vCenter 5 VMwareVCMSDS Errors

So after playing around with my latest vCenter 5 installation I found that my logs were filling up with the following:

Active Directory Web Services encountered an error while reading the settings for the specified Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance. Active Directory Web Services will retry this operation periodically. In the mean time, this instance will be ignored. Instance name: ADAM_VMwareVCMSDS

I remember this happening before in vCenter 4.1, the fix was to modify a registry key for the Port SSL Value.  Here is where you need to modify it for vCenter 5.x:

• Key:  HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ADAM_VMwareVCMSDS\Parameters
• Value:  Port SSL
• Type:  REG_DWORD
• Data:  636

You will notice that there is already a value there but it is a REG_SZ.  You will need to delete this one and create the above value.  Once you do this, restart the VMwareVCMSDS service and you should be good to go.

vSphere Lab Give Away

So one of our community well-known and appreciated people has found a way to make someone’s year a special one.  Cody Bunch over at ProfessionalVMware.com has put together an awesome give away.  This give away consists of a vSphere Training package.  It will include some great books, video training, software, and the big kicker, lab gear!  I won’t go into too much detail since you can grab all the details at the following link:

http://professionalvmware.com/2011/12/brownbag-blow-out-vsphere-lab-give-away/

From what I can see the additions of more prizes tied to this awesome give away just keep piling in.  Go over to ProfessionalVMware.com and check it out…go ahead and sign up for it…maybe you will soon have a lab to build on your knowledge of VMware products.

Tool: UBERAlign by Nick Weaver

We all know that one of the biggest performance killers in our virtual environments is the wonderful alignment of partitions so that they may work in harmony and produce many I/Os with our SANs.  There are a few good tools out there for us to use but we are often caught in the middle of having to purchase the product or only have access to a vendor specific application for doing this.

The wait is over!  Let the alignment begin!

Presenting UBERAlign, a tool for VMware Virtual Machine alignment and Space Reclamation

Some of the features:

• Allows for fast alignment checking of virtual machines with detailed logging.
• Can perform alignment to any offset you want. Even the crazy ones that you shouldn’t choose.
• Works with both Windows 2000/XP/2003/2008 (NTFS) and Linux Distros (EXT2/EXT3/EXT4).
• Is able to work on NTFS boot drives perfectly. It does this by rewriting NTFS Metadata (the right way).
• Auto detects Windows 2008 and Windows 7 native installs (alignment not needed). Will not touch a System Reserved Partition (important for Windows 2008).
• Preserves all Windows drive mapping (AFAIK only one to do so). This means no having to remap drive letters and complete support for non “C:\”  system drives with some Windows builds (some Citrix stuff).
• Completely Storage Array agnostic. That’s right: if it connects to vSphere and host storage UBERAlign will work with it.

That list is only a small portion of the feature list.  The best part of all of this is that this tools is completely free.  Thanks to Nick over at Nickapedia (http://nickapedia.com) for taking the time to develop such a great tool and bring it into the community for that awesome price of FREE!

Head over to Nickapedia to read more and download the tool.  The link is: http://nickapedia.com/2011/11/03/straighten-up-with-a-new-uber-tool-presenting-uberalign/

SLES 11/11sp1 Cloning or Deploy from Template Network Interface Fix

So we have all seen the wonderful cloning or deploying from template of a SLES VM and suddenly the network interface changes to eth1 and you have no network connectivity.  This is in part due to the use of udev and persistent naming.  As of SLES 11, the FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES option has been removed.  Here are the steps to a work-around for this to enable happy cloning and deployment from a SLES template:

1. Convert your template VM back to a normal VM.
2. Boot your VM and login.
3. cp /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules /root/.
4. rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
5. Shutdown the VM.
6. Convert back to a template.

Once you do this, every time you deploy from your template a new 70-persistent-net.rules file will be generated with the new MAC address of the virtualized interface.

For reference, you can look at VMware KB Article 1021624 for information regarding this.

VMTN Subscription Coming Back?

So there has been a spark of another conversation regarding the VMTN Subscription.  For those of you who are unaware of what this is/was, it was a service similar to Microsoft’s MSDN Subscription which allowed, for a flat yearly fee, users to be able to run VMware’s software within your lab environment.

Should VMware bring this back to light?  In my opinion, yes, this would definitely be a smart move.  Not only would this benefit those of us who have home labs, it would then be extended to others who could not originally do this.  It would allow companies to maintain a similar lab and also allow for even more exposure for VMware and their line of products.

It has been verified by Duncan Epping at Yellow Bricks that the message has been heard and the talks are stirring.  I urge you to follow both the above linked conversation on the VMTN forums and also follow the #VMTNrevolution hash tag on Twitter.  The more we push for it, the more likely VMware is to answer our call.  So don’t be shy, help start the #VMTNrevolution and support the push today!  Sound off in the comments with your thoughts!

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