Zsoldier's Tech Blog

Summary: I had to script migrate 130+ VM’s off a clariion SAN array because of SP utilization issues to a vMAX array.  All but 3 succeeded.  1 of which exhibited the below symptoms.  The other two were a MSCS cluster, unrelated to this post. Symptoms: Above message appears when attempting a Storage vMotion on a VM. Gets to 5% to 10% before above error appears. When VMWare’s KB1010045 does not apply as evidenced in my Summary. Work Around: vMotion VM to another ESX host. Attempt Storage vMotion. I have no clue why this worked, but whatever.  If this helps someone make their day a little easier then I’m happy.

Configuration: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (Originally installed w/ English, later changed to Japanese) Summary: Using Mac’s Software Update system, I was presented w/ the above error followed by “ Some of the selected updates couldn’t be installed, an unexpected exception occurred. ”  Deleting the contents /Library/Update did not help.  My system was running in Japanese mode. Workaround: Change the system back to English, run Software Update again.  Success.   No clue as to why I had to do this, I thought all underlying binaries were written in the same language, but I guess I might be mistaken.

[Update: The config file, named  BarManagerLayoutFile.xml is  likely responsible for this weirdness is located in your user's application data folder.   Win7 - C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Quest Software\PowerGUI WinXP - C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserName\Application Data\Quest Software\PowerGUI Play w/ the settings changing them from False to True.  Looking @ my own, most are set to True. ] Summary: Weird issue, I open PowerGUI’s script editor one morning and my menu bar items are all grayed out.  This makes it so that I can't use my mouse to select File, Edit, View, Go, Debug, Tools, or Help.  Reinstallation doesn’t seem to help either. Solution: Right-click in the menu bar area and select “Customize:” Highlight “Menu Bar” and whatever other buttons/menus are grayed out and click the reset button. The Menu Bar and other toolbars should now be un-grayed out unless they are supposed to be. Configuration: Windows 7 64-bit PowerGUI Scrip...

I've completely rewritten my original summary script for much faster performance (From 20 min. to approx. 3 min. in an environment running 60 Hosts, 1300VMs, and 181 Datastores).  Nothing much has changed as far as how or what it reports on, but here is a list of changes: Much Faster Performance. CSS can be used to change mouse cursor to hand icon for table header.  ( Example CSS found here ) vCPU and Datastore Percent numbers to highlight ‘out of spec’ numbers in customizable variables now. Custom ico file specifiable. (icon to show up in supported browsers) Custom JScript specifiable.  ( Recommended JScript found here ) Added some versioning There is still plenty to be refined about this script, but it’s pretty fast and can give you an overall picture of how your environment is doing.  Plus, it’s a good thing to put in front of management to help them understand what’s going.  I run this script about ev...

[Update:  Windows 2008 does not require gParted.  It can extend disks on the fly.] Summary gParted does not detect drives using VMWare’s paravirtual scsi controller.  Unable to extend a boot partition. Workaround Change the SCSI Controller to the LSI Logic Parallel controller. Boot into gParted and extend the disk. Shutdown the VM and change the SCSI Controller type back to VMWare Paravirtual . Easy Peasy!