by Duncan Epping
Duncan Epping · ·
Got a question today on how to change the licensing server from the Service Console or how to add the license server via a scripted install. Of course “vmware-vim-cmd” is the keyword here. If you want to use a license server you will need to use the first option, if you want to add a license file you will need to use the second option:
vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source server
vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/license --source file
Don’t you just love “vmware-vim-cmd”….
Duncan Epping · ·
This afternoon @Stevie_chambers published something on twitter on memory limits of vSphere VMs. This was a recap of a question asked on a VMware internal mailinglist, here’s what Steve posted:
Why has a vSphere VM max mem 255GB? VMFS block size of 1MB = 256GB max – 0.4MB VM state = 255.6MB rounded down to 255GB – from Ole@VMware
In other words, the maximum memory size for a vSphere VM is 255 GB. This is the maximum memory size because a swap file needs to be created as well. This swap file cannot exceed the maximum file size of a 1MB blocksized VMFS volume. Max file size = 256GB – VM state(roughly 400MB)=255.6GB. For safety this has been rounded down to 255GB. Which at first sounds like a weird amount but actually makes sense when you read the explanation.
By the way, Steve has recently started a blog: View Yonder. Welcome to the blogosphere!
Duncan Epping · ·
After I wrote the licensing server post a couple of days back one of my colleagues(Thanks Horst!) was so kind to email me the following script. What it basically does is check every server for the availability of the license source. Of course it can be improved by adding for instance a check to see if the license service is running on the license server and for instance email the results if there’s an error… [Read more…] about Check if your license server is still running…
Duncan Epping · ·
I like trying out new stuff. That’s one of the reasons I upgraded my testing machine to Windows 7. Unfortunately the driver that is included with Windows 7 for the Intel 965 Mobile is far from perfect. Nasty side effects are: flickering taskbar, black boxes on random places of the screen, minimize / maximize / close buttons hidden, taskbar disappearing… as you can see there are more than enough issues to look for a workaround. I tried updating to the latest and greatest version but this did not solve the issues I was facing. But the following did:
So far I haven’t experienced the issues anymore…
Duncan Epping · ·
On twitter John Troyer retweeted a question a couple of days ago which basically came down to the following: When your VM which contains the license server goes down and has been down for longer then 14 days you will not be able to actually boot it up. This is because the grace period has expired.
As a VMware PSO Consultant my recommendation is to make sure you always have a “host based” license file laying around. In a normal situation you don’t need to use it. But in a situation like this it will be very useful because you can just change the license to a host based license instead of a “license server”. This would enable you to actually boot up the License VM. When booted up you could easily revert the changes again and point to your license server again.