Shutdown all vms on a vsphere instance

This post http://communities.vmware.com/message/2068218#2068218 got me thinking about various DR situations.Essentially, what the op was saying was that even though he has a generator, it doenst work. Another variable that can throw wrenches in someones day.Not going into reasons why someone doesn’t have other DR plans, sometimes a graceful shutdown is much more efficient then a looming hard shutdown.Using the script from herseyc I'm going...

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Power off Virtual machines via command line: Part2 : force off vms

Previously I wrote about powering off vms with vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off  VMIDNow suppose even with a hard power off command, the vm wont go down.You can kill the process associated with the vm.I had to do this on one of my hosts a while ago when it locked up.The first thing you will need is the process id of the host you want to terminate.Host I want to terminate: esx_esx1Run this command ::  ps | grep vmxHere you can...

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Vmware reference card.

Just found this vmware reference card over at http://www.vreference.com/Looks like it has all the "should know" information, which can help not only on a day to day basis, but also makes for a great reference tool for VCP studying.I didnt host a copy since it may be updated and it's better to check back at the si...

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Power off Virtual machines via command line

 Here are the steps to power down a vm via ssh or tech support mode.The reason this could be useful is if you are having problems with your management agents and before a reboot of the host you wanted to shutdown the vmsConnect to the host in question. Im using ssh. Make sure you enabled it.First list all your vms on the host::      vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvmsThis will list every vm.It will list: Vmid   :...

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Veeam one now has a free edition! Also try Veeam backup free if you haven't

We use veeam for our systems but it is nice to know that veeam is also putting a free version out there get users introduced to their software."There are no limits on the number of hosts, management servers or Failover Clusters you can manage, or the number of users or size of your data archive."That pretty generous!By simply installing a purchased license key, Veeam ONE Free Edition can easily be upgraded to the full version of Veeam ONE to gain these and other additional capabilities:•Custom alarms and alarm modeling•Full email notification for...

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ESXi host: viewing logs

Using a Web BrowserI found this on techhead.co.ukbut I will include the steps here to keep everything in one place.Open your favorite Web BrowserEnter the following: https://<esxi ip address>/hostEnter the ESXi Host Root username/passwordPasted from <http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/2010/06/03/vmware-esxi-4-log-files/> This makes looking at the logs a lot simpler, for me.View the logs is a pain, this makes for viewing them quicker if you have the address of your esxi host bookmarked....

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snapshots, which order to delete

So you have several iterations of snapshots under each other.And you want to only keep the current version.What to do?As you can see veeam didn’t remove the snapshot like it should have and now we have several change disks.So we have Parent disk, snap1, snap2, snap3, and current snapDELETE ALL: is a nonoAccording to yellow bricks, http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2008/01/07/delete-all-snapshots/, you DON’T want to hit the "delete all".Why? "...

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Troubleshooting: Vmotion: error migrating

vMotion error: Virtual machine must be running in order to be migratedMachine is powered on!Vmware tools are running, I even restarted themRestart services via DCUI or services.sh restart in ssh shellNow I can migra...

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Datastore: marked inactive but still accessible

Datastore marked inactive in vpshere client.Right click and browse datastore to see if we can access it.Datastore appears as well as folders and items..Restarting maangement agentsStorage now looks normal.References: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1664...

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