When Lab Manager’s SSMove doesn’t cut it anymore…
Nov 29, 2010 Blogs
I’ve been busy migrating a VMware vCenter Lab Manager installation from an EMC AX150i SATA-II iSCSI SAN to a CX3-10c 10k FC disk SAN using SSMove. As I’ve experienced many times before, SSMove isn’t as robust as it should be. In this case, it refused to move a linked clone disk chain from a LUN on the AX150i to the CX3-10c. It kept telling me that some virtual machine folders were already present on the target LUN, no matter how often I deleted them from the target and started the move again. The exact error was
“Host “esx01″ has reported an error. Requested file “/vmfs/volumes/4cea58db-75a2ccd2-8774-0019b9e37a1d/lm/978″ is already present.”
I went to the VMware Communities site, and stumbled upon a post by IamTHEEvilONE where he hinted at being able to do SSMove’s work manually:
(…) the data changed location (new UUID) so update the DB and VMDK headers. It’s just that we have tools to help recover from this, and is intended to be used when SSMove fails.
Since SSMove actually already moved the files to the destination, I wanted to try to edit the VMDK’s/VMX’s and DB myself.
Adding a second VMDK to your ESX Service Console
Nov 4, 2010 Blogs
One of my ESX-servers is hosted in a remote datacenter. I don’t have easy physical access to the device, and I don’t have much means of remote access (like a KVM, iDRAC or iLO). There’s no second host, no SAN and no vCenter. Basically, it’s an ESX-host surrounded by Xen-powered VPS-hosts. Suffice to say that their average uptime is only 238.7 days…
When I originally installed ESX on the machine, I mistakenly used default partitioning for the Service Console. This left me with a (roughly) 8GB Service Console disk (wrapped in the ‘esxconsole.vmdk’ file within a VMFS-datastore). Because the server is running some pretty important virtual machines and I simply cannot walk into the datacenter that easily, I never really bothered to reinstall the machine, this time ’round using a recommended partitioning scheme.
The machine needs regular updating (using the ‘esxupdate’ Service Console utility), thus needing a lot of space in ‘/var/cache/esxupdate’ to store the unpacked binaries. As time passes, I tend to forget to do this kind of maintenance, and the number of patches to be installed grows and grows.
StratoGen vCloud Director Beta Program
Nov 1, 2010 Blogs
William Craig (Product Development Manager) of StratoGen Managed Hosting just sent me an e-mail about an upcoming beta of their VMware vCloud Director-based offering. He would like to bring to your attention that registration for the beta for one of the first public vCloud Director offerings is now live. If you want to really put it through it’s paces, sign up for the beta here.
StratoGen are seeking experienced VMware users to join the StratoGen vCloud Beta Program which is based on VMware vCloud Director.
Beta testing is a crucial element in the cycle of our product releases, and we work closely with the VMware community to ensure our products are the best they can be. vCloud Director is a powerful but complex product and as such we are seeking experienced users to provide informed feedback on our product offering.
By participating in the program you will be provided with resources on our enterprise platform enabling you to build, deploy and manage virtual machines, vApps and networks using the StratoGen vCloud Director portal. You will be contacted on a periodic basis for feedback.
StratoGen is a leading VMware Service Provider Partner (VSPP) with an extensive cloud hosting platform based in London, UK.
If you would like to take part in the program please register at http://www.stratogen.net/products/vmware-hosting-vcloud.html
Thank you for your support.
William.
