Recently I faced some issue at my customers site which almost caught me into trouble. Although I admit, problem can happen to anyone but sometime this problem can be avoided if we do understand, do some study on why and how the thing has been designed and configured. Sometime to troubleshoot the issue is not time consuming but what really frustrated was when the issue actually caused by human error.

First problem was related to RDM which currently being used by one of my customer VM’s. When people called me at 1:30am and informed me that in order the gain some space for new datastore creation, one of the RDM has been removed from the storage (SAN). I felt shocked. Yes, the 500GB vmdk is still visible and can be seen from inside virtual machine folder in the datastore. Unfortunately what they don’t understand is, the rdm.vmdk actually is a file mapping for the RDM to the real LUN which being hosted inside the SAN. We can’t do anything (cloning, using & etc) with the rdm.vmdk without the real LUN and trust me, even VMware Tech support can’t offer anymore help. What make the matter worse is, no backup or protection available for this 500gb disk. Luckily, the VM just been p2ved and the source physical machine still available for another copy.

Second, one of my customer vCenter virtual machine totally has been configured to use vDS switch last year and after performed a SAN migration, somehow they unable to bring up their vCenter network. I don’t know how the migration process goes but panic contribute to something worse. Without knowing that no network configuration for the VM is possible while vDS went down, they removed the vCenter vNIC and try to add back the vNIC to the VM but of-course it’s failed with error “configuration error for device 0″. So what they have right now is vCenter without vNIC and caused “vCenter server services” failed to start. Luckily, I’ve managed to borrow one vmnic from vDS switch and create a temporary vSS vSwitch and make vCenter vNIC to use this temporary network. Then request a network guy to configure appropriate VLAN on their pSwitch and finally vCenter network can be resumed. ONLY then we were able to start their vCenter Server service without issue.

So, my advice here is, please understand well about your environment before you do something major or minor.

p/s : RDM - require the source LUN  to works & no VM network configuration is possible when your vCenter/vDS goes down.

ariyossss

athlon_crazy 30/01/2011 5:06PM

Well, the licenses have been distributed to all vExpert and make sure you do register the below eval licenses ASAP within 14 days. Else, the licenses will be terminated.

• VMware vSphere, 16 processor (vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus, vCenter Server 4 Standard)
• VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager EVAL for 16 processor
• VMware Workstation 7 for Linux and Windows, ESD
• VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0 EVAL for 16 processor
• VMware Fusion 3, (for Mac OS X) ESD
• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4 EVAL for 16 processors
• VMware vCenter CapacityIQ EVAL for 16 processor
• VMware View 4 Premier Bundle: 100 Pack
• VMware vCloud Director EVAL (1000 VM Pack)
• VMware vShield App (100 VM Pack) EVAL
• vShield Edge (100 VM Pack) EVAL
• VMware vShield Endpoint (100 VM Pack) EVAL

Please check your mailbox and do locate email from John Troyer on how to register the licenses.

Thanks

Recently I don’t know what happen to me. I lost my focus, little depressed (jobs related), sleepy and etc. I really don’t know how to overcome this. My life become so slow and less interesting. It’s like when doing P2V with 10kbps of transfer speed and I have 11 hours more to go before I can go back. Is this what they call it “demotivated”?. However, I’m still happy when I go back home to see my wife and my daughter but not when I’m in the office. Huhuhu hate to say this, but obviously something is not right and bothering me in my office at this moment.

sigh……

I’ve just installed Zimbra Desktop Client yesterday after saw a the demo done by one of my colleague. What I can say is, this is the best email client I have ever used so far. The theme and features in this client are pretty cool. You can use this client for any POP3, IMAP, yahoo, gmail, Microsoft exchange IMAP and Zimbra account. The installation and configuration are pretty straight forward. Briefcase, document, calendar, social are some of nice features you can find in this client. You can even create a Zimbra document using tools which can be found under Briefcase tab. At this moment, you can create word, spreadsheet and presentation document and save it inside your briefcase for future sharing. Social will let you go online your facebook or twitter account straightly from this client. Pretty cool ha? So, what are you waiting for? Go get this client and test it while it’s free.

ariyossss

athlon_crazy 12/01/2011 8:26am.

Due to some reason, finally I managed to get everything back online. Just want to wish a happy new year and I hope that year 2011 will brings more joys to you and your loved ones.

Update:

My ESX corrupted and my ISP respond time had caused this delay. Actually I just moved to my new house and I’m confident that I had turned off my ESX server properly before. Who knows after second time booting my ESX, suddenly the drive became corrupted. Luckily the drive is just for the OS alone. After long thought, I had decided and installed VMware Workstation over ESX on my Athlon 64 X2 machine. Since VMware Workstation doesn’t have any problem to read all ESX VMs inside my NFS box, here we go. I can convince you, this time my home server is totally back online.
oh btw, I had replaced my Scalix with Zimbra mail server and what can I say. It’s really awesome