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Monday, December 17, 2012

KB Articles and IMP links

There are lot of KB article we use on day today basis and Its hard to remember all the KBs. Following are the list of KBs useful for daily administration

This post is dedicated to the KB article 

  1. Error in the RPC receive loop => Article Number 2036350
  2. Configure the MS Cluster
    http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-mscs-guide.pdf
  3. Change the disk type to SSD : KB
    http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2013188
  4. vCenter Performance logs - Default value : Purge  after 30 days . Following link helps to remove the default configuration http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2042009
  5. ISCSI software Trouble Shooting
    http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008083
  6. VLAN Tagging
    http://www.vmwarearena.com/2012/07/vlan-tagging-vst-est-vgt-on-vmware.html

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

VSphere 5.1 Syslog Server

  • It is used to redirect the ESXi Host logs to Vcenter server. 
  • Sys log server is normally installed on a vCenter server.
  • Machine that connects to the vCenter Server through the vSphere Client must have an IPv4 address for the Syslog Collector service to work.
Configuration of Sys log server is fairly simple.

Pre-requisites :

  1. Install the Syslog application from vSphere installation Media .
  2. Know the retention policy 
  3. Check if firewall port 514  is not blocked in vCenter server


Following steps can be used to configure the sys log server


  1. Enable the sys log service in all the ESX hosts in the cluster.

    ESX Host => configuration =>security Profile =>firewall=>Syslog (hit the check box)
  2. Set the sys log path for each host in the cluster

    ESX Host =>Advanced Settings =>Syslog=>global=>syslog.global.loghost
     Set  to  tcp://vcenterip:514

  3. Connect to ESXi Host and restart the syslog service.

    esxcli system syslog reload
  4. Configured settings can be found at






Monday, December 10, 2012

Unable to login - Group policy Client

Error Msg "Group policy client service failed the logon"

Connect to the server using net Bios path \\servername\drive$\users

Rename the profile folder of the user who is not able to login to the system . 

User will be able to login after renaming the profile folder. The issue is caused due to the Corrupted profile folder.

This error is user specific not system specific.

vMotion Error - ESX 4.1 to ESXi5.1

Today I came across this error while migrating the machine from ESX 4.1 Host to ESXi 5.1 .

This is a know issue as said by VMware.  Work around would be shutdown the virtual machine and start it in the New ESXi 5.1 Host . 

Things which didnt help : 

  1. Restart the Virtual Machine 
  2. Power off , Un- register and Register . 



Reference :  http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2036892

Change Memory limit of All the VMs

I had a requirement to change the limit of all the virtual guests  to Unlimited .

Limit can be an issue when we upgrade the virtual machine memory to a higher value . For OS it would look like it has the memory but host will not allow to use the memory above the limit ( previous configured value in my case).

We have a misconception above the unlimited memory . Unlimited memory means using all the allocated memory . It will never be above the configured or allocated memory.

Following power shell script can be used to change the Limit to Unlimited.



Connect-VIServer vcenterserver -User "vcenter_admin" -Password "Password"

Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | where {$_.MemLimitMB -ne '-1'} | Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null

Disconnect-VIServer vcenterserver -Confirm:$false