags" (or features) that vSphere needs.
Open up a SSH session to your ESX server and log in as root.
Then type in:
egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
The flags on the CPU will show if it supports Virtualization Technology (VT) or not. If your system supports VT, then you'll see vmx or svm in the list of flags.
The vmx flag is for Intel based processors. The svm flag is for AMD based processors.
You'll see that in the screenshot above, our processor (Intel) does support VT as we have the vmx flag in the results, circled in the red box.
VT technology can still be disabled in your computer’s BIOS, however, so you’ll want to check there to make sure that it hasn’t been disabled. The flags in cpuinfo simply mean that your processor supports it.
Another method of checking your CPU's to see if they support 64 bit and the necessary features for vSphere is to use a utility from VMware. More information about this can be found at this site, which has an excellent write up on it:
http://www.vladan.fr/you-have-to-have-64-bit-hardware-for-vsphere/
VM /ETC has a great article that helped me while onsite to perform an upgrade of the vCenter SQL database from 2005 express edition to a licensed version of SQL 2005 (in my case it worked on SQL 2008).
This lesson describes how to reset a lost password on vSphere 4 and ESX 3.x. This information is based off of VMware KB article 1317898 which can be found here:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1317898.
1.Reboot the ESX host.
2.When the GRUB screen appears, press the space bar to stop the server from automatically booting into VMware ESX .
3.Use the arrow keys to select Service Console only (troubleshooting mode).
4.Press the 'a' key to modify the kernel arguments (boot options).
5.On the line presented, type a space followed by the word single.
6.Press Enter. The server continues to boot into single-user mode.
7.When presented with a bash prompt such as sh-2.05b#, type the command passwd and press Enter.
8.Follow the prompts to set a new root user password.
9.When the password is changed successfully, reboot the host using the command reboot and allow VMware ESX Server to boot normally.
1.Reboot the ESX host.
2.When the GRUB screen appears, press the space bar to stop the server from automatically booting into VMware ESX .
3.Use the arrow keys to select Service Console only (troubleshooting mode).
4.Press the 'e' key to modify the kernel arguments (boot options).
5.On the line presented, type a space followed by the word single.
6.Press Enter then press the 'b' key to boot the ESX host in single-user mode.
7.When presented with a bash prompt such as sh-2.05b#, type the command passwd and press Enter.
8.Follow the prompts to set a new root user password.
9.When the password is changed successfully, reboot the host using the command reboot and allow VMware ESX Server to boot normally.
1.Reboot the ESX Host.
2.When the LILO screen appears, press the space bar to stop the server from automatically booting into VMware ESX.
3.At the LILO prompt select linux, adding the -s to the end of the line. For example: linux -s.
4.Press Enter. The system begins to boot. The server continues to boot into single-user mode.
5.When presented with a bash prompt such as sh-2.05b#, type the command passwd and press Enter.
6.Follow the prompts to set a new root user password.
7.When the password is changed successfully, reboot the host using the command reboot and allow VMware ESX to boot normally.
VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 was released over the weekend. Some notes from the email that I received is below.
Desktop virtualization, and I use that term loosely as it really encompasses so many technologies, is the future. Here is how to turn your existing desktops into thin clients for cheap...or should I say FREE!
If there are disk array or networking issues in VMware ESX 3.x or vSphere, some virtual machines (VMs) may appear in the vSphere Client as being Invalid and are greyed out. The following steps will fix this issue.
When using Virtual Machines (VM's) from other VMware products, the easiest way to get these VM's into ESX/vSphere is to use VMware's product called vCenter Converter Standalone. vCenter Server does include a version of Converter, however I've had better success in using the standalone version to do VM conversions as it is (typically) a newer version with more features than the one included with vCenter. This lesson describes how to use vCenter Converter Standalone to import VM's or VMDK files from other VMware Products, such as VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and VMware Server.
