This OVF Deployment Error occurred after the vCenter server 6.5 upgrade. It was not happening in the previous versions and I can confirm that we were able to deploy the same OVF template in the 6.0 and 5.5 vCenter servers. This OVF Deployment error was not a common error and I thought to post this in my blog and I hope this post will help others as well.

Deploying OVF template is just a common task as a VMware admin and I’m not going to show you the steps of deploying an OVF template. The error message was appearing as below in the OVF Deployment window.

How to fix this OVF Deployment Error ?

To fix this OVF Deployment error, open the OVF file using a text editor. I use Notepad ++ which is one of my favourite software. Right click on the OVF file and open with the text editor.

We were able to identify the below block of codes with the “IDE Controller”

We have changed the Controller type as “SCSI Controller” and saved the file

After saving the file, we restarted the OVF deployment and this time it was successful. It was a quick fix and hope this post will help others to resolve the similar OVF deployment errors.

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In this article, let’s see how to enable ESXi Host Encryption in the vSphere 6.5 environment. Some Virtual Machine Encryption tasks enables ESXi Host Encryption automatically if the account has the relevant privileges. One important thing, Virtual Machine Encryption can be enabled only if you enable the ESXi Host level encryption. Encryption tasks are possibly only in environments that include vCenter Server.

After host encryption mode is enabled, all core dumps are encrypted to avoid the release of sensitive information from your secure Virtualized environment. If you no longer use the Virtual Machine encryption you can disable the Host Encryption. Disabling Host Encryption is not that easy and let’s see how we can work with these settings.

vCenter Cryptography Privileges and Roles

By default, vCenter Server administrator has all the relevant privileges. Also, there is a No cryptography administrator role which does not have the Cryptography Privileges.

Cryptographic Operations Privileges:

This is a sample output for the No Cryptography administrator Role privileges

How to Enable ESXi Host Encryption

To enable the Host encryption “Cryptographic operations.Register host” privilege is required.

Login to the vSphere client, click on Host->Configure->Security Profile. Click on “Edit” under “Host Encryption Mode”

Set the Encryption Mode to Enable and click “OK”

How to Disable the Host Encryption Mode

If you are no longer use the Virtual Machine Encryption you can disable the Host Encryption. Enabling the Host Encryption mode is just a easy task if you have the right privileges. But disabling Host Encryption is bit of a pain. Unfortunately, I don’t have the screencaptures to show you the steps and if I get a chance in the future I will update the post with the screen captures.

To disable the Host Encryption follow the below Steps:

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VMware partnered with the pioneer of the Global Cloud platform AWS and released athe VMware cloud on AWS platform for its users and now you can experience the best of the both worlds in a single Cloud Service. Previously, I wrote an article about the Technical Overview of the VMware Cloud on AWS environment after announcing the initial release.

VMware Cloud on AWS hypervisors running on top of the i3 bare metal instances and integrated with the Amazon Cloud Formation to build the Cloud based Software Defined Datacenter. These bare metal i3 instances give you the direct access to it’s compute resources and have the below hardware specifications:

How VMware Cloud on AWS use the AWS Services for VMware SDDC ?

VMware Cloud on AWS leverage the AWS services such as Cloud Formation, IAM and Lambda to provide and deploy the i3 Bare metal instances and complete vSphere Software stack (vSphere, NSX and VSAN) in the cloud.

First of all customer will login to the VMware on AWS Console and start the SDDC deployment. It will generate the Cloud Formation Template which customer run in the AWS account, Cloud Formation will leverage the AWS Identity Access Management (IAM) policies to grant the cross account access. These cross account access describes the AWS VPC, VPC Subnets and Route tables to create and manage the ENIs (Elastic Network Interfaces). These policies allows the full visibility to the operations which are performing the VMware SDDC.

Once the access is granted, AWS Lambda communicates to the Cloud console to provision the VMware SDDC in the customer VMware account. It will deploy the hosts according to the number of hosts selected during the provisioning stage along with the VMware software stack.

Each ESXi host provide the connectivity to the AWS ENIs, one additional ENI connectivity in each host will use the Gateway to migrate across the hosts (additional ENI connectivity shows in the first EC2 instance only). NSX will create the logical networks and these ENI connectivity allows to utilize the AWS services such as S3, Redshift, Lambda, etc.

Try VMware Cloud on AWS on VMware Hands-on Lab

VMware Hands-on Lab allows you to try this cloud platform and it’s worth of spending some time and playing around with this. Use your myVMware account to access the Hands-on Labs.

Fill the required details and accept the End User License Agreement to start the free trail

Wait for sometime to create the Hands-on Lab

Once you get the Desktop access open Google Chrome

Click on Student Check-In, type the same myVMware account email and search, once it listed the email click on Click to Validate to validate the email address

Check your inbox and you will get the confirmation email and you will be able to access the VMware on AWS Console from your browser

Now you can follow the steps to configure the VMware Cloud on AWS platform in the instruction.

I will post another complete post with the configuration steps. I hope this post will give you the high level overview of the VMware Cloud on AWS and how it leverages the AWS services and vSphere software stack to provide the best cloud experience.

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It’s pleasure to write this article as there is a new release of VMware vSphere and vCenter Server 6.7. VMware vSphere 6.7 is officially released and it comes with lots of enhancements. In this post I’d like you to walk you through the vCenter 6.7 features, deployment and the enhanced options.

VMware has officially announced that vCenter Server appliance is the default deployment of the vCenter server and Windows based vCenter Server will be discontinued in the next numbered release. But still, You can download the Windows based vCenter Server in this 6.7 release.

From the appearance point of view it introduced with Clarity Theme and it supports the Embedded PSC with Enhanced Linked Mode.

Upgrades and Migrations to the vCenter Server 6.7

Only vCenter Server 6.0 and 6.5 versions can be upgraded directly to vCenter Server 6.7 version and vCenter Server 5.5 is not possible to upgrade directly. vCenter Server 5.5 should me upgraded to 6.0 or 6.5 before upgrade to vCenter Server 6.7.

vCenter Server (6.0 or 6.5) which are managing ESXi 5.5 hosts cannot be upgraded or migrated to vCenter Server 6.7 directly and should be upgraded these hosts to 6.0 first.

These are the benefits of this deployment model:

vCenter Server 6.7 Appliance Deployment

Let’s try to deploy the appliance and discuss the differences while we enjoying the deployment. Download the ISO and mount it to a one of the Server available to start the deployment. Actually it doesn’t have any differences with the vCenter Server 6.5. Go to “vcsa-ui-installer/win32” folder and run the installer

Similar to vCenter 6.5 this has two Stages to deployment and the Configuration of the vCenter Server

Stage 1 – vCenter Deployment

Installer GUI has completely changed and icons explains the procedures well. To start the deployment click on the “Install” Option

Similar to 6.5 vCenter Server deployment it has two stages in the deployment wizard, This is the introduction screen anc Click on “Next” to proceed

Accept the End User License Agreement and Click “Next”

It has both the Options to install as an Embedded Deployment or Install with a Separate PSC, In this deployment I’m going to use the Embedded deployment.

Provide the target vCenter or the ESXi host, Port and the Root Credentials to the Appliance

Accept the Certificate Warning

Provide Virtual Machine name and the root Password

Select the Deployment and Storage Size

Provide the Network details

Review the Configuration and Click “FINISH” to start the Appliance Deployment

Wait until it Completes the appliance deployment

Once it completes the Stage 1 – Appliance deployment , Continue to the Stage 2 – vCenter Configuration

Stage 2 – vCenter Configuration

This is the Introduction of the Stage 2 , no configuration is there

NTP and SSH access configuration can be seen in this window

I got this Warning! , but I didn’t change the IP address of the vCenter Server, click OK as we do not change the IP address

Provide the Single Sign-On domain and administrator Credentials

If you wish to join the Customer Experience Improvement Program select the check box

Review the Configuration and hit “Finish” to start the vCenter Configuration

Wait for the completion of the Configuration

Once it completes the configuration click on the Getting Started page link to open the vCenter server on your browser (Google Chrome is recommended)

Getting Started page is different than the Previous version of the vCenter Servers and HTML5 option is highlighted

Allow the “vmware-cip-launcher.exe” and open the launcher

vCenter Server Management Interface Improvements

Appliance management can be accessed from the same url (https://<fqdn_of_vcenter>:5480), GUI is completely different

VAMI interface has given a completely different look, here the Summary tab of the appliance

Three Syslog Servers can be configured

File level Backups of the vCenter Server can be Configured and scheduled, this is one of the newly added great features. Previously, there was no scheduling option and we had to use typical cron jobs to automate the backing up the files of the vCenter Appliance. This is a great improvement

Scheduling option

vCenter Server Interface and Features

vCenter Server Interface has got some major improvements and it is much similar to a cloud console, complete summary can be seen in the vCenter Home. A great overview of the resource utilization

Platform Service Controller configuration can be seen under “Administration”

vRealize Operation integration also added to this and can be seen in the vCenter “Home“.

Update Manager has integrated to the vCenter similar to the vCenter server 6.5 and has a different appearance in this release and added with a different icon

There are couple of posts on the way and stay tuned!

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This is not related to any troubleshooting, new feature or break FIX! of a Virtual environment, but something related to the personal development and achievement. I wanted to share these tips with all my followers and readers to achieve their AWS Certified Solution Architect – Associate certificate and I make this opportunity to share the resources that I used to study and pass the exam.

First of all I like you to recommend to follow some video training and get yourself familiar with the technology and the basic concepts of the AWS Cloud Technology. With my own experience I’d like you to recommend A Cloud Guru for your video training and complete the entire course.  I just purchased the course in Udemy which is one of my favourite self learning platform and I can recommend this to anyone who is interested in self learning.

Try to complete all the videos and get a good understanding about the AWS Cloud Concepts.
Ryan Kroonenburg is explaining all the required concepts to the certifications and practicals, make sure to make an account in the AWS free tier and practice your own. I have completed the Video course and Udemy gave me a certificate of Completion of the Course.

One important thing is this course is included with some practice quizzes and helps to understand the weaker point of the completed sections.

Once you completed the Video training of the course I’d recommend you to read the FAQs in the AWS website. These FAQs provide all the necessary details, limitations and concept behind all these services with a practical situations. Highly recommended to read at least first 20 FAQs before the Exam. For more information read the white papers and improve your knowledge.

I personally recommend to use Whizlabs practice tests before the exam. But keep this in your mind this is just only your practice tests to get yourself familiar with the questions and improve your knowledge. This is not a EXAM DUMP and you can’t depend on these tests and you can’t expect to see these questions in your exam.

I’d say this exam is a great start for your career and open to anyone. So if you are confident with the exam schedule the exam in the nearest exam center and get your self certified.

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This issue has been noted while and I thought to share this in my post as this was a common situation in Windows 8 and Windows 2012 Server in all our vSphere 5.5 environments, these virtual machines hang at splash screen without booting up the Operating System.

VMware KB article (2092807) clearly mentioned that, this issue is causing with the virtual machines configured with the virtual hardware version 10 (vmx-10), but I have seen some virtual machines lower than virtual hardware version 10 have the same symptoms when booting up the OS. I’m not quite sure this issue is limited to the virtual hardware version 10 (vmx-10) or that’s something wrong with our virtual machines. But we were able to fix this after following the same workaround.

Virtual Machines Hang at Splash Screen

This is how the the console looks like when the Operating system Loading, it is sitting in the same splash screen until we perform a manual reset of the virtual machine.

The cause of this issue explained as below:

This issue is fixed in below VMware ESXi versions:

Virtual Machines Hang at Splash Screen workaround Fix!

You can follow the below workaround to fix this splash screen and we were able to fix the similar issues in all our Windows 8 and Windows 2012 servers.

Power down the virtual machine, right-click and select “Edit Settings…”

Go to “VM Options” tab, expand “Advanced” menu click on “Edit Configuration…”

Add the “monitor_control.enable_softResetClearTSC = TRUE” parameter to the virtual machine (parameter and value is in separate columns, follow the screencapture to the parameter update)

Save the configuration and Power On the virtual machine, Windows Operating system will load without an issue.

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“Cloned Linux Virtual Machine doesn’t connecting to the Network” problem might be a very common issue in the VMware Virtualization platform. This question was appeared few times and I thought to write this article to fix it with few steps.

I had the same issue with couple of Linux Virtual Machines and I normally do these steps before I connect the Virtual Machine to the network. So, if you are making a clone of a Virtual Machine make sure to follow these steps before you start anything and connect your virtual machine to the network.

Cloned Linux Virtual Machine doesn’t connecting to the Network ? Change the MAC Address

This happens when you clone a Linux Virtual Machine and it keeps the old MAC address in the Operating System. Linux is a file based Operating system so you can easily update the parameters in the files.

I took a clone of a Virtual Machine which was running in my VMware Workstation

Once you power on the Virtual machine and check the IP information from the “ifconfig” command and restart the Networking services from “service network restart” command you might see something similar to this output

Check the Network adapter information from “cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0” command and note the MAC address of the interface

Check the Actual MAC Address from the VMware Console

You can note that the actual MAC address and the MAC address in the configuration file are different. Now we need to adjust the actual MAC address in the configuration file.

Open the configuration file in the vi editor (command : vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and hit insert key to enable the editor mode). Change the MAC address to the actual MAC address in the VMware console

Save the file and shutdown the Virtual Machine

Just check the ifconfig and interface will up and run with the configuration. Quite easy!

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This issue appeared in the Linux virtual machines in the VMware environment after upgrading the guest os, Virtual machines were failing after the guest OS shutdown and it was throwing the ” Kernel Panic : Not Syncing : VFS : Unable To Mount Root FS On Unknown-Block (0,0) ” error on the screen.

This is not directly related to the VMware Virtual platform, but I thought it is worth to share this in my site for my Linux users who are working with the Virtual Machines. Upgrading the Operating system is not expected after the os and it’s package update, unfortunately it ended up with this error at the boot. If you reboot the Virtual Machine it might not appear in the screen but it might appear after shutting down the Virtual Machine and restart after a while. I was using a CentOS Linux machine and this is how I fixed the issue.

Try Old Kernel…

So, I tried to use my old kernel to load and it was successful and Operating System loaded without an issue.

I logged in as root and checked the available kernels and I removed my updated kernel from the Operating System ( use “rpm -qa kernel” to display the available kernels, and “yum remove <kernel_version>” to remove the kernel)

Let the Virtual Machine to remove the kernel and hit “Y” if it asks in the middle of the removal

Checked the kernel and verified

I performed the update again and Virtual Machine installed the removed latest kernel again on the Operating System (Used “yum -y update“)

Once it completed the Virtual Machine I powered of and started to confirm the kernel and newly installed kernel loaded without an issue.

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As you may already aware VMware has released the vSphere 6.7 and it ships with lots of new features and I’d like to show you the complete steps to Migrate Windows Based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.7. It is much similar to Windows based vCenter server to VCSA 6.5 Migration and I previously posted a blog post about the Migration.  vCenter 6.7 has released with a new appearance and I have tested it in my lab at the very first day of the release. Read my blog post about the vCenter Server 6.7 first impression here.

Before you start your migration make sure to check the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices and cross check your environment support. VMware vCenter Server 6.7 migration supports only for vCenter Server 6.0 and upper versions for the Migrations. If your vCenter is sitting in vSphere 5.5 or lesser version make sure to upgrade your vCenter Server to vCenter Server 6.0 first.

vCenter Server 6.7 can manage only ESXi version 6.0 and upper versions. If your environment consists with ESXi version 5.5 and lower versions you have to upgrade the ESXi version 6.0 first.

Migrate Windows Based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.7 From the Beginning (Stage -1 )

Migration of Windows based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.5 and 6.7 has no difference in steps, but I wanted show you the complete steps of the Migration so anyone can start and plan their migration without wasting time in their test labs. It is a two stage process and as the Stage – 1 it deploys the appliance and continue the configuration in stage – 2.

First things first, I assume you already fully patched your Windows based vCenter server from the Operating System Patches, because running the Migration assistant will require the C++ 2005 redistributable binaries installed on the system otherwise migration assistant will fail the prechecks.

Download the vCenter Server 6.7 Appliance and mount it to the Windows based vCenter server (6.0) and run the Migration Assistant located in “VMware VCSA/migration-assistant” folder as shown in the below screen capture.

Ensure that there is no errors in the Prechecks of the Migration Assistant and you can start the Migration once you get the “Waiting for Migration to start …” notification

Now login to another server in your network and mount the vCenter Server 6.7 ISO and go to the

Select the Migrate Option, you can see a small self explanatory description under Migration tab

Nothing to do with the Introduction Page, Just click Next

Accept the “Terms of the License Agreement”

Provide the source vCenter Server details , Migration Assistant will use the default port. If you are intend to use a different port please specify otherwise use default port

Just verify the thumbprint in the next step

Specify the target vCenter or the ESXi host details and credentials

Accept the certificate

Specify the Virtual Machine name and the the root password

Specify the deployment size, if you are intend to use the VCHA feature at least you need to select the size as small. You can see the required resource size in the table

Select the target datastore, I’m enabling thin provisioned virtual disks for my deployment. In a production environment I do not encourage to enable thin provision disks for your vCenter server

Provide the networking details and we need to have a temporary IP address as similar to the 6.5 Migration

Review your settings and Click on Finish to start the deployment and complete the stage -1 of the Migration

Just wait for the completion of the Stage -1 of the migration

Once it completed the Stage – 1 of the migration Continue to the Stage – 2

Migrate Windows Based vCenter Server to VCSA 6.7 : Stage -2

As similar to the previous stage nothing to do with the Introduction and just click Next

Then it will perform a pre-checks

You can see the pre-Migration check results and errors and warnings can be seen in the window. In my case I have two networks connected to the source vCenter Server and it gave as a warning as it cannot add the network adapter as a part of the migration

Provide the AD account credentials which has the privilege to add this appliance to the AD domain. You can perform this task later if you need

After validating the credentials select the migration data which you want to migrate from the old vCenter server. Migration process time will vary depending on the data set you select here

Tick or untick the CEIP selection according to your requirement and this is completely optional

I hope, I don’t want to mention that you need to take a backup of the database before you start the migration and confirm that you have taken the backup in this stage. Also, you can see the summary of the configuration selections in this window

It will give you a Warning to the shutdown of the source Virtual Machine. Migration wizard will automatically power off the source virtual machine

It will start the Migration wizard, there three main steps similar to the 6.5 migration

I got this information at the end of the stage two

Finally, it completed the migration from Windows vCenter 6.0 to VCSA 6.7

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One of the leading Software and Cloud service provider Vembu has recently released Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 with new design in mind with the Small Business support. Key highlight of Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 is the launch of Standard Edition. Previously, Vembu BDR Suite was available only in single edition for all businesses.

Obviously, there are different business requirements for the Small and Enterprise level businesses and Vembu take this requirement in to the consideration and released the BDR suite in Standard and Enterprise editions. Now, customers have the option to select the BDR suite according their business perspective and can protect their Virtual Environment without wasting their time.

Vembu BDR Suite Editions

From Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 release, Vembu introduce Vembu BDR editions for varied user functionalities as follows:

Major features in Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1

With this new standard edition of Vembu BDR Suite, SMBs can protect their entire virtual IT infrastructure with predominant features.

What’s with Storage?

There are also “NO” restrictions in terms of scaling of storages.

Customers can add any type of storages to meet their business and storage retention needs. The Standard Edition of Vembu BDR Suite also offers inbuilt compression and deduplication to use the storage resources efficiently. And, through AES-256 encryption algorithm, it assures data security at flight and on rest.

Pricing Point of View

Small business customers didn’t want to use more features than they actually required and spend more money on an enterprise level product without an actual use, so Vembu has looked in this requirement and Standard Edition is great fix for the Small business customers and it comes with a simpler pricing model.

Wrap-Up

Implementing a BDR Solution is preferred to ensure data availability at all times for continuous business operations. With the new Standard Edition of Vembu BDR Suite, the SMBs can now enforce the best Backup and Disaster recovery solution in their IT environment at a reasonable price to achieve superior data protection along with Business Continuity.

The Vembu BDR Suite v3.9.1 comes with significant enhancements and bug fixes aimed at improving the performance of Vembu BDR Suite.

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” VMware Workstation and Device/Credential Guard are not compatible. VMware Workstation can be run after disabling Device/Credential Guard. ” error might be familiar with the VMware workstation users.

I ran in to this problem while I was starting to use my VMware workstation 14 pro on Windows 10 and it was throwing this error when I’m booting up the Virtual Machine. Actually, it was giving the direct VMware Knowledge base article to follow the steps to resolve it. But I thought to write this up to help all those who look for a step guide to fix the error.

This was the appeared error message in my Virtual Machine.

I had to disable the Device/Credential Guard in my local group policy and I opened a “run” prompt by pressing Win Key + R and typed ” gpedit.msc ” to open the local group policy editor.

Once it opened up the Local group policy editor, navigate to ” Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Device Guard ” and open the ” Turn on Virtualization Based Security ” setting by double click on it.

Set the setting to ” Disabled ”

Opened a Command Prompt elevating the “Administrative Privileges” and run the below piece of command

mountvol X: /s
copy %WINDIR%\System32\SecConfig.efi X:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\SecConfig.efi /Y
bcdedit /create {0cb3b571-2f2e-4343-a879-d86a476d7215} /d "DebugTool" /application osloader
bcdedit /set {0cb3b571-2f2e-4343-a879-d86a476d7215} path "\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\SecConfig.efi"
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} bootsequence {0cb3b571-2f2e-4343-a879-d86a476d7215}
bcdedit /set {0cb3b571-2f2e-4343-a879-d86a476d7215} loadoptions DISABLE-LSA-ISO,DISABLE-VBS
bcdedit /set {0cb3b571-2f2e-4343-a879-d86a476d7215} device partition=X:
mountvol X: /d

Hyper-V role was not installed on my system, if it is installed make sure to disable it before you restart.

Rebooted the Computer and at the login screen it prompted to accept the change and pressed F3 and Operating system loaded without issues, after that my Virtual Machine started correctly.

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I was testing Microsoft’s new release of evaluations and I got ” Windows Cannot Find The Microsoft Software License Terms. Make sure the installation sources are valid and restart the installation. ” error message when I’m powering up the Virtual machine. Even though rebooted the Virtual Machine it was kept looping the error message.

I’d like to mention that Workstation now allows you to enter serial number and the user credentials at the creation of the virtual machine and it can set to automatically login to the system when powering on the Virtual Machine. Since, I was using the evaluation edition of the operating system, I didn’t have a serial key with me, so I skipped that step with my user credentials.

This is how error message looked like.

As I mentioned earlier, I have provided the credentials without the serial and that caused the issue.

If I select the ” I will install the operating system later ” option, map the ISO file later and start the Virtual Machine, this error would not appear in my screen. It will simply allow me to install the operating system without any issues. If you already have created the Virtual Machine delete it and recreate with this option.

I have created a small video to show the successful steps of the Virtual Machine creation.

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At the Microsoft Ignite 2017, Microsoft announced the centralized Management platform as Project “Honolulu” and it is now generally available as Windows Admin Center for IT admins. The intention behind introducing this type of product is to provide the modernized, simplified, centralized and secured management experience for IT Administrators who open dozens of consoles in the Windows Operating system environments in terms of management of the services.

Benefits of Windows Admin Center to the IT Administrators

Windows Admin Center is lightweight browser-based GUI toolset which is very much easier to deploy and mange the Windows server and 10 operating systems. This tool can easily be connected to the Physical servers, Virtual Machine running on Hyper-V hypervisors and Azure Cloud environment but completely working without the internet connectivity and cloud dependencies. Microsoft is expecting to extend the 3rd party tool integrations in the future and those vendors can use the same tool to manage their own hardware.

Install Windows Admin Center on Windows Server 2019

You can easily download the Windows Admin Center using the above ” Download ” button and installing is pretty straight forward.

To install the Windows Admin Center just click on the installer

Accept the End user License agreement to begin the installation

Set the update checker, in this case I don’t need to check for updates

Provide the permissions to Windows Admin Center to modify the machine’s trusted hosts settings and if you need you can allow it to create a desktop shortcut for the ease of use

Set the server management port and set the SSL certificates, or let it to generate the self-signed SSL certificate.(Certificate will expire in 60 days)

It will start the installation

Open the Windows Admin Center using the desktop icon, otherwise open the internet explorer and type the FQDN and the provided port top open up the management interface

Provide the user credentials to logging in to the application, in my case I just installed on a standalone server and I did not configured and connected to the Active Directory, so I use local admin credentials to logging in

Browser will take you to the Welcome screen and click next to the next slider, or you can skip the Tour

All the available connections can be seen in the initial screen

Server management interface can be opened up by clicking on the connection

How to Add a New Connection To The Windows Admin Center

New server connection can be added using the + Add link and connection type must be selected in the menu appear in the side pannel

Provide the Tags and the server FQDN. In my case these are auto generated server names as I’m not using a proper DNS server for this demonstration

Added server will list under the ” All Connections ”

Remote server details can be seen after click on the server connection link

Management Credentials can be changed after adding the remote server, and that can be seen in the ” All Connections ” page. ” Manage As ” option can be used to specify the credentials

Remote server roles and almost all the configuration can be done remotely from Windows Admin Center now

Gateway access and Azure integration can be done in the Settings

My Thoughts

I have worked many years as a Windows System Admin and I had to RDP in to lots of servers for all most all the time for do some health checks, install Roles and features, read event logs and many more things. In that perspective I think this is a really great approach for simplifying the administrative tasks and reduce the work overhead for IT administrators.

From The installation Point of view I had not experience single issue such as installing any binaries or windows updates, etc. Couple of clicks actually completed the installation and was able to launch the Admin interface in few seconds. But I had some issues with Internet explorer and Chrome gave me a great and faster experience with the Admin interface. Turning on the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration gave me the faster load of the interface and some loading issues experienced with the turned off of this feature.

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Disaster recovery options are quite important to the running services and these disaster recovery mechanisms should be able to recover/restore the affected services as soon as possible without making a serious impact to a company or it’s revenue. That’s where these reliable disaster recovery options are coming in to play.

One of the most leading software and cloud leading provide Vembu has a different vision on these disaster recovery options and mechanisms and highlight the importance of having multiple recovery options in the production environments.

Eager to know more on which Backup and DR strategy to adopt for your business?

Attend the live webinar by Vembu highlighting the different recovery options available and how to make the best use of them to keep your data centers shielded

Why is recovery more important than a backup?

All your data is vulnerable to a threats, viruses and anything that can harm to your organization and it’s reputation. Safeguarding your data is quite important and you might be ready to face any sort of disaster and you need to have your data available for faster recovery.

Losing data is really easy, that can be varying from human error, hardware malfunction to a natural disaster like flooding or tornado and no one guarantee that there might not be something like that in the future.

The most important thing is your reputation and you can’t have a downtime with your business. So you need to think about a suitable backup strategy to your organization.

Important Factors in a DR Plan

RPO determines the amount of data that a business could afford to lose when a disruption occurs.

It is the time window between the occurrence of a disruptive event and a return to fully operational business status, essentially, the downtime. It basically determines how long you can afford to stay out of business.

Important factors in backup and recovery mechanism

Following are some of the most widely adopted and looked for features while adopting a suitable DR software:

Vembu offers below recovery options for your business needs

Attend to the Webinar so you can learn more about Vembu BDR capabilities as a backup and disaster recovery option for your business needs.

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This article explains the complete steps to Reset vCenter Inventory Service Database in vSphere 5.5 environment. Running out of space in the vCenter Server installation partition can cause the inventory database corruption and we might need to reset this inventory server database.

Symptoms were something similar to non-responsive vCenter server and after a server reboot vCenter was not connecting to the network and services or any other consoles were unable to open to check the status. I was ended up with the same situation with couple of my clients and I thought to write this article for anyone who wants to follow and reset vCenter Inventory Service database easily.

Actual, Server response was really bad when I logged in to the vCenter Server from the console. Network was disconnected and I was not able to open the Network Settings of the server.

So, the next step was something that optional as I usually follow in similar situations, I restarted the server and entered to the “Safe Mode” of the vCenter Server. Set all the VMware services to manual mode to avoid this non-responsive situation of the server. (Screen capture only shows the VMware VirtualCenter Server service and VMware VirtualCenter Management Web Services, all the services should be in the manual mode in order to get the full response state).

I rebooted the Server again and logged in to the server, and navigate to “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\data” location and identify the “xdb.bootstrap” file

Opened the command prompt with “Run As Administrator” and navigated to the above location, and executed the below command to extract the bootstrap header to a text file.

type "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\data\xdb.bootstrap"|findstr "<server" > "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\datahash1234321.txt"

See below output

Navigated to the location of the output file as mentioned in the above command and check whether the file has been created as we expected

File output would be something similar to this

Renamed the data folder as “data.old” which is under “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service”

Navigated to the “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\scripts” location and executed the “createDB.bat” file

I let that script to do the rest

If this operation has been successfully completed then new “data” folder should be there as below in the screen capture

Opened the Notepad with “Run As Administrator” privileges and opened the new “xdb.bootstrap” file

Copied the content of the extracted header file and pasted it in the newly created file as below

Restarted the Inventory Service

Changed the directory to the “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VirtualCenter Server\isregtool” location in the command prompt

Run the below command with the server FQDN and rhe relevant ports of the lookup service

register-is.bat https://<SERVER_FQDN>:443/sdk https://<SERVER_FQDN>:10443 https://<SERVER_FQDN>:7444/lookupservice/sdk

Command should end up with similar output like this

Restarted the services after that and issue has been fixed. Make sure to set the service start type to “Automatic” and “Delayed Start” (VMware VirtualCenter and VMware VirtualCenter Management WebServices)

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This was a different type of incident and I experienced this issue while I’m upgrading the vCenter server 5.5 to 6.0 and “Source vCenter Server Schema validation found an issue” error appeared at the start of the upgrade. First of all I would like to tell you this this vCenter was an old vCenter server with Oracle database which was coming from earlier vCenter server editions and it was finally upgraded to vCenter server 5.5.

I had to upgrade this vCenter server to vCenter server 6.0 and this error message appeared in the very beginning of the vCenter upgrade.

Actually, we can think about the extensions issue later or we can ignore that as we can re-register them. Actual issue was not with the extensions and “Source vCenter Server Schema validation found an issue”, that’s was the main concern about this issue.

I opened the “vcdb_req.err” file which was under “C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\vcsUpgrade” location

I was able to identify the below errors in the “vcdb_req.err” log as below

I was searching a solution for this “ERROR” I was able to find couple of VMware Knowledge base articles and some database level queries had to directly run on the database console.

I found the similar errors in VMware KB 2147549 and I wanted to check this in the database.

Those entries were like this

The given queries in the VMware KB article has some query errors and had to modify those queries in order to do the modification correctly on the DB.

The corrected query was this

alter table VPX_DEVICE add constraint VPX_DEVICE_P1 primary key (DEVICE_ID) using index VPX_DEVICE_P1;
alter table VPX_DATASTORE rename constraint FK_VPX_DS_REF_VPX_ENTITY to FK_VPX_DS_DC_REF_VPX_ENT
alter table VPX_DATASTORE rename constraint FK_VPX_DS_REF_VPX_ENTI to FK_VPX_DS_REF_VPX_ENTITY

After that I was able to proceed with the upgrade successfully.

A Word Of Advise

That’s it, hope this article will help you to fix similar issues in your environment. Normally, this happens in very old vCenters which are upgraded to different versions.

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This error was occurred while I was configuring the VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 and my first VCSA 6.7 Backup Failed with an error. This automated backup scheduler was introduced in vCenter Server 6.7 and I was very exited to configure this in my environment.

VCSA backup and restoration was there in vCenter Server 6.5 but there was no a way to automated the VCSA backup in the appliance. Read my previous blog post with related to the backup and restoration for more information. With vCenter Server 6.5 we had to use the traditional cron script backups to make it automate and save it in a remote location.

I have setup a FTP server in my network and I have created a folder to store the vCenter backup files. Once I configured and started the backup this error message appeared on my web client and backup failed.

VCSA 6.7 Backup Failed : Check Share and Security Permissions for the Destination Backup Folder

The user account that I used to create this backup job didn’t have the read/write share permissions and the relevant security permissions to access the folder.

So I changed the folder share permissions and shared the folder with the user.

I have changed the security permissions as well. In my case I was able to grant the “Full Control” to the folder to the user account without an Issue.

I re-run the manual backup and it was successful after changing the folder permission

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VMware recently released the latest release of the VMware vSphere 6.7 and Vembu, one of the most giant software and cloud service provider released the latest release of it’s flagship product to the market, Vembu supports vSphere 6.7 now!.

Now you have a great opportunity to experience the latest advancements in the field of virtualization with VMware vSphere 6.7, while Vembu ensures the protection of your virtualized environment.

Vembu, are proud to announce the release of Vembu BDR Suite 3.9.1 Update 1, the latest flagship offering from Vembu. You can now protect your VMs running on vSphere 6.7 with the enterprise-level features offered in the Vembu BDR.

Users can now experience the latest advancements in their VMware hypervisor with vSphere 6.7 while ensuring the protection of their virtual environment with Vembu 3.9.1.

The Vembu BDR Suite 3.9.1 Update 1 is now generally available(GA) and ready for download.

Along with the support for vSphere 6.7, the latest release comes with numerous enhancements that can simplify the backup process and take the business continuity to next level.

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I have been working with many vSphete 5.5 to VCSA 6.5 migration projects and this was a bit different scenario which I had to face, the requirement was to migrate distributed Windows based vCenter Server 5.5 to an embedded VCSA 6.5 .

Our clients deployed their Windows based vSphere 5.5 vCenters as a distributed installation which means separate servers for Single Sign-On, Web Client, Inventory Service and vCenter server. According to the VMware vSphere 6.5 upgrade paths mentioned here there will be separate VCSA appliance for PSC and vCenter server. I have posted a different article for this 6.5 migration when it has a separate Signle Sign-On server, you can read it in this post.

My customers wanted to leverage the VCSA HA feature which is a really cool feature comes with 6.5. In that case third party load balancer is recommended to maintain the high availability of the PSC. But use of a third party load balancer or NSX load balancer was not approved by the management due to some reasons. So only option was to migrate the distributed vCenter server to an embedded VCSA appliance.

The existing and the expected setup can be explained as below, It has two main steps (Consolidation of the distributed vCenter server in to a single server and actual Migration)

Before we start the actual migration we had to some changes to the existing environment. As the first step of this migration process we had to consolidate the current system to a single vCenter server, no changes to the database. It was sitting alone and we did not do any changes to the vCenter server database.

High level procedure can be explained as below.

How to consolidate the distributed vCenter server in to a single vCenter server ?

Firstly, we had to uninstall the vCenter server from the Windows based vCenter server and install all the components in to the same server. We can ignore the other servers (Single Sign-On, Webclient) as we are going to install those components in the same vCenter server. Of course, we need to adjust the virtual machine resources in order to run those services in the same server. Please refer the configuration requirements to run all the services in a single server.

Before you start you need to consider few more things in this process. Pretty obvious, we need to take a backup of the vCenter server database. Also, we need to backup the SSL certificates located in “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Virtual Center\SSL” this is the location for Windows server 2008 and 2012, Windows server 2003 server location can be different than this location.

The importance of taking the SSL backup is once we completed the vCenter server 6.5 Migration all the hosts are automatically connected, but in some instances we had couple of issues and we had to re-generate the SSL certificates which means proceed without using these SSL certs in the next installation. I will share the experienced issues at the end of this article. If we regenerated these SSL certificates at the next simple installation (consolidation stage) we need to re-connect all the ESXi hosts to the vCenter server.

Once these backups are in place make sure to take a snapshot of the vCenter server and proceed with the un-installation of the existing vCenter server. I would start with the vCenter server and uninstall all the installed services.

This is step is quite important after completing the uninstallation we need to rename the below folders before we install the vCenter components again on the vCenter server. Then the installation will work as a fresh installation otherwise it will install the files in the old folders which can make some issues. (ex: Rename the folders as  C:\ProgramData\VMware\Infrastructure.old)

Now we need to recreate the folder path to “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Virtual Center” and copy the SSL folder which we backed up in the previous step.

Now it’s time to proceed with the simple installation again (Consolidation Stage). Mount the vCenter server 5.5 .iso file and proceed with the the installation. I normally, install all these components manually one after the another rather than just clicking on the “Simple Install”. That’s my practice to keep the track of what I’m doing.

Once we install all the components in a single server check the access to the vCenter server and see all your hosts are connected and working.

If everything is working as we expected then it’s time to proceed with the two stage vSphere 6.5 migration as a single server.

Here is my previous article for the vCenter Windows Server 5.5 to VCSA 6.5, with a separate PSC. In this scenario we don’t have two appliances we have only a single Windows based vCenter Server.

Similar article can be found here with regard to the Windows vCenter Server 6.0 to VCSA 6.7 (No changes with the steps).

Distributed Windows Based vCenter Server 5.5 to An Embedded VCSA 6.5 Encountered Issues

This issue occurred while we were upgrading the consolidated (converted to a simple installation) to a Windows based vCenter server 6.0. Upgrade was failed.

In the vCenter upgrade error logs located in “C:\Users\Aruna\AppData\Local\Temp\vcsUpgrade” we were able to see something like this

Also, we could see the below error message in a consolidated (converted to a simple installation) vCenter Server 5.5 to VCSA 6.5 migration. VMware Migration Assistant was throwing the below error message.

If you re-generate the SSL Certificates you have to reconnect all the hosts in the vCenter Server, new SSL Certs break the connection encryption between the vCenter and the ESXi hosts.

We used below piece of script to connect all the disconnected hosts back to the vCenter server I hops this might help you.

# Reconnect all hosts in VirtualCenter. Connect first using Get-VIServer.
# If you need a password, set it here.
$password = "password"
get-vmhost | where { $_.State -eq "Disconnected" } |
% {
$view = get-view $_.ID
$arg = new-object VMware.Vim.HostConnectSpec
$arg.userName = "root"
$arg.password = $password
$arg.force = $true
$return = $view.DisconnectHost_Task()
wait-task $return
$view.ReconnectHost_Task($arg,$null)
}

This is a bit of a lengthier post but I wanted to share the exact experience and the steps that we followed in this migration process.

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I’m a big fan of a Google Cloud Platform and I was studying alone with this and I thought to write a series of blog posts with regard to this great Cloud Platform and this is how we can get started with Google Cloud Platform. In this post I’m planing to show you how you can create a Google Cloud Account and get started with this platform.

If you are pretty interested with this cloud platform you can Sign Up and get $300 to spend on Google Cloud Platform over next 12 months. I will discuss what more on the infrastructure and it’s components later and let’s see how we can sign up with this Cloud Platform and get start our work.

To begin with Google Cloud Platform click on the above Sign Up button, you can try it for free and you will get $300 for next 12 months. The good thing about this is you will not be automatically charged at the end of your free time period. So I encourage you to go and try it out!

Select your country and accept the email notification settings and “Google Cloud Platform Free Trial Terms of Service.”

Provide the Billing and contact details. Don’t worry you won’t be charged and this this is to ensure that you are a human and active card, it will charge a small amount of money and will refund in a minute. Also select the Account type for a “Business or Individual” use.

You will see the Welcome message as a pop-up

You will be redirected to the “Getting Started” page and use the”Hamburger Menu” to see the full menu

Create a Project to started with Google Cloud Platform

First and foremost you need to create a project click on small drop down  icon to open the projects and create a new project using “NEW PROJECT” option. I have already created a project for some API work, you will not see any projects at first time.

Provide a Project name and a Project ID, it should be a unique value if your Project Name is not available as the Project ID it will randomly generated an ID. You can specify an organization if available

This is my Project ID, I don’t have an Organization, if you are done with the project click on “CREATE” to complete the project creation

You can see the status of a task from the small “Bell” icon

Now you can select the created Project

Your Project dashboard would look like this

You can customize the dashboard widgets using CUSTOMIZE option

Enable and disable the widgets easily with small slider button

You can set the Project Access permissions using “IAM & admin” option also you can pin the important menu Items to the top of the main menu using small pin icon

Permissions can be granted in IAM menu I will talk about this in detail later

All the activities can be seen in the “ACTIVITY” menu of the dashboard

Google Cloud Platform has it’s own cloud shell which you can interact with your browser, we’ll see in detail later

Also, you can download the Google Cloud Console Mobile App and access your console while you are on the go. A great feature!

This is just the overview of the Google Cloud Platform Console and how you can get started with this platform I will talk about in detail about other features and configuration later.

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