Host Cannot Download Files From VMware vSphere Update Manager Patch Store

You may see following error when you scanning ESXi hosts by vCenter Update Manager.

Host cannot download files from VMware vSphere Update Manager patch store. Check the network connectivity and 
firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details.

You also see similar logs in /var/log/esxupdate.log.

[Errno -2] Name or service not known

The root cause could be following:

  1. ESXi host cannot resolve DNS name of vCenter Update Manager Server.
  2. One of the DNS servers incorrect if you set multiple DNS servers on ESXi host.

Migrate vCenter Server 5.5 Windows to 6.0 Virtual Appliance 

Virtual appliance is future of how VMware delivery their product to customers. It’s pain to migrate from vCenter Server Windows version to virtual appliance. The only way was build up new virtual appliance and move everything out of Windows vCenter Server. The challenge is you lost data if you have integrated vCenter Server with other VMware products, or using DVS.

VMware released vCenter Server Migration Tool after VMworld 2016. It gave me confidence to give it a try. I assume vCenter Server is embedded SSO. I did the migration 2 or 3 times, following is summary of my experience. The migration tool only support migrate vCenter Server 5.5 windows edition to vCenter Server 6.0 U2.

Prerequisites

  1. vCenter Server is more like core services today since lot of 3rd party software call vCenter API to interactive with VMs. You may have some products integrated with vCenter Server already. Please upgrade to vCenter 6 compatible version before migration.
  2. I suggest create a local account on source vCenter Server if your server is domain member. You can login back source vCenter by local account in case migration failed.
  3. vCenter Server Migration Tool applies temporary IP address on destination vCenter virtual appliance during migration. It’s used to communicate with source vCenter. Please register a temporary IP address for destination vCenter Server.
  4. A helper VM is required to run migration image. Please make sure you have a free Windows VM be ready to mount migration image.
  5. SQL database is exported to source vCenter Server if you want migrate performance and event data. So you need to make sure enough space on C: drive on source vCenter. The free space should be much bigger than vCenter database size.
  6. Of course you need a vCenter Server 6 license key since old key doesn’t support the version.
  7. Some cases show migration process stopped during export SQL database. That’s because memory of source vCenter is too small. Please make sure RAM of source vCenter should be equal or greater than destination vCenter Server.
  8. The other tricky is database table. You may see migration processes is completed but destination vCenter Server doesn’t come up, and no data actually imported. That’s because ‘checksum‘ column existing in table [dbo].[VMO_ResourceElementContent] in vCenter DB. You can run following SQL query to remove it before migration.
    alter table dbo.VMO_ResourceElementContent drop column checksum;

Procedure

The items above can be done anytime before the migration window. Following steps should be token during migration.

  1. You need to disable firewall and anti-virus software on old vCenter to avoid communication issue between Migration Assistant and new vCenter Server.
  2. To avoid any unstable, resource contention, or potential network connectivity lost issue, I suggest temporarily disable DRS and HA on source and destination cluster if they are virtual machine.
  3. Copy Migration Assistant from migration image to old vCenter.
  4. Take snapshot on old vCenter and backup database of old vCenter.
  5. Connect to console of source vCenter and run Migration Assistant.
  6. Mount vCenter Server 6 U2m image on helper VM. Launch vCenter migration. The migration process is straightforward. I wouldn’t introduce more here.

After Migration

Basically you need to revert all the temporary changes made before. Such as delete snapshot and DB backup, enable DRS and HA, and disable vNIC on source vCenter Server to avoid any human error.

How to Integrate PowerCLI 6.5 with PowerShell and PowerShell ISE

I wrote an article to introducing how to integrate PowerCLI with PowerShell and PowerShell ISE. VMware just released PowerCLI 6.5 R1, it includes lot  of new features and modules. And somehow my way doesn’t work. Following is new way to integrate PowerCLI 6.5 with PowerShell and PowerShell ISE in Windows 10.

PowerShell and PowerShell ISE both have it own $profile. So we need to do two times.

Before we start

Please make sure your PowerShell execution policy is not restricted. You can get the setting by run  following command:

Get-ExecutionPolicy

PowerShell Integration

  1. Open PowerShell window. Run following command to confirm profile file is not existing.
    Test-Path $profile

    If return is ‘False’, go to step 2.
    If return is ‘True’, Backup the file and go to step 3.

  2. Run following command if the  profile file  doesn’t existing.
    New-Item -Path $profile -type file -force | Out-Null
    
    Test-Path $profile

    The return above should be ‘True’. Profile file is created.

  3. Run following command to include VMware PowerCLI modules in  PowerShell.
    Add-Content -Path $profile -value "# Load Windows PowerShell cmdlets for managing vSphere `r`n. 'C:Program Files (x86)VMwareInfrastructurePowerCLIScriptsInitialize-PowerCLIEnvironment.ps1'"

    The blue text above maybe different in your environment base upon where your PowerCLI is installed.

PowerShell ISE Integration

PowerShell ISE process is same to PowerShell, only different is all the operation should be completed in PowerShell ISE window.

Reboot is not required in my environment. But anyhow please reboot if you see any issue.

The processes above integrate PowerCLI 6.5 with PowerCLI and PowerCLI ISE for  current user only. If you want to integrate for all users on the machine, you need to refer to this article.

VMworld 2016

本年度VMworld重回拉斯维加斯,相比旧金山各方面都要好很多,参会这几天有不少乐趣。技术层面,本年度vmworld主要聚焦于用户端统一管理、公有云、以及vmware自家的“超融合软件”。
第一天的主题演讲回顾了近十几年来传统IT、私有云、公有云的增长趋势,这里有个很有意思的地方。我一直以为IT的转变方式应该是从传统到私有,最终到公有的。但是从演讲看,私有云和公有云占有率同时保持增长,公有云甚至一直比私有云要高一些。但直到今年云的占有率依旧不敌传统IT架构,这还是在国际大公司接近80%虚拟化的现状下。演讲中还提出了一个观点——数字化商业。今天,企业都在追求创新、高效的商业,IT已经不像过去仅仅支持企业内部的信息系统,而是引导企业走向何方,IT更加紧密的和商业结合在一起,很难想象一家没有技术驱动的企业可以高效的与客户沟通和分析数据、快速的对市场做出反应、自动化的生产经营。第二天的主题演讲介绍了一些用户层面的新解决方案,由于本人不关注该层面,没有太多了解。

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Virtual Machine Console in vCenter is Opened by VMware Workstation

If you have VMware Workstation and VMware Remote Console both installed on Windows 10 you may see vCenter virtual machine console in vSphere Web Client is opened by VMware Workstation instead of VMware Remote  Console. If you see same case your VMware Remote Console may be hijacked. I call it “hijack” since there is no easy way to revert it back.

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VMware Workstation自动打开vCenter虚拟机的控制台

如果你的Windows 10电脑上装了VMware Workstation和VMware Remote Console,当你在vSphere Web Client里打开运行在vCenter上的虚拟机控制台时,VMware Workstation可能会代替VMware Remote Console自动连接到控制台。恭喜!你的VMware Remote Console被劫持了。这个问题解决起来比较复杂所以我叫它“劫持”。

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