Luke

Site Recovery Manager failed to start – service did not respond to start in timely fashion

I noticed today that one of my two SRM servers wasn’t online in vCenter. I did some quick checking and found the service itself wasn’t running, and the last log entry was from seven days ago (the SRM log is located here “C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\Logs”).

It has some info about it being shutdown, and it turns out that was our production patch cycle that rebooted the server. I checked ODBC, all was well, could manually connect to the database just fine. I also checked on the other SRM server, but it was 100%. I restarted both servers and nothing changed: one worked, the other didn’t.

I’m guessing since the service wouldn’t start, it wouldn’t update the log (which is why last write time was June 7th). The windows application log was unhelpful, and the system log only had the typical message

The VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Server service failed to start due to the following error: 
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

1 2	The VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Server service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

On a whim, I decided to delete the System ODBC connection and recreate it. After that, SRM started fine.

I’m still on version 5.0, no Update 1 yet. If I encounter this problem again, I’ll upgrade to Update 1 and see if it comes back.

Just thought I’d share.

PowerCLI one liner to move all VMs on one datastore to another and convert to thick or thin

I wrote this post a while back on how to use the API to convert VMs from thin to thick, which you could also go from thick to thin using it. I had written it because I was trying to use the inflate function, which isn’t allow against powered on VMs.

It was pointed out by a reader that I could have simply used Move-VM to accomplish the same task. This is great, shows how a second set of eyes and a different perspective can help you solve the problem. You could simply do

Move-VM vmservername -Datastore datastorename -DiskStorageFormat thick

1	Move-VM vmservername -Datastore datastorename -DiskStorageFormat thick

and it will move your VM to the specified datastore and convert to thick. You could use either thin or thick.

If you wanted to move every VM on a datastore, say Datastore1, to a new datastore, say Datastore2, and convert all of them to either thin or thick, you could do it like this:

Get-VM -Datastore Datastore1 | Move-VM -Datastore Datastore2 -DiskStorageFormat thick

1	Get-VM -Datastore Datastore1 \| Move-VM -Datastore Datastore2 -DiskStorageFormat thick

You cannot specify the current datastore as the destination datastore, though. It will complete, but it will not convert your VM’s disk format, you have to actually Storage vMotion the VM to a different datastore. It basically validates the destination datastore is where it currently resides and exits without trying to convert your vmdk.

You could then take it a step farther and make a function that supports parameters, like if you wanted to move VMs on multiple datastores, or a given list of VMs to a specific datastore. For instance, you could create something like “convert-vms.ps1” and run it like this

convert-vms.ps1 -vms ("vm1",vm2","vm3","vm4") -destination datastore2 -thick

1	convert-vms.ps1 -vms ("vm1",vm2","vm3","vm4") -destination datastore2 -thick

and it would move all four VMs to datastore2 and convert them to thick in the process. Or something like

convert-vms.ps1 -source ("datastore1","datastore2") -destination datastore3 -thin

1	convert-vms.ps1 -source ("datastore1","datastore2") -destination datastore3 -thin

That would move all VMs from datastores 1 & 2 and thin provision them on datastore3.

If anyone’s interested in the actual script/function, let me know and I can put one together fairly quickly.

And just like that, the Cisco Cius is dead – @Cisco #Cius

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Cisco Cius is an Android tablet designed for corporate use.

I’ve been using mine for roughly 5 months. Initially, I loved it, but it’s proved to be less than (insert some mediocre phrase here). It wasn’t bad, but also wasn’t great. However, over time, the tablet performed worse & worse. The week before last, it pretty much became non-functional. It would drop the SIP connection on wifi, I do have a dock for it, but no POE+ drop to power it. I tried to go into the About section of settings and that started force closing on me. Eventually I got to the point where a full wipe was needed.

I did a quick Google search to see about custom ROMs (again), getting into Recovery, or if there are updates. I did find one update, that update being that Cisco is dropping the Cius.

Senior VP of the TelePresence Technology Group, OJ Winge, wrote, “Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet”, in This Blog on May 24th. I was really hoping Cisco would have put a lot more effort into it and made it great.

I cannot say I’m surprised, though, I bet I’m the lone user of the Cius table of all that were issued/demo’d here at my employer. I see several laying around, collecting dust, because user experience just wasn’t there. One even has a post-it note simply saying “DEAD”. Initially, it came with Donut (Android 1.6), no Market (Play Store), and was clunky. Luckily, the one I use had a newer ROM, but it was still sluggish and didn’t perform optimally.

I’ll continue to use it, unless it tanks on me again, forcing a wipe, at which time it’ll probably end up on a shelf, too…

Editing vDS Distributed Port Groups with vSphere Distributed Switch PowerCLI cmdlets

I’ve been toying with the vSphere Distributed Switch PowerCLI cmdlets off and on and have had mixed results. It’s worth noting it only works in 32-bit PowerShell, so if you’re wondering why you get do ‘get-vds’, it’s either because the snap-in is not there, or you’re in 64-bit PS. I have a vDS with 17 ‘Networks’, although one is the uplink, and the others are actual distributed port groups. I added “Add-PSSnapin VMware.* -erroraction silentlycontinue” to my profile, so anytime I open PowerShell, I get all VMware snapins.

I was having difficulty because I was getting errors, things weren’t working as I expected, etc. I’ll explain why…

Cisco UCS Blade System – Part 4 – A much needed update

A few years ago, we were one of the first/early adopters of UCS. At that time, it was clearly in it’s infancy and not ready for prime time, our local Cisco guys didn’t even know anything about it. If you care to read those previous posts, they can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I was fairly bitter when I wrote those, but with good reason. I ‘wasted’ a lot of time (read weeks or months) jacking with it and had nothing but problems.

Updated: Finding WWNs for HBAs in ESXi hosts, now with get-vmhosthba

This is an update to my original get-WWN script using Get-View. Get-VMHostHba was pointed out to me by Robert van den Nieuwendijk, vExpert 2012, so I wanted to provide an update to my original post HERE. I attached the ps1 file at the end.

With the addition of get-vmhosthba in PowerCLI, you can get this information somewhat easier. At line 46

$hbas = Get-View (Get-View (Get-VMHost -Name $vmhost).ID).ConfigManager.StorageSystem

1	$hbas = Get-View (Get-View (Get-VMHost -Name $vmhost).ID).ConfigManager.StorageSystem

becomes

$hbas = Get-VMHostHba -vmhost $vmhost -Type FibreChannel

1	$hbas = Get-VMHostHba -vmhost $vmhost -Type FibreChannel

Since that pulls only fibre channel HBAs, the foreach changes to simply $hba in $hbas, and the if statement is no longer needed (line 47-50):

foreach ($hba in $hbas){
$wwpn = "{0:x}" -f $hba.PortWorldWideName
Write-Host -foregroundcolor green `t "World Wide Port Name:" $wwpn
}

foreach ($hba in $hbas){

$wwpn = "{0:x}" -f $hba.PortWorldWideName

Write-Host -foregroundcolor green `t "World Wide Port Name:" $wwpn

}

Here’s the new version –> Get-WWN.ps1

Installing Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V 3 in VMware ESXi 5 & Workstation 8

I found several posts regarding ‘nesting’ hypervisors (installing a hypervisor within a hypervisor), since I wanted to test out Hyper-V in a VM, and followed this one from William Lam. It worked to allow Hyper-V to pass validation, but after a few reboots, I’d get the dreaded “Windows can’t boot” screen. You have the option to continue, which only reboots to this screen; repair, which gives a command prompt and a few other options; or power off.

<– I would get this far, reboot 3 times, then Windows Server 8 would die, as follows.

<– First option would end up back here

<– Second option above ends up here

I tried the typical bootcfg commands, but it couldn’t read the boot.ini. Some other tests were showing the disk was read-only, which was strange. William’s post was for 2008 R2 and not Windows Server 8, but it worked for the most part. I did have a few other issues I worked through, continue reading for those and how I fixed them.

Script to join ESXi 5 hosts to Active Directory for Directory Services Authentication

I’m getting ready to upgrade a ton of our ESXi hosts to 5 and wanted a quick way to join all of them to AD after. I could probably do a fresh install and incorporate this into my ESXi Config Script, that’s a consideration, but for the time being, a script that targets clusters, folders, vDCs, etc, will work. The script can also target individual ESXi hosts, they do not have to be joined to vCenter.

Some thoughts on the Cisco Cius Android tablet – User Review

I’ve been using a Cisco Cius 7″ Android tablet for several months now and am starting to have mixed emotions about it. Initially, I loved it, especially since it now has 2.2.2 (Froyo) and Google’s updated Play Store. It also allows side-loading of apps, so I have the Amazon Appstore, plus Cisco’s AppHQ. Overall, it’s fairly snappy, but is Atom-based (at 1.6GHz), so custom ROMs are pretty much non-existent.

Initial thoughts of the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, unofficial review

I received a demo of the Ultrabook and I have to say I’m pleased out of the box. It’s obvious it took some cues from the ‘other’ laptop, and it’s nice. First thing I noticed is how light and thin it is. It’s probably as thick as my Viewsonic G Tablet, and boots faster. I timed it, from the time I pressed the power button, until I had a mouse pointer without the ‘wait’ signal, was about 20 seconds. The windows boot logo never even finished! Craziness.