Install and Configure VMware ESXi 6.0

There are few system requirements that must be met before you can install ESXi 6.0 server:
- Make sure the server hardware that you are going to install ESXi server on is supported by VMware vSphere. You can check that using VMware Compatibility Guide.
- The physical server must have 64-bit processors with at least two CPU cores.
- The physical server must have minimum of 4GB of RAM. You need at least 8GB memory to install a virtual machine after ESXi server is installed.
- The NX/XD bit must be enabled in the BIOS. Intel-VT for Intel processors and AMD-V for AMD processors.
- The physical server must have one or more Gigabit Ethernet adapter.
- Compatible disk storage.

Install and Configure VMware ESXi 6.0

There are different ways to install ESXi server. You can use interactive installation (CD/DVD, USB drive, and PXE boot), scripts or auto deploy. Here, I will use interactive method using CD/DVD media to install ESXi server. You can download installation ISO image from VMware. Let’s begin the installation. First, make sure the server is configured to boot from CD/DVD. Insert CD/DVD in to the DVD-ROM or map ISO image to virtual CD/DVD drive and boot the server from ISO image.

Once you start the server with ESXi installation media, you will be presented with ESXi standard boot menu as shown above. Choose ESXi standard installer to start the ESXi installer. Press [Tab] to toggle the selection and press [Enter] to choose the selection. As you can see above, you also have option to booth from local disk.

 Welcome screen appears as shown above. Press [Enter] to begin the installation of ESXi server.

 Press F11 to accept the license agreement.

Choose the storage and press [Enter] to continue. As you can see above the disk type is VMware Virtual S, this is because I am installing ESXi server on a VMware Workstation virtual machine. You can press F1 to see more details about the disk. If you are installing ESXi server on a local SAS storage, it will be listed as remote devices.

 Choose the keyboard layout. Press [Enter] to continue.

Enter the password for root user account. The password must be at least 7 characters long. Press [Enter] to continue.

To confirm the installation press F11.

The installation now begins.

Press [Enter] to reboot and complete the installation.

After the reboot, you can see the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) above. You can see the ESXi build number, memory and processor information and IP address. As you can see above by default, ESXi is set to receive IP from DHCP server. You can press F2 to login to DCUI to change IP address, DNS, hostname and other information.

Read More

Configure IP Address and Hostname in ESXi Server

You need to have physical access to the server to configure IP address in ESXi server. Press F2 to log in to Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) of ESXi server. You can configure DNS and hostname using vSphere client. 

 Enter the password for root user account. Press [Enter]. You will be presented with list of system customization list as shown below.

 As you can see above, the IP address 192.168.0.22 was acquired from DHCP server. Select Configure Management Network option and press [Enter].

Here, you can configure IPv4, IPv6, DNS, DNS suffixes and VLAN. To configure IPv4, select IPv4 Configuration option and press [Enter].

Choose option, set static IPv4 address and network configuration. Press [Space Bar] to make the selection. Now, type IP address, subnet mask and gateway as shown above and press [Enter]. Then press [Esc] key to go back.

You will be asked to confirm the changes and restart the network. Press [Y] to restart the management network.

Now, select DNS Configuration option and press [Enter].

Configure primary and alternate DNS server and hostname. Press [Enter]. Press [Esc] to go back, you will again be asked to confirm the changes and restart management network.

As you can see above IP address and hostname have now changed. In this way you can configure IP address and hostname in ESXi server.

Read More

Configure the storage area for shadow copies to go to a different NTFS volume on a Windows 2008 and 2012 servers

Problem

Backup jobs fail due to VSS related errors indicating either a lack of disk space or IO that is too high to maintain the shadow copies.

Solution

By default, Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) is configured to write the shadow copies of a volume to a storage location on the volume itself.  This can result in very high IO or low disk space problems during the backup of a volume since the drive is experiencing load from the backup reading files, load and disk space usage from VSS reading from and writing to the shadow copy, and load and disk space usage from any other applications on the system using that same volume.  The shadow copy storage location of each volume on a Windows 2008 and 2012 servers can be configured to use a different NTFS volume.  The ideal situation would be to have a separate drive dedicated to shadow copies that is not being backed up and is also not the drive containing the paging file.  If this is not possible, specifying a separate drive that contains the paging file is typically still better than storing the shadow copy on the drive being backed up.  In order to configure the shadow copy storage location for each volume, the following steps can be taken:

1.  Open a command line as Administrator by browsing to C:\Windows\System32. Right-click on cmd.exe and pick Run as administrator

2.  Run the following command:

vssadmin add shadowstorage /for=<drive being backed up> /on=<drive to store the shadow copy> /maxsize=<percentage of disk space to allow to be used>

For Example:
If the VSS shadow copies of the C: drive will be stored on the D: drive and allowed to use up to 90% of the free disk space on D: the command would look like:

vssadmin add shadowstorage /for=c: /on=d: /maxsize=90%

If the command was performed successfully, the following message will be shown:
Successfully added the shadow copy storage association

The current shadow copy storage locations for each volume may also be confirmed by running the following command:

 

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Read More

Backup and Restore ESXi configuration using VMware vSphere CLI

How to backup

First of all you have to download  and install the vSphere CLI tool. You should also have access to the ESXi server using the tool. Open the CLI console as is shown on the picture and run the command below.

 

Tool located at C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI>

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl --server 192.168.0.1 --username root
--password your_password --save backup.cfg

==================================
vicfg-cfgbackup.pl -server 192.168.0.1 -s host01

Possible Errors: CLI Error :  Saving firmware configuration to backup.cfg …
GET https://192.168.0.1/downloads/configBundle-servername..tgz unsuccessful : 404 Not Found Event log : Boot partition : /usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/downloads//files cannot be found

Solution:

/usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/downloads is only a link to /scratch/downloads/

and /scratch is link to /tmp/scratch

Problem will be solved after create a folders under /tmp

SSH to ESXi Server

cd /tmp

mkdir scratch
cd scratch
mkdir downloads
cd downloads

How to restore

You can use same command to restore, Use –load (-l) syntax instead of –save
While restore all the guest machines should be in off state. Command will give a message to shutdown all the gust VMs. ESXi will go to maintenance mode and restore the configuration and reboot the server.

vicfg-cfgbackup.pl --server 192.168.0.1 --username root
--password your_password --load backup.cfg

 

Read More

Removing shared mailboxes from an Outlook profile

Following a server migration, an administrator had user's mailboxes showing up in his profile. This was the result of giving himself Full Access permission to the mailboxes during the migration.

When a user has Full Access permission to another user's mailbox, Outlook 2007 and above automatically opens the mailbox in the profile. (The mailboxes were not listed as secondary mailboxes in Account Settings.) The administrator removed Full Access permission for the mailboxes but this didn't remove the accounts from his profile.

You need to edit the user accounts in the Active Directory and remove your name from the MsExchDelegateListLink attribute.

01. Open Active Directory Users and Computers

02. Go to View menu and select Advanced Features

03. Open the user account that is showing in your mailbox

04. Open the Properties dialog

05. Click Attribute Editor tab

06. Locate MsExchDelegateListLink

07. Click Edit

08. Remove your name from the attribute

09. Close the dialogs

Read More

Windows Server 2008 Activation error: Code 0x8007232b

When you trying to activate Windows Server 2008 and got this error:
“Activation Error: Code 0x8007232b. DNS Name does not exist”

Actually Windows was looking for KMS server for the activation and when it did not find that, it threw error 0x8007232b.

I used following method to resolve the issue:

1. Right-click Command Prompt.
2. Click Run as administrator.
3. Type the following command, and then press ENTER:

      slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

Note: In this command, the xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx placeholder represents your MAK product key.

4. Now try to activate the Windows online, you will succeed.

Microsoft has a KB article for resolving the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929826

Read More

An error caused a change in the current set of domain controllers - Exchange 2010

After demoting some domain controllers, Exchange was functional and healthy, but we were seeing the occasional error when loading recipient lists, or drilling into a specific mailbox's settings such as below:

This error is caused by GUI caching, more specifically MMC caching. This occurs when a DC (domain controller) that is either unreachable or has changed in some way is still cached by the MMC applet.

To fix this issue remove or delete the Exchange Management Console cache file during it is closed:

Delete this file: "c:\users\<specific user>\appdata\roaming\microsoft\mmc\Exchange Management Console"

This completely worked and we no longer receive the above errors.

Read More