Tag: vCenter

  • How to remove orphaned VM from vCenter the easy way

    I have lately had few orphaned VMs in my Home Lab vCenter, as I was recreating my setup. Some of the Virtual machines were deleted directly from ESXi host, but still had records in the vCenter inventory. Below how orphaned VMs looked in my vCenter. I have looked online for a way to remove these orphaned…

  • Unable to establish an SSL connection with vCenter Server

    While trying to export one of my VMs into OVF from my virtual infrastructure using the vSphere Web Client, I kept getting the following error:  “Could not connect to the remote resource: SSL connect error”. I have as well tested to import OVF templates into my VMware vSphere environment, and I was getting the same error,…

  • Myth busted: vCenter Site Recovery Manager using vSphere Replication for Datacenter migration causes data loss

    It seems there is a lot of confusion out there on how vCenter Site Recovery manager work with vSphere Replication when used for a data center migration, thanks in big part to competing products FUDs. Many admins still believe that using vSphere Replication with vCenter Site Recovery Manager for data center migration you will still…

  • vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) 6 limitations removed.

    If you have been using the vCenter Appliance (vCSA) in vSphere 5.5 or been considering it, then you are more likely aware of its limitations. You might have in the past as well looked at my blog post that highlighted the vCSA 5.5 limitations found at: vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 limitations. The good news in…

  • VMware vCenter 6 Installation Steps

    I wanted to demonstrate how VMware vCenter 6 installation is a bit different than vCenter 5.x, and the below post show the installation steps of VMware vCenter 6 basic install. 1. Make sure you have minimum requirements and the OS you are using is on the compatibility list of vCenter 6.0. The below table demonstrate…

  • VMware vSphere 6.0 is here!

    Today VMware has made a big announcement of the long waited VMware vSphere 6.0, while the bits are not available for download yet, it will follow shortly. The all new vSphere 6.0 is loaded with new features, that many of you were waiting for it for years. In this post, I will cover what’s new…

  • Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]

    I was at a customer which I have deployed vCloud Automation Center 6.1 for, and they tried to create a new blueprint. They have copied the old blueprint and only changed the VM template used in that blueprint from Windows 2012 to Windows 2008 R2. They saved and published the new blueprint without any problem,…

  • How to configure vCAC not to delete VMs after deployment failure

    I have a customer approach me asking of how we can stop vCAC from deleting VMs after deployment has failed for debugging purposes. The default behavior of vCAC is to delete the VM after deployment failure even if that failure was just caused by Guest customization failure or by the Guest Agent execution failure. The…

  • vCenter Upgrade Error 28035. Setup failed to copy LDIFDE.EXE from System folder to ‘%windir%\ADAM’ folder

    During the upgrade of vCenter I have faced the exact error that is documented in KB#2013675. The error was as follow: ———— Error 28035. Setup failed to copy LDIFDE.EXE from System folder to ‘%windir%\ADAM’ folder ———– Below is an actual screenshot of the error: Further, in the vminst.log file, we found the following error: ———- Unable to copy…

  • Upgrading vCenter with vCenter Heartbeat

    I have went through the upgrade process of vCenter 5.0 to vCenter 5.1 which was protected by vCenter heartbeat(Please note same process apply for upgrade to 5.5 as well). The process end up being more of uninstalling and re-installing vCenter heartbeat rather than upgrade to avoid the undesired behavior of SSO lockdown that can be caused…

  • vCenter 5.5 Upgrade fails when installing Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package prerequisite with the error: Error Code 3010

    While at a customer site and trying to upgrade their vCenter 5.0 to 5.5, every time we tried to run the installer it ran for a bit then gave us the follow error: Then the following errors appeared in a log files that was opened automatically in a notepad. —————–  Error start —————– Action 12:39:49:…

  • vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 SSO Issues

    While rebuilding my home lab to use the latest version of vCloud Automation Center, I have decided to rebuild it from scratch with the latest vCenter Server Appliance and ESXi. After deploying the vCenter Appliance 5.5c and going through the configuration, I wanted to join the appliance to my domain and allow users from my…

  • vCenter Appliance fsck failed

    While I have been working with a customer on upgrading their infrastructure to vSphere 5.5, they had a power outage during the night which got their full virtual infrastructure down including storage (Not sure what the story with their UPS/Power generator). After they have brought their virtual infrastructure backup up both their vCenter Appliance and…

  • vCenter Single Sign On 5.5 Whats New

    vCenter Single Sign On has a considerable amount of changes in vSphere 5.5, with few major ones. Many of these changes have went undetected or unnoticed by the Virtual Infrastructure Admins. If you have deployed vSphere 5.5 and missed these changes or planning to install vCenter SSO 5.5 and want to learn what has changed…

  • vCenter Server Appliance Error: failed to connect to VMware Lookup Service

    While working with VMware vCenter Server Appliance 5.5, I needed to change the IP Address of the appliance as my customer were changing their IP scheme. It was quite to go to the VMware vCSA then to the network tab then Address tab and change the IP Address. After rebooting the appliance to ensure the…