Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Bugs

Scripts release for Storage vMotion / HA problem

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Last week when the Storage vMotion / HA problem went public I asked both William Lam and Alan Renouf if they could write a script to detect the problem. I want to thank both of them for their quick response and turnaround, they cranked the script out in literally hours. The scripts were validated multiple times in a VDS environment and worked flawless. Note that these scripts can detect the problem in an environment using a regular Distributed vSwitch and a Nexus 1000v, the script can only mitigate the problem though in a Distributed vSwitch environment. Here are the links to the scripts:

Once again thanks guys!

Workaround for: ESX(i) 4.1 Password Issue

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As many of you already know there is an issue with the encryption mechanism of ESX(i) 4.1. When passwords are used which are longer than 8 characters the password will be truncated after the 8th character. As such during authentication only the first 8 characters are used. In other words if you have  a 10 character password you will only need to type the first 8 characters correct and the rest can be completely random.

The KB article that was published yesterday contains a workaround to change this behaviour. I recommend everyone to read the article and implement this workaround when your password policy describes passwords longer than 8 characters.

vSphere 4.1: Datacenter.QueryConnectionInfo failed?

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When I was installing vSphere 4.1 ESXi I ran into a problem. I received the following error when I added the ESXi host to my cluster:

Call “Datacenter.QueryConnectionInfo” for object “yellow bricks” on vCenter Server “W2K8-001” failed.

Although the error didn’t make much sense I had the feeling it had something to do with name resolution(This KB article gave a hint I guess). After I added my dns suffix on my NIC it worked. Problem solved.

NIC Teaming load balancing does not work with global vSwitch configuration on ESX 3.5

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A week ago a colleague contacted me about the fact that he had issues with load balancing on “Virtual Port ID”. Only a single NIC was utilized while running over 10 VMs on a single host. When changing the order of the NICs the traffic would flip over but again no load balancing. I remembered a KB article from months ago and pointed him to the article. Yesterday on the VMTN Community someone reported a similar issue with his ESX 3.5 environment. I referred to the article again and it solved the problem. Might be worth checking your setup in terms of load balancing. Is your second NIC actually being used? And if not here’s a short description of the problem and the solution:

Source

  • Symptom: NIC Teaming load balancing properties do not take effect with global vSwitch configuration settings.
  • Resolution: Override the load balancing order at the port group level, under Policy Exceptions, select the checkbox and choose the proper load balancing from the dropdown menu. Please note that this workaround only works until the next reboot of ESX.

Windows 7 and the Intel 965 video driver

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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:

  • Download the Vista 64 Bit driver for the Intel 965 (in my case Lenovo laptop)
  • Unzip the software
  • Right click properties on the “setup.exe”
  • Click on the Compatibility tab and select mode to “Windows Vista Service Pack 2” and select “run this program as an administrator” at “privilege level”
  • Click “Ok”
  • Run the setup and reboot

So far I haven’t experienced the issues anymore…