I’ve been asking around why the default isolation response has been changed from “power off” to “leave powered on”. It seems that this is done because a lot of customers had VM’s being powered off unnecessary. This happened because the service console or physical switches weren’t setup redundant and thus caused HA to kick in. In other words, for those [...]

There has always been much discussion about the VirtualCenter database if it was important enough to back it up. Most people agreed that the information that the database held was not important. A datacenter and cluster could be easily reconfigured and all other settings were saved on the host. HA wasn’t even using VirtualCenter, and DRS well a day without [...]

How about backing up that dreadful application/server that you couldn’t or did not wanted to virtualize to your ESX environment? It could be useful to have a copy of a server that for whatever reason you did not virtualize. The new VMware Converter plugin for VirtualCenter gives you this option. You can create a reoccurring schedule for a p2v, you [...]

For those like me who would like to check ESXi 3.5 update 2 but don’t want to install on a local harddisk. Here’s a good pdf about how to install it on a USB memory key. It’s fairly easy and I just booted my IBM X61 laptop with ESXi. In short: First get the following tools: 7-Zip(Free), WinImage(Demo) Download the [...]

I just noticed the following, when creating a new(!) HA cluster on VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 the default isolation response is set to “Leave powered on”. In other words, when your ESX host hasn’t got a network connection any more the VM’s remain on. This is a huge change because the default used to be “Power Off”. Besides “Power Off” [...]

Erik Zandboer just posted a topic on the VMTN forum about an HA error he received when he updates his machines to 3.5 U2. The error was one almost everyone has probably seen by now “could not contact primary HA agent”. This is normally solved by pressing “reconfigure for ha” or disabling and enabling HA. This wasn’t the case this [...]

You can pick up a free ESXi 3.5U2 license now. Just login, fill out the questions and receive a free license! I will be updating my ESXi machine today!