upgrade

Upgrading to vSphere 5.1? Check your third party software

Before upgrading to vSphere 5.1 it is important to check your existing hardware, firmware levels, drivers, vSphere versions, other VMware products that integrates and third party software if it is compatible with vSphere 5.1. Here is a list of  third party software and it’s support for vSphere 5.1 .

Software Version vSphere 5.1 Support Comment
Veeam Backup & Replication 6.5 yes  
CommVault 9 SP8 yes 3 extra SP8 post patches needed
PHDVB 6.1 yes  
Trilead Explorer 4.1.010 yes  
Quest vRanger Backup & Replication 6 no  
Trend Micro Deep Security 8 SP2 yes *4
NetApp Virtual Storage Console 4.1 yes Including SnapManger for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI)
Symantec NetBackup 7.5.0.4 yes *3
Symantec Backup Exec 2010
2012		 no Beta for Backup Exec 2010 R3 SP3 and Backup Exec 2012 SP2*2
HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter server 7.1 yes  
EMC NetWorker 8.0 SP1 Yes  
Citrix VDI-in-a-Box 5.2 Yes  
Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 No *1
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 6.4 Yes  

 *1 Citrix XenDesktop and Provisioning Services support for vSphere can be found here: Link

*2 More information can be found here: Link 

*3 More information: Link

*4 Trend Micro Deep Security vSphere support: Link 

If other third party software vendors have support for vSphere 5.1 please let me know so I could add them to the list.

 

Last Updated:

February 2 2013, Added Trend Micro Deep Security support link

Upgrade Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC) to RTM

Now Windows Server 2012 is release I tried to upgrade my lab environment from Microsoft Windows Server 2012 RC 8400 to Windows 2012 RTM. It is not officially supported to upgrade from Windows Server 2012 RC to Windows Server 2012 RTM by Microsoft.

I did the following steps to upgrade:

  • Downloaded  the Windows Server 2012 ISO
  • Mount or extract the ISO
  • Executed setup.exe
  • After several screens it is possible to choose for “Upgrade: Install Windows and keep files, settings and applications” option

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  • Now the he following error appeared:

The upgrade cannot continue. The upgrade you needs to be running the following Windows Server 2012 build number of higher: 8508.0

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  • use the work around by editing  the file “cversion.ini”  found in the “sources” folder. Change the “MinServer=8508.0”  line in “MinServer=8400.0”

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  • Start the setup process  again. Now repeat the above steps.  The installation checks the compatibility. In my case the following errors are displayed:

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  • To solve the above errors I did the following things:

– Uninstall the Intel Wired PROset for Windows software

– Because the Active Directory (AD) role is installed, I needed to upgrade the AD schema by using the ADPREP /FORESTPREP and ADPREP / DOMAINPREP commands

– Reboot the system

  • Again the setup process must be started and the upgrades completes. After the upgrade the Windows Server 2012 version is Build 9200 (RTM).

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Post checks after upgrading to VMware vSphere 4.1

Memory limits

When adding existing VMware ESX servers (for example 3.5) to the VMware vCenter 4.1 server, all the VMs got a memory limit.

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To reset the memory limits to unlimited for all VMs, use the following PowerCLI script:

Connect-VIServer servername
Get-VM | Get-VMResourceConfiguration | Where-Object {$_.MemLimitMB -ne ‘-1‘} | Set-VMResourceConfiguration -MemLimitMB $null

VMware ESX NICs as fixed

Already mentioned earlier in the “Change NIC speed and duplex setting to AUTO in ESX4 using PowerCLI” blogpost. The VMware ESX installation set by default each NIC in the VMware hosts to fixed. To change every NIC from fixed to auto negotiate  use the following PowerCLI script

Connect-VIServer servername
Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter | Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter –AutoNegotiate

Active Directory Web Services warnings in the vCenter server event log

The following warning is flooding the vCenter event log:

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

EventID: 1209

The Port SSL value is created as a REG_SZ instead of a REG_DWORD. To solve this warning open the Windows registry editor (regedt32) and browse to:

  • HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VMwareVCMSDS\Parameter
  • Delete the “Port SSL” value
  • Create a new ““Port SSL” value  as REG_DWORD and give it the data 636.
  • Restart the ADM instance