Vsphere Web Client

vCenter Server Web Client crash with latest Flash 27.0.0.170

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

Within the last couple of days Google ran an automatic update of Flash, which is causing havoc in the all-things-flash world.

Since Google manages the upgrade of the flash you are kind of at their mercy on this one, until all applications finally learn to stay as far away from flash as possible! Can only hope!

You can however disable the automatic update feature for flash by setting the registry HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update\AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes to 0.

My fix was pretty straight forward and I only had to delete the latest release folder from the path “%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\PepperFlash” (windows) or “~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/PepperFlash” (MAC).

In my case the older version was still available in the same folder so I only had to delete the latest and restart google but if do not have the older version you can download it here.

From other users responses it seems that the version 27.0.0.130 and older still works but newer version will crash on both your Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.

Update:  VMware has release a KB here

 

 

How to retrieve a VM log file through vSphere Web client

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

In the web client there is an easier way instead or using outside methods for instance:
SSH into host and upload log files to ftp site
GUI interface apps like WinSCP.

These normally have issues with copying of files due to file being locked while VM is powered on.

Firstly need to note the folder file name for VM:

  1. Select VM
  2. Select Summary tab
  3. On VM hardware window and select “settings”
  4. Expand the Hard disks and note the Disk File name provided.

To retrieve the log files following these instructions:

  1. Select VM
  2. Select Related Objects tab
  3. Select Datastores
  4. Right click on databastore and select “Browse files”
  5. Double click the folder associated to VM which was retrieved in beginning.
  6. Highlight each vmware*.log file individually
  7. Right click and select “Download from datastore”
  8. Select local folder location
  9. done!
If your server is unresponsive or crashed you can also export all the log files.  However beware this option will suspend or crash your VM so please use with caution!(KB 1007802)
  1. Select VM
  2. Right click VM and select “all vCenter Actions”
  3. Select “export system logs”
  4. Select system logs to export
  5. Select finish
  6. done

vSphere web client login error: "Client is not authenticated to VMware Inventory Service"

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

This week received the following error when trying to login to vSphere web client.
“Client is not authenticated to VMware Inventory Service”

Troubleshooting:

Was able to login with local user “administrator@vsphere.local”.
Problem seems to be only related to domain user authentication.

Looked at all services on vcenter server, which was running.
Service health on vSphere web client also all green without any errors.

Solution:

Finally looked at VMware KB articles and found the following:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2059637

Group names with permissions seems to be case sensitive.
Our domain admin has change the security groups cases and we were not notifiied which cause to the authentication to fail.

Resolved by removing and re-adding the active directory security groups back under permissions for the objects it was registered on.

I would recommend notifying your Domain administrators regarding this issue.

vSphere web client 5.5: Add new datastore to storage cluster with associate storage profile.

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

Adding a new datastore to vCloud storage profile has change just a little bit with vSphere Web client.
refer to my previous post to see the difference:
http://virtualrealization.blogspot.com/2014/01/assigning-storage-profilepolicy.html

Information to know up front:
Storage policy/profile name
Storage capability (Rule-Set 1 Tag) – vSphere Web migrated the capabilities to Tags

Steps:

Backend storage:

  1. This is normally handled by storage team which will provide the LUN.
  2. Since I am also the storage engineer I created the LUN from my Dynamic Pool on the Hitachi AMS 2100.

Within vCenter server web client:

  1. Right click the ESXi host from vCloud datastore
  2. Select “all vCenter actions”  from menu -> Rescan storage
  3. Only need to check the Scan for new Storage devices.
  4. Rick click the ESXi host again
  5. Select “New datastore”.
    1. Type – VFMS or NFS depending on block or file level storage.
    2. Datastore name
    3. Select version
    4. Partition size
  6. Go to vSphere web client home page.
  7. Select VM storage policies which will be associated to this datastore.
  8. Edit the VM storage policy, select Rule-set and write down the Tag name
  9. Right click the newly added datastore 
  10. Select “Assign Tag”
  11. Add the Tag to datastore for association to VM Storage policy.
  12. Now you can add the new datastore to the Datastore cluster.

VMware 5.5 error – Invalid datastore path ”. – When creating new Virtual Machine

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

A new problem I found in VMware 5.5 is when you try to create a new Virtual Machine.

Debugging the problem:

I have never had any issues with creating new Virtual machines from scratch.  However i had to create a new OS template and started the process but received error:  Invalid datastore path.

Looking online I did seem to find this error popping up alot but not related really to my problem.
I did test the following:
•Verify that datastore mentioned in the error is connected and accessible.
•Verify that the file exists in the datastore.

•Ensure that the file name does not contain non-Basic Latin characters.

Kind of figure the problem storage or permission from error message so  I went through my custom VM steps and under storage selection I always choose the Storage cluster and keep storage DRS enable so VMware make the recommendation of where to place the disks.  This is where the problem lies for some reason….



Resolution:

When you create the VM and under storage selection if you choose the storage cluster, make sure you disable Storage DRS for the VM and select the datastore manually.

This seems to have fix my issues and I was able to create the VM successfully.