VCSA disks become full over time
I’ve recently spoken with a number of VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6 (VCSA) users that have had issues with the root filesystem of VCSA running out of space. This situation seems to be occurring more often now due to a combination of when the VCSA 6 went mainstream (18 to 24 months ago) and the
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HPE Custom Image for ESXi 6.5U1 has been withdrawn due to purple-screen issues
HPE has quietly withdrawn the HPE Custom Image for ESXi 6.5U1 July 2017 due to purple-screen issues being experienced on a number of current VMware-supported servers (http://vmware.com/go/hcl)! The particular issue purple screen we saw when deploying this ISO against a HP BL460 G7 was: #PF Exception 14 in world 6824:sfcb-smx IP 0x1 addr 0x1
Revisiting scripted installation for ESXi 6.5
I thought I would revisit scripted ESXi installation for my lab. It’s been since 5.0 or prior since I actually went into depth on this and there are some significant changes for 6.5. The example script draws heavily from other sources and it is now working.
Patch your ESXi Hosts from the command line easily and quickly
In many situations it is desirable to patch your ESXi host(s) prior to being able to install or use VMware vSphere® Update Manager™. UPDATED 4/18/2016: HP has a new URL for HP Customized VMware ISO’s and VIB’s For example: Prior to installing vCenter in a new cluster Standalone ESXi installations without a vCenter Server Hardware
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vCenter 6 Email configuration remains stuck in 1997
On the release of vCenter 6, I was personally very excited to see several email configurations which had not been previously possible. Listed under vCenter Server Settings > Advanced Settings were the following new keys: mail.smtp.password mail.smtp.username One might be led to believe that the ability to configure a SMTP username and password implied that
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Timekeeping on ESXi
Timekeeping on ESXi Hosts is a particularly important, yet often overlooked or misunderstood topic among vSphere Administrators. I recall a recent situation where I created an anti-affinity DRS rule (separate virtual machines) for a customer’s domain controllers. Although ESXi time was correctly configured, the firewall had been recently changed and no longer allowed NTP. As
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