You are not very likely to bump into Windows 2003 physical servers anymore – but nevertheless that just happened to me a week ago. The task was clear – this server needs to be virtualized into a vSphere 7 environment, running vSAN.
The problem with this task is that to convert (P2V) a 2003 server you need to install vCenter Converter 6.2 on it, since the latest release 6.3 simply doesn’t work on 2003 servers (It won’t install).
Next problem is that vCenter Converter 6.2 doesn’t work with vSAN 7 – only “traditional storage” can be used as target – but in this case there were no other storage than vSAN that could be used as target.
What to do? – read on…
Installing Windows 11 on vSphere / ESXi 7

If you run in to the above error when installing Windows 11 as a virtual machine on ESXi (or other virtual platforms) then be aware that there is a workaround.
Continue readingNutanix ESXi upgrade error: Insufficient space of host [ip] for storing bundle

I recently ran into the above problem with a customer while trying to upgrade ESXi from Prism interface. The KB6470 Mentioned that it might be related to the ESXi scratch partition not having enough available space. But that wasn’t the issue here.
Continue readingUnable to update VMware Tools on ESXi 7.0 U1 (17325551)
After I have upgraded my home lab from ESXi 7.0 to 7.0 update 1c (17325551) I ran into an issue updating VMware Tools on my VMs.
I tried both update options (“automatically” and “manually”), but both failed with a VIX error.
Automatilly update output = “vix error code = 21004”
Manually update = “vix error code = 21009”

vCenter: update installation failed, vCenter Server is non-operational

I recently ran in to this error upgrading my homelab vCenter from 7.0.0.10400 to 7.0.10600:
vCenter: update installation failed, vCenter Server is non-operational
Luckily, the fix was easy – all I needed to do was to delete the file “/etc/applmgmt/appliance/software_update_state.conf”
So you just need to SSH to your vCenter and execute this command:
rm /etc/applmgmt/appliance/software_update_state.conf

Error when updating vCenter to 6.7 U2c

A few days ago, I decided to update my vCenter server to version 6.7 U2c – normally this is an easy task with the update section in the VAMI interface. But this time I just encountered this error message when I tried to search for the update:
Continue readingError in method invocation ({‘default_message’: ‘Manifest verification failed’, ‘id’: ‘com.vmware.appliance.update.manifest_verification_failed’, ‘args’: []}, ‘Verification Failure\n’, ”)
vSAN Health: “Hosts with connectivity issues”
I have lately been involved in two vSAN installation that had this alert in vSAN Health pane.

Another side effect is that the hosts on the warning list is unable to enter maintenance mode.
Continue readingVM folder remove, deletes VM or not?
I’ve just seen this in the release notes for VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 Update 1b:
Removing a virtual machine folder from the inventory by using the vSphere Client might delete all virtual machines
In the vSphere Client, if you right-click on a folder and select Remove from Inventory from the drop-down menu, the action might delete all virtual machines in that folder from the disk and underlying datastore, and cause data loss.This issue is resolved in this release.
I’ve just checked this in my lab on the 6.7 U1b release – when I delete a VMfolder with a VM inside – the VM gets removed from inventory but not deleted on the datastore!
If I delete a VMfolder containing a VM, in vCenter 6.5 the VM gets deleted in the datastore!
Be careful when deleting virtual machine folders!
Veeam error: Failed to check certificate expiration date
This error is seen when you open the Veeam Backup and Replication console “Failed to check certificate expiration date”
Its seems like there is a bug in Veeam Backup and Replication that hits you 11 month after you install or upgrade to 9.5 U3 – luckily Veeam is already aware of it and some helpful URLs has been revealed in Anton Gostev weekly newsletter that can assist in solving this error:
VMware “LOM link” warning in “Hardware Health”

For quite some time I have observed a LOM warning in VMware health status tab on an HPE Proliant ML350 Gen10 server. It seems like it reports the warning on two NIC that are down, even though there are unused by ESXi.