VMPOOL & TECH BLOG

Purpose This article guides you through the process of increasing the size of a virtual disk. This procedure is necessary to accommodate data requirements that have changed since the creation of the virtual disk. Resolution Important information before you begin Even though this article provides steps to increase the size of your virtual disk, the size of the disk partition does not increase as observed inside the guest operating system. You must follow steps related to your specific operating system to increase the size of the disk partition(s). For more information, see  Increasing the size of a disk partition (1004071) . Caution : VMware recommends that you back up your virtual machine before increasing the size of virtual disks. The procedure for increasing the size of a virtual disk differs between VMware products. Follow the section below that matches your product. In all cases, confirm the following before increasing the size of the virtual disk: Al

Purpose This article explains VMware's position on its support for running Fusion 3 on Mac OS X Lion, and the compatibility guidelines. Resolution VMware Fusion 4.x supports OS X 10.7 (Lion) as both a host and a guest operating system. For more information, see the VMware Fusion home page .   VMware Fusion 3.1.4 was designed for OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It is compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), with some limitations. VMware Fusion 3.x is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). VMware Fusion 2.x is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). If you are running an older version of VMware Fusion, upgrade to VMware Fusion 3.1.4 before upgrading to Lion. For the best experience, reinstall Fusion after upgrading to Lion. When running Fusion on Lion, these limitations are known to exist: VMware Fusion 3.1.3 virtual machines do not start in Mac OS X 10.7.4 or later. For more information, see   Fusion 3.1.3 virtual machines fail to start af

Purpose This article explains the host machine hardware and firmware requirements for installing virtual machines with 64-bit guest operating systems. Note : 64-bit guests are not supported for ESX versions 2.5.x and earlier. For information about installing Guest Operating Systems, see the  Guest Operating System Installation Guide . Resolution VMware's virtual machine monitor has traditionally used segmentation to provide isolation between the guest operating system and the virtual machine monitor. This is necessary because the guest operating system and virtual machine monitor share the linear address space. To determine whether or not your CPU is suitable for running 64-bit guest operating systems, VMware distributes a free utility. You can download the tool from our web site:  Processor Check for 64-Bit Compatibility  . Note : This utility is provided without support from VMware and does not require ESX/ESXi, VMware Server or VMware Workstation to perform

Symptoms Cannot convert a Windows physical machine Converting a Windows physical machine fails You see the error: Unable to create a VSS snapshot In Windows Event Viewer, you see the error: Service Control Manager Event ID 7000 The Vstor2 P2V230 Virtual Storage Driver service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the path specified  Cause This issue occurs if the previous agent installation was not removed correctly and  Vstor2P2V30.sys  is installed and continues to exist from a previous conversion attempt with Converter 3.0. Resolution To workaround this issue: Click  Start > Run , type devmgmt.msc, and click  OK . The Device Manager window opens. Click  View  >  Show Hidden Devices . Expand  Non-Plug and Play Devices . Locate  Vstor2 P2V30 Virtual Storage Driver .  Right-click  Vstor2 P2V30 Virtual Storage Driver  and click  Uninstall. Reference http://kb.vmware.com

If you’re running the free version of ESXi 5.0 in your homelab or testing it at work, you might be wondering what’s the easy way to upgrade existing ESXi 5.0 installation to the latest ESXi 5.1 without much effort and without breaking your existing installation, without re-installing everything. Your existing VMs won’t be affected. I’ve already wrote about patching ESXi without vCenter, but this time the command used slightly differ, and here I’m showing you the the steps which needs to be accomplished to upgrade to the latest ESXi 5.1 version. More advanced users can skip, because they’ll probably know this method. This article is meant to be for every user who don’t uses vSphere update manager for this process. I’m writing it down here for my own bookmarking needs as well. -:) As you might already read in my article about the changes to the ESXi, there isn’t any vRAM limitation on the free ESXi 5.1 but there is still the 2 physical CPU limit together with the 32Gb physical RA

Symptoms Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 fails to boot or install on any version of ESXi or ESX Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 is not working You cannot use Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 in ESXi or ESX Purpose This article provides information on using Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 in a vSphere environment. Resolution Like many of you, VMware is becoming familiar with Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 preview. VMware is testing and enabling the support of Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 on vSphere. Note : Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 will not be supported on ESXi/ESX 4.0 or 4.1. Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 is fully supported for ESXi 5.1. For more information, see What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.1. Consider this guidance, which is based on testing Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 up to build 8224: Windows 8 Developer Preview / Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate does not boot on ESXi 5.0. To resolve this issue, you must install patch ESXi500-201112001 (Patch

Purpose This article provides the default location of log files on an ESXi 5.0 host. For related information, see the  Logging in vSphere 5.0  in Command-Line Management in vSphere 5.0 for Service Console Users. For other products and versions, see Location of log files for VMware products (1021806). Resolution You can review ESXi 5.0 host log files: From the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI). For more information, see  About the Direct Console ESXi Interface  in thevSphere 5.0 Installation and Setup Guide. From the ESXi Shell. For more information, see the  Log In to the ESXi Shell  section in the vSphere 5.0 Installation and Setup Guide. Using a web browser at  https:// HostnameOrIPAddress /host . For more information, see the  HTTP Access to vSphere Server Files  section in the vSphere Web Services SDK documentation. Within an extracted  vm-support  log bundle. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi using the vSphere Cl

Symptoms Windows 2000 Terminal Server shows degraded performance when running under ESXi 5.0. Performance Charts for the virtual machine show a much higher CPU usage compared to the same virtual machine running on vSphere ESX/ESXi 4.x. Windows guest operating system task manager shows a very high CPU usage as soon as multiple Terminal Server users are connected. The guest operating system appears to intermittently become unresponsive due to the CPU load. A CPU spike for the System process may occur. Changing the virtual machine's hardware to version 8 or increasing the vCPU count does not resolve the issue. After migrating the virtual machine back to a host running ESX/ESXi 4.x, the virtual machine returns to normal behavior. Cause This behavior is caused by changes to the Binary Translation (BT) Monitor Mode of the VMware Hypervisor in version 5.0. These changes were included to address an issue related to coherency of translated code. Resolution This issue is

Symptoms After upgrading to ESXi 5.0, PXE servers provided by Citrix Provisioning Server report issues while PXE booting a virtual machine. A virtual machine becomes unresponsive during the boot process at: CLIENT MAC ADDR:  xx xx xx xx xx xx If the virtual machine is rebooted from within the guest operating system, the virtual machine fails to PXE boot. However, if the virtual machine is reset or powered off/on, the virtual machine PXE boots correctly. This issue does not occur with earlier versions of ESXi/ESX. This issue may occur on virtual machines regardless of the network adapter (such as  e1000  or  vmxnet3 ). Cause This issue is caused by the mishandling of pending interrupts. Resolution This issue is resolved in vSphere 5.0 Update 1. Note : Before implementing this workaround, confirm with Citrix if the version of Citrix Provisioning Server being used is compatible with vSphere 5.0. To work around this issue, configure the Citrix Provisioning Bootstrap and

Symptoms After installing Windows 8 (64bit) Release Preview or Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate on an ESXi 5.0 Update 1 host or the VMware Workstation Tech Preview, you experience these symptoms:  When starting for the first time after the installation, the virtual machine stops responding and displays a black screen with a white status ring Restarting the virtual machine does not resolve the issue Resolution To resolve this issue, use one of these workarounds: Change the virtual machine to use EFI instead of BIOS. Right-click the virtual machine and click  Power  >  Shut Down Guest. Right-click the virtual machine and click  Edit Settings. Click the  Options  tab. Click  Boot Options. Click  EFI  under Firmware. Click  OK .  Power on the virtual machine. Add  vmGenCounter.enable = FALSE  to the  .vmx  file of the virtual machine. Right-click the virtual machine and click  Power  >  Shut Down Guest. Right-click the virtual machine and click  Edit S

Symptoms The network configuration in the Linux Guest operating system still refers to the original MAC addresses. Mismatch between the MAC addresses in the virtual machine settings and the Linux operating system. Networking does not work in a cloned Linux virtual machine. Cause When a virtual machine is cloned, the network adapter(s) are given new MAC addresses. Resolution To change the MAC address of the Linux operating system:   Redhat Connect the vSphere Client to the vCenter Server. Click the virtual machine. Click  Edit Settings . Click  Network adapter  and take note of the  MAC Address : For example,  00:0c:29:c1:9e:66 Power on the Linux virtual machine. Open a console and log in as root. Change directory to  etc/sysconfig/network-scripts . Edit  ifcfg-eth0  using a plaint text editor and update the MAC address to reflect the MAC address in Step 3. For more information, see  Editing files on an ESX host using vi or nano (1020302) . Activate the e

Symptoms After a storage device has unexpectedly unpresented from the storage array, you are unable to mount it again There was a running virtual machine when storage device went offline ESXi 5.0 host cannot mount the storage after the LUN is online again In the vmkernel log file, you see entries similar to: 2012-02-13T22:47:44.243Z cpu36:5590)Vol3: 1665: Error refreshing FD resMeta: Device is permanently unavailable 2012-02-13T22:47:44.281Z cpu34:5590)VC: 1449: Device rescan time 165 msec (total number of devices 75) 2012-02-13T22:47:44.281Z cpu34:5590)VC: 1452: Filesystem probe time 504 msec (devices probed 48 of 75) 2012-02-13T22:47:44.406Z cpu38:5590)ScsiDevice: 4592: naa.6006016058201700354179be0c6fdf11 device :Open count > 0, cannot be brought online 2012-02-13T22:47:44.654Z cpu34:5590)Vol3: 647: Couldn't read volume header from control: Invalid handle 2012-02-13T22:47:44.654Z cpu34:5590)FSS: 4333: No FS driver claimed device 'control': Not supported 2012-0

Resolution To workaround this issue, boot into the ESXi host's BIOS and disa ble   UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) or  EFI. For more information on how to perform this change, consult your hardware vendor. reference http://kb.vmware.com