vSphere Update Manager Troubleshooting: Could not scan ESX / ESXi host OR cannot execute upgrade script

Even though I was more involved in conceptual doing in the last months I was recently asked for help since a customer was not able to update their environment via vSphere Update Manager.

The following blog post explains how we can work deal with the following event / task error messages:

“Could not scan ESXihostname” or “Cannot execute upgrade script on host”

The vSphere Update Manager is nowadays integrated in the vCenter Server Appliance and is pretty suitable for patching and upgrading ESXi hosts. In theory the process is really straight forward.

  1. Optional: Create a baseline that includes all relevant ESXi components (so called vSphere Infrastructure Bundles [VIB]) that you want add to your ESXi hosts (e.g. Create a static baseline for a specific vSphere build)
  2. Attach the baseline to a Cluster or an ESXi host object
  3. Scan the Cluster or ESXi host object against the baseline. In the end we can discover which baseline elements are installed on the ESXi host and which are missing. In case all baseline items exist on the ESXi host the host is declared as comply.
  4. Remediate the baseline. The ESXi host will be placed into the maintenance mode, the components defined in the baselines will be installed on the ESXi host. The host will reboot and the maintenance mode will be disabled. Afterwards the ESXi host should be comply to the baseline.

That is quite easy. Easy enough that this module takes around 1 hour in the vSphere: Install, Configure & Manage class (from time to time I still deliver VMware Trainings -> contact me if you want to join :).

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#Mac OS Mojave. A Problem Occurred. The web page couldn’t be loaded when connecting to Wifi

This is a non virtualization based topic, but since I know many in the VMware community are working with a MacBook I just wanted to share this quick workaround about a malfunction I have when connecting to a public wifi since upgrading to Mac OS Mojave.

Once you connect to the public wifi instead of a captive window the following error shows up.

A Problem Occurred. The web page couldn’t be loaded

There seems to be an issue with displaying the captive screen within the integrated browser. What is the workaround? Open up another browser, like safari and bookmark/open the following page

http://captive.apple.com

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vCenter Server Appliance Migration fails at 50%: shutting down source machine

I love the vCenter Server Appliance. The migration works pretty well. Still from time to time I stumble across minor problems (which until now were always quite easy to workaround/fix).

One of this migration ‘issues’ I was faced with recently at a customers site.

We migrated a vCenter against an ESXi host which was using a distributed switch and the corresponding portgroup as a target network.

Since we add the virtual network adapter directly on the ESXi host to the distributed switch we need to have an ephemeral portgroup (otherwise only the vCenter could add the VMs network adapter to this portgroup).

The general process of the migration look like the following.

  • Deploy a new and empty vCenter Server appliance and connect it to the network
  • A temporary IP-address is given to this vCenter Server appliance
  • All relevant data of the source windows based vCenter Server is exported and transferrred over the network to the new vCenter Server appliance
  • When the whole data-set is transferred, shutdown the original vCenter and give the new vCSA the network identity of the original vCenter

Unfortunately the last step was not working properly. After a certain amount of time (and coffee) the migration process has stuck at 50% – Shutting down source machine

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vSphere 6.5: Virtual Disk / VMDK Hot-extend beyond or equal to 2TB is NOW supported

When vSphere 6.5 was announced I was quite impressed about the features. Gathering more and more hands-on experience so far I am more than happy with it.

One of the new features that can have a real operational benefit hasn’t been documented so far that often (or at least I haven’t seen it anywhere).

Before vSphere 6.5 it was impossible to increase the VMDK size of a DISK that was larger than 2TB when the Virtual Machine was powered on. That was a fact that not many organizations were aware of it until they stumbled upon it.

From an architectural point of view there shouldn’t be many use cases where such a large disk layout would be the best practice. But from an operational point of view for many of my customers this has been a bigger issue.

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vCenter 6.5: #SRM, #vSphere Replication, #NSX problems after SSL change (LS_Update_certs.py)

After upgrading to vCenter 6.5 I replaced the Certificate Authority certificate of my (external) Platform Service Controller (PSC) with an ‘flenzquest-enterprise ;-)’ signed certificate.

The tasks to replace the ssl certificates haven’t changed much from version 6.0 and has been document very well within the community.

After the successful replacement I realized that I had problems with vSphere replication and NSX. I know that NSX is not supported yet with vSphere 6.5, but so far the NSX Manager connectivity with vCenter 6.5 has worked pretty well (until I replace the certificates).

I had a very bad feeling about this issue and googling about it brought an old case to my attention which I thought has been fixed quite a while ago (obviously it hasn’t). I found an old chat protocol of me, Frank Büchsel and Feidhlim O’Leary on Twitter.

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Let’s troubleshoot User Environment Manager (#UEM) 9.X: How to avoid errors during the installation

As I have written in my last post UEM is a game changer in the way how we can create great VDI solutions.

Having worked a lot with VMware’s User Environment Manager (UEM) within the last month I saw many errors made and occurring during the installation phase.

Even though the the installation is quiet straight forward, some minor mistakes can happen from time to time. I am going to summarize which symptoms might occur, how to check to gather further information and what most possiblely has caused the malfunction.

At the moment the post is focusing on the Active Directory Group Policy based installation & configuration within UEM. The newest version 9.1 allows us to it also in a non-ad way. If demand is there, I can add a section for that topic as well.

I am not going to cover the basic installation steps. Chris Halstead did a great job on that topic (and for all the things he worked on [flings, blogs, etc.]).

Please use that one for the basic installation tasks and come back to this post if you need to troubleshoot further ;-) With the following list you can fix 98% of the problems that might occur during the UEM installation ;-).

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Deploying EUC Access Point via the Deployment Utility (fling) fails

Some of you might know that VMware finally creates an alternative to the Horizon View Security Server based on a virtual linux appliance. I don’t want to argue about that topic, but I think we all can agree on that many security people will like the idea to get rid of our Windows based Security Server within the DMZ.

Since the inital deployment of VMware Access Point can be really painful, Chris Halstead created a nice little GUI that helps us during the deployment.

Just fill in the relevant parameters and the small tool will create an output string that gets executed via my beloved ‘OVFtool’.

Screen Shot 2016-07-12 at 16.18.49

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Horizon View Update to 7.0.1 warning: Connectivity problems due to changed tunnel settings

We observed a strange behaviour after updating from Horizon View 7.0.0 to 7.0.1. For whatever reason the tunneling settings within the Connection Server changed back to the initial settings (tunneled for HTTPS/Blast).

connection_server

This might have a severe impact if you have a Load-Balancer in front of it configured for Src-IP session persistence where a direct connection is a MUST.

Those settings define if the remote-session between the Horizon View Client and the View Agent within your virtual Desktop are either tuneled over the security/connection server or directly between the client & agent.

I know that this is not a common situation after the update, but I could not figure out what triggered this effect. Anyway to be in a save position, after updating please check the value to ensure they are fitting to your system design:

–> Deselect both checkmarks and you are back in business.