I’d left my home lab dormant for a period of time and when attempting to bring it back to life, I couldn’t access the vCenter using the vSphere Web GUI and was getting a HTTP Status 500 - Internal Server Error. Here is what I did to troubleshoot and resolve which turned out to an … Continue reading HTTP Status 500 – Internal Server Error caused by Expired vCenter machine cert
vSphere
Configure vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode
vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode allows you to log in to any single instance of vCenter Server and view and manage the inventories of all the vCenter Server systems in the group. You can join up to 15 vCenter Server appliance deployments with vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode in a single vSphere Single Sign-On domain. This blog post covers how to join two … Continue reading Configure vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode
ESXi host mappings unexpectedly removed from SAN
A storage administrator mistakenly removed the VMware ESXi host mappings which were still mapped and being used in Production environment from the SAN. This of course impacted live services and I was the lucky person on call. I've posted this because I'd hoped that simply readding the host mappings on the storage might resolve the … Continue reading ESXi host mappings unexpectedly removed from SAN
Unable to storage vMotion vCLS VMs – A specified parameter was not correct. StoragePlacementSpec.vm
I was completing tasks to delete datastores and consolidate storage capacity but hit a blocker when attempting to put a datastore in to Maintenance Mode. The datastore didn't go in to Maintenance Mode and I was left with a few vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VM's unable to move. If you're unsure what these vCLS VM's … Continue reading Unable to storage vMotion vCLS VMs – A specified parameter was not correct. StoragePlacementSpec.vm
vMotion failing with “The VM failed to resume on the destination during early power on. The source detected that the destination failed to resume.”
VMware KB 59665 advises to reboot the VM to clear any locks but I found this wasn't required. I completed a Storage vMotion of the VM Configuration file to another datastore and the VM was then able to vMotion successfully which meant no downtime for the Production servers! Remember to move the VM Configuration file … Continue reading vMotion failing with “The VM failed to resume on the destination during early power on. The source detected that the destination failed to resume.”
Reset vmhba storage Fibre Channel adapter on ESXi host
I've encountered an issue which randomly affects some of our hosts vmhba's losing one storage device target which halves the paths to the storage and reduces resiliency. Host, storage and network configuration doesn’t highlight anything incorrect and resetting the vmhba brings back the Target to our desired state. This post shows how I reset the … Continue reading Reset vmhba storage Fibre Channel adapter on ESXi host
HTTP & HTTPS proxy server unreachable – VMware vCenter VCSA not accepting proxy settings
PSA: I no longer experience this issue since upgrading to vCenter 7.0 U2d! This is was quite a common issue where we're unable to set the HTTP and HTTPS proxy settings using the VAMI with versions 6.5, 6.7 and early versions of 7.0. This post will show the how we experience the HTTP & HTTPS … Continue reading HTTP & HTTPS proxy server unreachable – VMware vCenter VCSA not accepting proxy settings
Use PowerCLI to find which VMs restarted after a HA protected host failure
One of my hosts in a HA protected cluster crashed and I usually use vRealize Log Insight to retrieve a list of VMs which have been restarted on other hosts but in this instance, the host in question didn't seem to have been logging correctly and I wasn't getting any results back. I found a … Continue reading Use PowerCLI to find which VMs restarted after a HA protected host failure
Change from US to UK date format in the vSphere Client
If you've found yourself double guessing and still not being sure what date you're actually looking at in the vSphere client then this post is for you. We're going to change the US date format MM/DD/YYY to DD/MM/YYYY in Chrome but it also works for Firefox and Edge too. The default setting in when logged … Continue reading Change from US to UK date format in the vSphere Client
Hide VMs in the Hosts and Clusters view in the vSphere Client
This is a great setting to change for Administrators that spend most of their time in the Host and Clusters view managing hosts rather than the VMs. It's a feature that was easy to change and quite well known in the old fat client but seems to get forgot about in the new HTML5 vSphere … Continue reading Hide VMs in the Hosts and Clusters view in the vSphere Client
Define The Data Centre 