Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

3.0.x

Howto: Rename a VM

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There are a couple of ways to rename a Virtual Machine, but there are two in my opinion that stand out:

  1. Shutdown the VM
  2. Rename the VM in VirtualCenter
  3. Migrate the VM and move it to another Datastore
  4. done!

And from the service console:

  1. vmware-cmd -s unregister /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm/vmold.vmx
  2. mv /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-old /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-new
  3. cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-new
  4. vmkfstools -E vm-old.vmdk vm-new.vmdk
  5. find . -name ‘*.vmx*’ -print -exec sed -e ‘s/vm-old/vm-new/g’ {} \;
  6. mv vm-old.vmx vm-new.vmx
    for every file that hasn’t been renamed (.vmsd etc.)
  7. vmware-cmd -s register /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm-new/vm-new.vmx
  8. done!

VDI / VCM with ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5

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Try it out:

Get a free 60-day evaluation of VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), an end-to end solution for virtual desktop management that gives you the ability to deliver desktops from the data center for greater control and flexibility. With VMware VDI, you get the proven VMware Infrastructure 3 software along with VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM), an enterprise-class connection broker that connects remote users to centralized desktops and manages VDI environments. Learn more about VMware VDI.

YOUR TRIAL INCLUDES

  • VMware Infrastructure 3:
    • VMware ESX Server 3.5
    • VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 (including VMware VMotion, VMware DRS and VMware HA)
    • VMware Consolidated Backup
  • VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2

New HA error messages

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Just noticed the new errors HA produces at the console when a host is isolated in ESX 3.5:

Node isolated from network. Either repair network or override agent startup using option -noiso

And when the host returns from isolation:

Node no longer isolated, will restart

This makes troubleshooting a lot easier! Thanks VMware 🙂

Queue depth and alike settings lost after an upgrade to ESX 3.5

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I just had a discussion about an upgrade from 3.0.x to 3.5. During that conversation the new HBA drivers that VMware uses came up. After an upgrade it seems that the queue depth settings are lost. Thinking about it I can understand why. ESX 3.5 uses different driver for most HBA’s. For instance Emulex, their driver for the LP11002 used to be the “lpfcdd_732” and now is the “lpfc_740”. After an upgrade the new driver/module doesn’t get the options you provided with “esxcfg-module” because it was specified for that specific “old” module. This means that you have to set these options again!

CDP, why?

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That’s what I thought at first, why do I need CDP(Cisco Discovery Protocol)? Well yesterday CDP proved to be an excellent option for troubleshooting weird networking problems. One of my customers replaced a faulty NIC and accidentally switched two network cables. One of these cables was part of an etherchannel, this caused all kind of strange routing / connection errors to the virtual machines. CDP was very useful because I could setup a remote connection to the customer and check which vmnic was connected to which port on the switch. So use CDP when in doubt!
Click on the blue cloud next to the vmnic name on the right:

This is the result:

(Screenshots taken from the RTFM Upgrade Guide.)