Useful links to know more about VMware Cloud on AWS

As most of us would be aware, in Oct this year VMware and AWS announced a partnership where VMware Cloud would run on AWS infra…This VMware vSphere-based cloud service running on AWS that will make it easier to run any application and can be also connected to inhouse existing VMware virtual infrastructure…for detailed info please refer to below listed links.

VMware and Amazon Web Services Announce Strategic Partnership

VMware Cloud on AWS – A Closer Look

In the Works – VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS: The Only Way to Extend Your VMware Environment into AWS

VMware on AWS: A one-way ticket to the cloud

VMware Cloud on AWS - Overview

                                   

Components of VMware Cloud on AWS

                                                   Thanks to Amazon/VMware for this nice Graphic

VMware Cloud on AWS Demo…

For more videos – check out the VMware Cloud on AWS YouTube Playlist HERE.

Note: As per the information available so far, As part of the deal, VMware will be AWS's preferred private cloud partner and Amazon will be VMware's preferred partner in the public cloud and VMware Cloud on AWS will go live sometime in 2017.

I would add more related links here in future.....

That's it for now..........Wish you all A VERY Happy New Year ... :)

VMware Product Walkthroughs site - self-paced demos with screenshots

I am not sure how many of us aware of VMware Feature Walkthrough Site, I personally found it very useful as its a great resource for stepping through a self-paced demo of a particular VMware product or feature.

This site (https://featurewalkthrough.vmware.com) provides great technical overviews and step-by-step guidance for installing, configuring and managing VMware solutions. The content here has some great info including product demos which help to explain what a given product does and what it offers. .

Currently following VMware Solutions are listed here,

vSphere 6
vSphere 6.5
vSphere with Operations Management
vRealize Suite
vRealize Network Insight
Virtual SAN
vCenter Site Recovery Manager
NSX
vCloud Air
VMware Integrated OpenStack
SAP on SDDC

Each walkthrough includes screen shots with relevant steps highlighted and text explaining the process.

That's it... :)

vSphere's Datacenter Command-Line Interface: Getting Started with Datacenter CLI

This post was originally published on VMware vSphere Blog and I am just re-posting it here for future reference...

Datacenter Command-Line Interface (DCLI) is one of vSphere’s newest CLIs. DCLI works exclusively with the vSphere Automation API (REST API for vSphere) to provide both an interactive and scriptable mode to monitor and manage all features made available to the REST based API.
With the vSphere 6.5 release, DCLI has picked up a ton of new functionalities! DCLI can now interact with the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), perform VM tasks, receive environmental vSphere information, managing vSphere Tags, and work with the Content Library. This is definitely a great tool to have in the toolbox for anyone accessing a vSphere environment.

Accessing DCLI

DCLI is able to be installed on a multitude of Windows and Linux systems as part of the vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI). DCLI is also automatically included within the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) as well as being included as part of the installation process for vCenter Server on Windows.

Using DCLI

There are two ways to use DCLI, either in an interactive shell or via scripting mode. Both methods have their benefits, so it comes down to either preference or what fits the use case at the time.

Interactive Shell

DCLI’s interactive shell has several great features, such as tab complete and session history retention and the ability to find a namespace just by starting it off with the first few characters.

Accessing DCLI’s Interactive Shell

Here’s an example workflow of using DCLI’s interactive shell:

• Start DCLI with the following options (Note: options start with a + in DCLI)
  • +server -> The vCenter name/IP to connect to
  • +skip-server-verification -> Instruct DCLI to ignore any certificate warnings
  • +interactive -> Start the interactive mode

Once in the interactive shell, you can either hit tab and see the namespaces available or start typing in the name of the object you’d like to begin viewing or working with.
The example below shows a tab complete example when working with VM objects:

Here’s an example on retrieving the VCSA’s system version and then how the session history works:  

As seen above, just by typing in the first letter of a prior command allows the user to recall that command without having to type the entire line. The history will persist through sessions as well, making this a very nice feature!

Scripting Mode

The scripting mode allows DCLI commands to be used within scripts. These scripts can then be turned into more extensive workflows and/or scheduled tasks.
Calling DCLI commands through the scripting mode is fairly similar to interactive mode, but a server has to be specified each time. The full namespace has to be referenced as well.
Here’s an example of retrieving the VCSA’s system version and then retrieving a list of VMs:

Here is an example of a bash script to create 10 VMs on a given datastore, resource-pool and folder:

 

#!/bin/bash

COUNTER=0

while [ $COUNTER -lt 10 ]; do

echo Creating LoopVM$COUNTER

dcli com vmware vcenter vm create --name LoopVM$COUNTER --guest "SLES_12_64" --resource-pool "resgroup-9" --folder "group-v7" --datastore "datastore-12"

let COUNTER=COUNTER+1

done

bold=$(tput bold)

normal=$(tput sgr0)

echo ${bold}--- VM List ---${normal}

dcli com vmware vcenter vm list

Output Formatting

DCLI also has the ability to change how the output from commands are handled. The formatter allows users to specify outputs of CSV, HTML, JSON, Simple, Table, or XML.
Here’s an example of using the formatter by showing a list of the hosts and then specifying the “+formatter json” parameter to receive the same output in JSON:

Credential Store

One of the other big capabilities of DCLI is storing credentials with the Credential Store. This streamlines the process of connecting to the same vCenter repeatedly, and even more so when working in scripting mode.
The first time a user connects to a vCenter server, they will be prompted to store the credentials to the credstore. After that initial save, the credstore will be referenced with each connection to that server. If needed, credentials can be specified at the command line to over-ride the values stored in the credstore.
Users can also work with the credstore to either populate credentials with the “+credstore-add +username user” parameter, remove credentials with the “+credstore-remove +user user +server servername.fqdn”, and list what credentials already exist with the “+credstore-list” parameter.
Here’s an example output from using the “+credstore-list” parameter within an interactive mode session:

Demonstration

Here’s a demonstration video showing DCLI’s interactive mode in action! The video details connecting to a VCSA, entering DCLI’s interactive mode, displaying some general environmental information as well as pointing out some of the benefits when using interactive mode, and lastly it creates a VM and shows all the important information about that new VM.
Pay close attention to that VM creation command, there’s a sneak peak of an upcoming post in this series on DCLI.

Conclusion

DCLI has, relatively, flown under the radar up until this point. Interactive mode allows even brand new users to easily access and run commands within moments of connecting and without knowin the name of the name spaces or reading documentation. Scripting mode lets users have those same great commands available outside of the interactive shell and utilize them in a standalone basis or within a scheduled task or cron job. These commands can easily be used with the formatter option to produce a variety of outputs and allow quick integration into other products.

DCLI is a great and intuitive CLI that should be added to anyone’s toolbox!
For more information on getting started with DCLI, see the DCLI Reference.

That's it... :)

VMware Update manager 6.5 and vCenter Server Appliance aka VCSA

As most of us know VMware update manager is one of the most preferred way to patch/upgrade the VMware infrastructure however if someone using a VCSA then until now they have to install vUM on a separate Windows server to make use of it but not anymore.

In vSpgere 6.5 VMware Update Manager is fully integrated with vCenter Server appliance or VCSA, by default the service is set to start automatically so its ready for use right away…

The embedded Update Manager leverages the vPostgres database that is part of the VCSA deployment, so there’s nothing extra to install, configure, or tune.  And because embedded Update Manager does not require a separate VM with its own general purpose operating system, that’s one less element in your datacenter to patch and license!

Useful links,
VMware vSphere Update Manager 6.5 Release Notes
VMware vSphere 6.5 Embedded Update Manager (VUM) Demo video on Youtube

That's it... :)

Application on VM runs slower then expected on few ESXi hosts while no issue on others

This is second time when I observed, during some activities on one of my database server, its responding slower than expected even though not using much system resources.  Here the server was using >50% of CPU, but was struggling to complete the task however not throwing any kind of resources contention alerts. On checking found there was no disk, RAM or network issues however CPU latency was bit high <25%.

The ESXi 6.x host where this VM resides having plenty of available CPU/memory resources so what’s wrong here.

While comparing the configuration of two hosts (one on which VM have no perf issue and the other), I recalled we might missed the changes in the Hardware Power management setting from BIOS of the target host.

“Note: for the resolution of this issue, you may directly jump to last paragraph of this post.”

Physical servers power management setting is something that can have an impact on server CPU performance as when the load is low on server it reduces the CPU clock speed or shutdown some cores to reduce the power consumption.

Ideally we should change the power management settings from BIOS during OS/ESXi installation on Server but we can also do that later from iLO console.

By default HP ProLiant servers have the power management setting set as Dynamic Power saving mode to run the server CPU with its full capacity. We need to change it to Static High performance mode, it will disable any kind of power management from server.

Like ESXi, if your server OS supports the server hardware power management then for ProLiant servers, you can also set the power management setting as OS Controlled and then can choose the required setting from within OS like in case of ESXi, from host configuration power management setting.

To Change the Power Management setting from HP ProLiant server iLO :

After logging in to iLO, from lest side menu select Power management => Power Settings => From here under Power Regulator Settings,  select Static High Performance mode.

To Change the Power Management setting from within ESXi: If you want to control this settings from within OS or when Hardware power Regulator Settings is set to OS controlled then to change the Power Management setting from within ESXi,

After connecting to vCenter via Web client, Select the intended host => Mange => Settings => under Hardware tab drop down, select Power Management => From here Select, Static High Performance

If using thick client then,

Now come back to the issue of application performance, on checking I found the Hardware Power Regulator Settings was set to default on this ESXi host and once I changed it to High performance……..Voila now there no CPU latency and the application started performing as expected.

For detailed info, please have a look at these white papers,

HP white paper on Power consumption and system performance

Host Power Management in VMware vSphere, Performance Study

Power Management settings available within ESXi 6.x host

Related KB article, kb# 1018206

That's it... :) 

How to run Powershell script as a scheduled task

Normally, we can execute a PowerShell script by typing ./ followed by the name of the script and if want to run a script on a scheduled time then we can schedule it with Windows Task Scheduler.

Lately, I had issues while scheduling an script as scheduled task so thought of making this note for future reference.

As we all would be aware, before calling any PowerCLI cmdlet we should load PoweCLI Snapin to powershell first without which PowerShell will not recognize any of the PowerCLI cmdlets. There are two ways to do this,

#1. Add the following line to the top of each PowerCLI script you will be running as a scheduled task,

add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

Now while creating the scheduled task, under Action option, pass the script execution command as follows,

C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe "& 'C:\Script.ps1'"

you can also use this,  C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe -file "C:\Script.ps1"

#2. This method runs the PowerCLI Console file before it runs your script. This will enable the PowerCLI snapin for you and there is nothing to add to the scripts.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\vim.psc1  "& 'C:\Script.ps1'"

Before using any of this method first we need to ensure it will work by running them from a cmd prompt. During testing we may aslo use the –noexit switch to see any errors arising from the operation.

For detailed info about runing Powershell script as a scheduled task, you can checkout Dmitry's related blog post, HERE, Alan Renouf's post, HERE and this blog post.

That's it... :)

Finding the host where your VM resides

It seems funny but possible, where using virtual vCenter and didn't created any VM-host affinity rule to limit its movement on hosts and in case if vCenter goes down then this script could be useful in locating it....

#Script to find a VM from a pool of individual hosts having differ passwords

Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core

$connectvmhost = "Connect-VIServer host-A -user root -password xyz"
$connectvmhost += "Connect-VIServer Host-B -user root -password 123xyz"

$connectvmhost

Get-VM vm-name -server Host-A, Host-B | select Name, VMhost

Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

If all hosts are having the same password, then,

$usr = 'user_name'
$pwd = 'password'

$connectvmhost = "Connect-VIServer host-A -user $usr -password $pwd"
$connectvmhost += "Connect-VIServer Host-B -user $usr -password $pwd"

$connectvmhost

Get-VM vm-name -server Host-A, Host-B | select Name, VMhost

Disconnect-VIServer -Confirm:$false

I believe, there would be a better way to do this but this also serves the purpose.

That's it... :)

PowerCLI 6.5 R1 is available now

VMware today announced the general availability of VMware PowerCLI 6.5 Release 1.

Here I'm just copying the details from original VMware blog post,

Cmdlet Updates

The Core vSphere module has received a number of updates as well as stability and performance improvements. The most notable updates include cmdlets based around VM creation and management. The ‘Move-VM’ cmdlet now supports the ability to vMotion VMs between vCenters which is known as Cross vCenter vMotion. Performing a Cross vCenter vMotion with PowerCLI also allows the VM to traverse between separate SSO domains too! This is something not available with the GUI. The ‘New-VM cmdlet now supports configuring a VM to have a specific number of CPU cores. Then, the ‘Open-VMConsoleWindow’ has been updated to provide access to the latest and greatest version of the VMware Remote Console (VMRC). Lastly, various cmdlets have received updated views to allow access to the new vSphere 6.5 APIs!

Storage Module Updates

The PowerCLI Storage module has been a big focus on this release. A lot of functionality has been added around vSAN, VVOLs, and the handling of virtual disks. The vSAN cmdlets have been bolstered to more than a dozen cmdlets which are focused on the entire lifecycle of a vSAN cluster. The entire vSAN cluster creation process can be automated with PowerCLI as well as running tests, updating the HCL database, and much more!

• Get-VsanClusterConfiguration
• Get-VsanDisk
• Get-VsanDiskGroup
• Get-VsanFaultDomain
• Get-VsanResyncingComponent
• Get-VsanSpaceUsage
• New-VsanDisk
• New-VsanDiskGroup
• New-VsanFaultDomain
• Remove-VsanDisk
• Remove-VsanDiskGroup
• Remove-VsanFaultDomain
• Set-VsanClusterConfiguration
• Set-VsanFaultDomain
• Test-VsanClusterHealth
• Test-VsanNetworkPerformance
• Test-VsanStoragePerformance
• Test-VsanVMCreation
• Update-VsanHclDatabase

vSphere 6.5 introduces a new way to handle the management of virtual disks. Instead of managing a VM’s hard disks through the VM, they can now be managed independently with new PowerCLI cmdlets. This allows the handling of a virtual disk’s lifecycle to be decoupled from the lifecycle of a VM. This adds a ton of flexibility!

• Copy-VDisk
• Get-VDisk
• Move-VDisk
• New-VDisk
• Remove-VDisk
• Set-VDisk

PowerCLI has been updated to include new cmdlets that allow for the automated management of the VVOL replication features which are new to vSphere 6.5. Some of the new features include finding fault domains and replication groups, syncing replication groups, as well as preparing for and starting the failover process to the target site.

• Get-SpbmFaultDomain
• Get-SpbmReplicationGroup
• Get-SpbmReplicationPair
• Start-SpbmReplicationFailover
• Start-SpbmReplicationPrepareFailover
• Sync-SpbmReplicationGroup

Horizon Module

A brand-new module has been included to work with VMware Horizon! This has been a long time coming and has finally been released. The module can be installed anywhere and then remotely connect to the Horizon Connection server, a huge improvement over the last offering. Speaking of improvements, the module provides access to 100% of the public API through the Connect-HVServer and Disconnect-HVServer cmdlets. Keep an eye on the PowerCLI-Examples Github repo for functions allowing you to easily work with this module and provide sample code!

Compatibility

As with all versions of PowerCLI, it’s also backwards compatible going back to vSphere 5.5!

                                         

PowerCLI Core

As if this release wasn’t enough, PowerCLI Core also has support for the new 6.5 vSphere APIs! This ensures those core vSphere cmdlets and Views are available to other operating systems PowerCLI Core operates on as well!

The PowerCLI 6.5 R1 can be downloaded from HERE.

That's it... :)

Some useful PowerCLI one liner scripts

In this post I would list some of the useful PowerCLI one liner scripts that I use time to time... some scripts are taken from other blogs so the credit of those scripts goes to their respective authors...

Open the PowerCLI and connect to vCenter server using Connect-VIServer cmdlet, then

Get VMs with connected VLAN and other details,

Get-Cluster "clustername" | get-vmhost "hostname" | get-vm | Get-NetworkAdapter | Format-Table parent, networkname, type, MACaddress

To create table with renamed property name, use @{Name="New_Name";Expression={$_.Old_Name}}
Like in above script,

Get-Cluster "clustername" | get-vmhost "hostname" | get-vm | Get-NetworkAdapter | Format-Table @{Name="VirtualMachine";Expression={$_.parent}}, @{Name="VLAN";Expression={$_.networkname}}

To list all harddisks of a VM with size,

Get-VM VM01 | Get-HardDisk | ft Parent, Name, Filename, CapacityKB –AutoSize

And if you want to export this to a CSV file then,

Get-VM VM01 | Get-HardDisk | Select Parent, Name, Filename, CapacityKB | Export-csv C:\file.csv

We can't export output of Format-Table cmdlet to CSV file so we need to use Select-Object instead.

Add PortGroup to all hosts in cluster with PowerCLI

Get-Cluster “clustername” | Get-VMHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name “vSwitch_name″ | New-VirtualPortGroup -Name “VLAN-xx” -VLanId xx

Check Multi-path policy/configuration of connected storage,

Get-VMHost | Get-ScsiLun | Select VMHost, ConsoleDeviceName, Vendor, MultipathPolicy, LunType

To get list of VMs with snapshot,

Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Select VM,Name,Created,sizemb

List of VMs having snapshot older than 3 days,

Get-VM | Get-Snapshot | Select VM,Name,Created,sizemb | Where {$_.Created -lt ((Get-Date).AddDays(-2))}

To remove snapshot older than 3 days,

Get-Snapshot | Select VM,Name,Created,sizemb | Where {$_.Created -lt ((Get-Date).AddDays(-2))} | Remove-Snapshot

To list time on all VMhosts,

Get-VMHost | sort Name | select Name,@{Name="Current VMHost Time";Expression={(Get-View 
$_.ExtensionData.ConfigManager.DateTimeSystem).QueryDateTime()}}

To find a list of VMs having sync time with host option selected,

Get-View -viewtype virtualmachine -Filter @{'Config.Tools.SyncTimeWithHost'='True'} | select name 

That's it for now... Over time I would add more scripts here... :)

A note of what’s New in vSphere 6.5

Yesterday, VMware announced vSphere 6.5 at VMworld Europe 2016 and in this post I am listing some useful links related to what’s new and related feature introduction of this version for future reference.

Beside other new features here are the few big things introduced with vSphere6.5,

VM-level native encryption via SPBM

Encrypted vMotion

vCenter High Availability

Proactive HA 

Orchestrated VM Restart using HA

Network-aware DRS

HTML5 vSphere Client

Automatic Space Reclamation (UNMAP)

Support for VVol Replication (VASA 3.0)

External protocol support for VSAN (iSCSI) 

Photon Platform support for VSAN

For Quick summary of all the new  features of vSphere 6.5, please have a look here, Quick summary of What’s New in vSphere6.5 

 

For detailed info please go through below links,

Introducing vSphere 6.5 

What’s New in vSphere 6.5: vCenter Server 

What’s New in vSphere 6.5: Security 

What’s New in vSphere 6.5: Host & Resource Managementand Operations 

Other link,  New features and functionality at a glance.

In future would add other related links to this post.

That’s it… :)

How to Log off window user remotely

Back to basics.....This is something that we have a do every now and then because people (most of the time fellow IT guys) are so lazy ;) and tends to close the windows remote session directly instead off logging off properly and due to this when you try to login on a remote server, end up with Terminal server exceeded maximum connection limit message.

Note: This is basically useful on legacy windows OSs, like 2003 and prior, yeh  some of us might still have those servers. In windows server 2008 and later, if maximum remote sessions are in use, apart from this method during remote login it pops up a window to request or forcefully disconnect any active user (if you have adequate rights to do so). 

If you have the adequate windows privilege then can easily clear remote sessions remotely ;)

To do so, open command prompt on any other machine and run below commands,

First run following command to get a list of connected users,

C:/>quser /server:target _server_name

The output of this cmd would be a list of logged in user with corresponding session ID, note down the session id of remote user (eg. 1, 2, 3,…) you want to logoff, now

C:\>logoff session_ID /server:target_server_name

Once you hit enter, the user will logoff from remote computer and you are done here.

That's it... :)

Getting error while trying to add a new virtual disk to VM

I have seen this error couple of time and every time it takes me some time to recall the cause, so thought of making a note of this very basic thing that one need to remember when adding a new drive to a VM.

You might have came across this error while trying to add a new drive (Thin or Thick Lazy zeroed) to a Virtual Machine,

VMware ESX cannot open the virtual disk "/vmfs/volumes......vmdk" for cludtering. Verify that the virtual disk was created using the thick option.......

This error is nothing but you have a RDM drive attached to VM in Physical mode and newly added drive is trying to use the same drive controller.

Only Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed drives can be added to a disk controller having physical mode RDM attached. Here to add a Thin or Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed dive, either we need use any other existing non physical mode disk controller or add a new one .

That's it... :)

vCenter Server 6.0 u2: The vSphere Client displays Revert to Current Snapshot as enabled while there is no snapshot

You might have noticed this, while connected to vCenter 6.0 via vSphere Client, you would see the VM snapshot option “revert to current snapshot” option always available even if the VM doesn’t have any snapshot.

Same can be seen in Snapshot Manager.

When you cross check the same using Web Client, you will find revert to current snapshot option grayed out.

As per kb# 2111363, it’s a known issue in vCenter Server 6.0 while accessing via thick client and currently there is no resolution.

To work around this issue, ignore the vSphere Client snapshot controls and use the vSphere Web Client for snapshot management.

That’s it... :)

vCenter 6 : Inventory search failed with the error, login to query service failed

We recently upgraded to vCenter 6.0 and today when I tried to search for virtual machines with the vSphere Client 6, the search failed with this error,

*I didn't see this behavior when checked via Web Client.

Initially I thought, its due to some DNS issue however when checked, was able to ping the vCenter server with its FQDN.

On further checking, came across VMware KB# 2143566, which is about the exact same issue.

As per this KB,

This is an expected behavior.

Searching for Inventory objects when logged in to the vSphere Client using the Use Windows session credentials option is not supported.

To work around this issue, log in to the vSphere Client by manually entering the login credentials.

Note: Using the same vSphere 6 client, I didn't see any issue when connected to vCenter 5.5 so this is something expected with vSphere 6.0.

That’s it… :)

VM crashed during backup and now getting error when trying to power on : sparse disk

Today while taking backup of a Linux VM, it got crashed during backup however backup completed successfully. When tried to power on this VM, end up with this error,

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM Test-VM01

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/5e4eb348-00341c9a-a87d-011d296158e2/Test-VM01/Test-VM01-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

The system cannot find the file specified

VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "/vmfs/volumes/5e4eb348-00341c9a-a87d-011d296158e2/Test-VM01/Test-VM01-000001.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.

Here I was able to quickly get the VM back in working condition by just pointing the disk back to original disk file however now I noticed this VM is using a Sparse disk which is spirited into 2Gbsize files.

This kind are disks are disallowed on all ESXi 5.x and later hosts and ideally we wouldn't able to power on VMs with such disk (VMware kb#1022242) however here I was/am able to power on this VM, noticed any issue only after backup.

Here one thing is worth to point out, this VM was not created on Esxi 5.x host but was imported from Virtual Box to VMware environment.

To fix this issue, power off the VM and clone all the sparse disks to a compatible format with vmkfstools by running this command,

# vmkfstools -i /vmfs/vloumes/.../source/VM_Name.vmdk -d disk_format(thin/zeroedthick/eagerzeroedthick) /vmfs/vloumes/.../destination/VM_Name.vmdk

Once completed then from VM edit settings, remove the old sparse disk and add this thin/thick vmdk file and now you can power on the VM.

As above process required downtime so alternatively I tried storage vMotion and it worked for me...so here the preferred fix is.. just Storage vMotion the affected VM to another Datastore, this will change the disk format on the fly and we are done.

Then just to check if we can restore the VM backup which was taken using Dell vRanger backup, when we tried to restore the backup it failed with the error: Error: API Call failed with message: The device or operation specified at index '9' is not supported for the existing virtual machine platform.

When checked about the error found a kb article on Dell support site, kb#104897, 19559960, according to this kb, we may take backup of a such kind of VM running on ESXi host but wouldn’t be able restore the same, and in order to fix this behavior we need to change the Sparse disk to thin/thick VMDK file. The process of converting the sparse disk is same a described above.

That's it... :)

Intermittent network connectivity issue with a Physical server having physically disconnected NICs in NIC Team

Last week I came across this issue where a physical server was losing network connectivity every now and then.

When checked, found this Windows 2012 server having four network cards but out of four only two were connected to network and for other two NICs, network cable was unplugged.

When checked the network teaming properties,

Server manger => Local Server =>from right side console, NIC Teaming and click on enabled => now under Team, select your NIC Team and go to its properties

Here as you can see,  disconnected NIC cards were also part of “NIC Team” so we suspect due to this the dynamic load balancing is having issues and so the server having Intermittent network connectivity problem.

We removed the disconnected NIC cards from NIC Teaming (just uncheck and click ok) and from then to till now didn't hear back any network connectivity issue for this server. 

Please share your thoughts in comment area if thinks otherwise and have any other solution. 

That's it... :)