See here for the command line option when the management agent refuses to restart.
There are also some good links on the VMware community website for diagnosing VMware host connection problems – see here and here.
Archive for the ‘VMware’ Category
Restarting and diagnosing problems with the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server
Monday, September 6th, 2010VMware Disk Performance cont…
Friday, August 13th, 2010VMware Disk Performance – tracking with Virtual Center.
Friday, August 13th, 2010You can use Virtual Center to track performance by creating custom charts, you can see how here.
NFS and IP-Hash loadbalancing
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010Sample configuration of EtherChannel / Link aggregation (LACP) with ESX and Cisco/HP switches
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010This article describes concepts, limitations and sample configurations of link aggregation / NIC Teaming / LACP / Ether-Channel connectivity between ESX and Physical Network Switches, in particular, Cisco and HP.
A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual NFS customers using VMware
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010Taken from Virtual Geek, see here for an excellent article on all things NFS.
Exchange 2010 and Windows Backup Server.
Monday, July 26th, 2010Found a great write up here on how to use Windows Backup Server (ntbackup replacement).
This is particular useful for truncating Exchange logs, especially when you perform VMware level backups on Exchange servers.
Troubleshooting guide to SnapShots on VMware ESX 3.5
Thursday, May 27th, 2010Written by Ruben Miguelez Garcia here is a in depth troubleshooting guide for snapshots on VMware ESX 3.5. See here for the full article.
Error upgrading HP Lefthand VSA 8.1 to VSA 8.5
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010If you get the following error when upgrading SAN/iQ on your VSA:
**ERROR**: The OS disk in this node is not large enough for the new software upgrade package.
* You must increase the size of the OS disk before upgrading this node.
* See the Release 8.5 P4000 SAN Solution Upgrade Guide for instructions.
It’s because you haven’t read the upgrade instructions (like me!) – you need to increase the size of the disk files. See here.
If you really don’t want to read the PDF, the relevant bit is below:
To increase the OS disk size on the VSA:
1. Using the CMC, power off the VSA.
2. Open the VI Client and select VSA -> Edit Settings -> Hardware.
3. Select Hard disk 1 (verify that the Virtual Device Node is SCSI (0:0)).
4. Under Disk provisioning, changed the provisioned size to 8 GB.
5. Click OK.
6. Repeat these steps for Hard disk 2 (verify the Virtual Device Node is SCSI (0:1))
7. Using the VI Client, power on the VSA.
8. Find the VSA in the CMC and apply the 8.5 upgrade.
To increase the OS disk size on the Failover Manager:
P4000 SAN/iQ software upgrade user guide 11
1. Using the CMC, power off the Failover Manager.
2. Open the VI Client and select VSA -> Edit Settings -> Hardware.
3. Select Hard disk 1 (verify that the Virtual Device Node is SCSI (0:0)).
4. Under Disk provisioning, changed the provisioned size to 8 GB.
5. Click OK.
6. Repeat these steps for Hard disk 2 (verify the Virtual Device Node is SCSI (0:1))
7. Using the VI Client, power on the Failover Manager.
8. Find the Failover Manager in the CMC and apply the 8.5 upgrade.
iSCSI multipathing on ESX4i
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010How to Configure iSCSI Multipathing on ESX4i
1.Open VMware vCenter.
2.Select Host > Configuration > Networking.
3.Click Add Networking.
4.Select “Virtual Machine” to create new vSwitch for iSCSI connectivity > Next.
5.Select “Create a virtual switch” and check the box next to the VMNICs for iSCSI connectivity > Next.
6.Type a name for the new virtual switch. (e.g. iSCSI) > Next.
7.Click Finish.
8.Scroll down and click Properties on the newly created vSwitch.
9.Click Add button to add Service Console port.
10.Select “Service Console” > Next.
11.Type a name for the new service console port. (e.g. iSCSI Service Console) > Next.
12.Select “Use the following IP settings” and type an IP Address on the iSCSI network > Next.
13.Click Finish.
14.Click Add button to add first VMkernel port.
15.Select “VMkernel” > Next.
16.Type a name for the first new VMkernel port (e.g. iSCSI VMkernel 1) > Next.
17.Select “Use the following IP settings” and type an IP Address on the iSCSI network > Next.
18.Click Finish.
19.Repeat Steps 14 to 18 to create additional VMkernel ports for each physical network adapter (VMNIC).
20.Select the first VMkernel port created and click Edit.
21.Click the NIC Teaming tab and select “Override vSwitch failover order”.
22.Designate only one active adapter and move the remaining adapters to the Unused Adapters category.
23.Click OK
24.Repeat Steps 20 to 23 to map each VMkernel port to only one active adapter. Only one active adapter can exist per VMkernel port for multipathing to function properly.
25.Identify the port names for each VMkernel port created. (e.g. vmk0, vmk1)
26.Using the vSphere CLI (NOT vSphere PowerCLI), connect each VMkernel port created to the software iSCSI initiator using the esxcli command.
27.esxcli –server=x.x.x.x swiscsi nic add -n <port_name> -d <vmhba>
(e.g. esxcli –server=10.0.0.6 swiscsi nic add -n vmk0 -d vmhba33)
28.Repeat the esxcli command until all VMkernel ports have been connected to the software iscsi initiator.
29.Verify the VMkernel ports connections by running the esxcli command.
a.esxcli swiscsi nic list -d <vmhba>
(e.g. esxcli –server=x.x.x.x swiscsi nic list -d vmhba33)
30.Multipathing configuration is now complete.
Taken in large part from the article here.