Recently I had an issue where I was trying to power on a VM from vCenter but unable to power on. While powering on getting below error. “ A general controller error occurred. Connection refused .” VCenter server which Im running is 6.0 and on appliance (VCSA). Steps I follow to resolve the issue: While investigation I found it’s a issue of Workflow manager service which was causing VM to start from vCenter. However, I was able to power on the VM from ESXi, which shows that the issue is not with VM or ESXi . It’s the issue with the services of workflow, which are not allowing VM to poweron from vCenter. I tried below steps to verify the status of the VMware vCenter Workflow Manger service from VCSA. 1) Login to VCSA via Putty. 2) shell.set --enabled True 3) service-control --status vmware-vpx-workflow Status of the services was showing stoped, So, I tried to start the service by using command. service-control --start vmware-vpx-workflo...

Migrating vCenter from one version to another was always a complected task earlier. With the introduction of migration assistance tool which was introduced in 6.0 u2 version,life of the administrator become far easier without worried about multiple components configuration task during migration as most of the task performed in this tool are automated. The risk of mistake and miss-configuration has become lesser during deployment. So, lets gets started.  Here we are migrating windows based vCenter with embedded PSC to VCSA 6.5 Download the ISO or binary of VCSA 6.5 from the VMware portal. Once you have ISO of VCSA mount it into vCenter. Step 1 Run the migration assistant tool which is present under  <Mounted Drive>:\migration-assistant\VMware-Migration-Assistant Note: This "Migration-Assistance tool need to be executed on windows vCenter and once run, it will automatically detect the vCenter instance runing on the machine. Step 2 Once the adminis...

Recently we got into the issue where I have to change the ESXi host root password which was managed by the vCloud Director. Changing the root password directly from the ESXi host is not recommended when the ESXi host is managed by vCloud Director. All operation task need to be accomplish through vCD. NOTE: The test was done on both the ESXi hosts in maintenance mode from VCD and with taking them in to maintenance mode. Since you are performing the ESXi root password change I would suggest to  perform during maintenance mode. Steps performed to change the root password of the ESXi host. Step 1) Enable or Disable an ESX/ESXi Host: You can disable a host to prevent vApps from starting up on the host. Virtual machines that are already running on the host are not affected. - To perform maintenance on a host, migrate all vApps off of the host or stop all vApps and then disable the host. Procedure: 1. Click the Manage & Monitor tab and cl...

Recently I got a case where vCenter 6.0 where the webclient was not showing inventory while loading. Issue occur when the customer was performing migration activity of virtual machine. We verified that the vpxd services of vCenter, which is VCSA (Appliance), went into stopped stated just after starting means its crashing. On VCSA Shell: service-control --status vmware-vpxd shows "stopped" service-control --start vmware-vpxd starts the service starts for a couple of seconds and stops again VCSA 6.0 is linked with extrnal PSC 6.0. Verified the services of PSC and found all looks into good state. Tried to power off both the VCSA and PSC and Power on in sequence where we started first PSC and later VCSA. After restarting the VCSA, status of the VPXD services was same as it was getting stopped after couple of seconds. Checked the VPXD logs and found that the heartbeat between ESXi and VCSA was getting timed out for more...

Recently I got an issue from one of my customer where they were unable to upload or download the files from vCloud Director. At the time or upload or download files into catalog, its prompting below error and ask for download the Client integration plugin, even though the CIP is already installed into the machine from where we are trying to upload the image into Vcd. “The Client integration Plugin-in must be installed to enable OVF upload and download functionality. Click the link below to download installer. When the download has completed, you must close your browser before you can install the plugin” To resolve the issue we have followed below steps. If you are using Internet Explorer 11 and above and facing same error. Please follow below steps to resolve the issue. 1)        Make sure your VCD FQDN is listed into trusted site. 2)        Enable Compatibility mode. 3)    ...

Recently there were an issue where vSphere Web client stopped working with Google crome and Firefox. After login to vSphere webclient or any other web based VMware application getting error where its states “ Shockwave Flash has crashed” After investigating it’s been found that the google recently published a newer version of Flash( 27.0.0.170) with its latest update of crome ( 61.0.3163.100). However, the newer version of Flash was not available for download or listed in Adobe site. Same issue identified on the Firefox where the latest Flash were causing the same issue. Workaround identified 1) One-way to disable the auto-update feature of Chrome, you can do so by changing the following  HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update\AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes  to 0 2) It looks like you can also simply replace the new pepperflash DLL with an older version and placing it within the 27.0.0.170 folder (in case Chrome tries to update ...

In our day to day operational activity into the vCenter we usually encounter with issue, like unable to power on the VM. VM failed to lock the file or file has been locked. To resolve the issue, I have some very usefull command which you can execute to immediatly idently where the .vmdk is being locked. As most of you know that vmkfstools -D is used to identify the lock on the .vmdk  where its gives the mac address of the VM or Host where the lock exist and we can identify the lock from Esxcli. ie (vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/abcd.vmdk) Apart from this there is one beautiful command which we can use to identify the lock on the .vmdk. The command to identify the lock is "vmkfsfilelockinfo -p (location of .vmdk) vmfsfilelockinfo -p (/vmfs/volumes….) You see ouput similar to: vmfsflelockinfo Version 1.0 Looking for lock owners on "VM1_1-000001-delta.vmdk" "VM1_1-000001-delta.vmdk" is locked in Exclusive mode by host having mac address ...

I have encountered may issues like where after some upgrade or migration we were unable to power on the VM. Figure 1 An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM HSSVSQL01. Failed to start the virtual machine. Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/578d835c-18b2c97a-9b0d-0025b5f13920/SAMPLE1_cloud/000000.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Failed to lock the file In above Figure:1, where while powering on the VM, its prompt for an error. Well, there are several reason for where the VM unable to poweron and you can find many article on this. Here in this article we will discuss to resolve this issue. Please use below step to resolve the disk lock issue  C hecked that VM is running on snapshot if its getting error " VM Consolidation required". Checked the snapshot manager if its showing any snapshot. If yes, try to delete the  snapshot. Verified the same from Esxi cl...