Recently, I thought I should patch one of my vSphere clusters using VMware Update Manager so I started to do a "Scan" for the cluster. However, the process failed soon after starting. The first thing I noticed was that the "VMware vSphere Update Manager" service was going down with it. VMware vSphere Update Manager had an [...]
Immediately after installing vSphere Update Manager 6 Update 1 (from the vCenter for Windows ISO), I went into the Web Client to do initial configuration. However, when I went into "Download Settings", there were no default download sources listed. That was strange but when I clicked the "Edit..." button (to see what the problem might be), [...]
While adding a couple of datastores to a newly-built vSphere 6 cluster recently, the following error message came up: All shared datastores failed on the host <hostname> Everything seemed normal and I hadn't done anything different. Plus, the datastores were actually visible and operational so it seemed like a false positive. I did a couple [...]
When adding an ESXi host to a cluster, you might see this error: A general system error occured: Unable to get signed certificate for host <your host>. Error: Start Time Error (70034). You are more likely to see this in a lab environment but may also see it in production, if you have just generated [...]
Whenever a new vSphere version comes out, I upgrade at least one of my clusters to it but when I get a chance, also install a new fresh one. So, the time has come for me to build a fresh vSphere 6 cluster. Normally, I just do an install with all the standard things done [...]
Just thought I should do a quick post about a command that is extremely useful but often forgotten and that command is "watch". Syntax of this command is: watch [-n SEC] [-t] PROG ARGS where "n" is the interval in seconds (2 by default). This command is used as a wrapper, to constantly update results from [...]
A few months ago, I was helping out a customer with a time configuration issue on their vSphere environment. For one specific question, I investigated and wrote the post: ESXi Time Configuration: Don’t point it towards the Windows Domain name However, while doing the investigations, I went through various documents produced by VMware. As NTP [...]
Time for a book review. This book was released in November last year so I know it's a bit late but I've just got my hands on it. I hope you won't mind. It is written by Mike Greer and is just over 300 pages long, divided into 13 chapters. It starts with a brief [...]
A few days back, Corey Romero asked me if I am interested in co-hosting a CrowdChat session on vSphere. Having never been on CrowdChat, jumping from nothing to co-hosting seemed a bit intimidating but I've always liked a challenge so I said yes. Plus, this was another something that I could do for this amazing community easily [...]
Chances are that unless you are an organisation new to vSphere or want an installation in the lab, you will be upgrading your existing vSphere infrastructure to the new vSphere 6.0 at some point in the future. As there are some design changes in this version, there are decision points that must be considered before [...]