The world of Marc O'Polo – Blog

Purpose

There are several methods to upgrade ESX/ESXi. This article outlines the available upgrade paths.   Note: This is not a comprehensive guide on how to upgrade ESX/ESXi. For more information on performing an upgrade, see the links in this article.

Resolution

This table lists the methods available to upgrade your ESX/ESXi host, and identifies the version to which you can upgrade:     

For more information about upgrading using:

• *1 *4 The CD-ROM Installation Wizard, see the vSphere Upgrade Guide
• *2 The esxupdate command from the Service Console, see About the esxupdate Utility in the ESX 4 Patch Management Guide
• *3 The vSphere Remote CLI, see Updating ESXi Hosts by Using Update Manager, VMware Infrastructure Update and the Remote CLI (1006089).
• *5 Update Manager, see the VMware vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide
• *6 The Offline Upgrade option, see Performing an offline upgrade from ESX 3.x to ESX 4.x (1009440)

Note: The Host Update Utility replaced Infrastructure Update and is available when you install the vSphere Client. It is a tool for upgrading ESX/ESXi hosts from 3.x to 4.0.x and for patching ESXi hosts only.  Patching ESX with this utility is not supported.  Also, as of vSphere 4.1 the Host Update Utility has been discontinued.

Today VMware released a new version of their virtualization product VMware vSphere 4.1. There are a lot of new things and features in this product. Eric Siebert has created a good article with all the new stuff that comes with this release. You can find the original article here: http://vsphere-land.com/news/vsphere-41-the-links.html

Downloads.

• Main Download Page
• ESX 4.1
• ESXi 4.1
• vCenter Server 4.1
• vSphere Hypervisor (Free ESXi)
• vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) 4.1
• vSphere CLI 4.1
• Cisco Nexus 1000 AV1 Virtual Ethernet Module

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Symptoms

• When attempting to customize the deployment of a virtual machine the radio buttons are disabled (grayed out)
• When a virtual machine is deployed from a template, the SID is always the same, despite the fact that you chose the option to generate a new SID during template deployment and guest operating system customization
• When attempting to create a new virtual machine from a template in ESX 3.5, you receive the following error message:

Warning: Windows customization resources were not found on this server

• You see this error in the guestcust.log file:

deploy doesn't contain known sysprep files

Purpose

This issue may occur if Microsoft’s Sysprep files are not found on the VirtualCenter host, are not the correct version, or are not in the location they are expected.

This article guides you through the process of determining the correct version of Sysprep to use and the correct locations for these files.

Resolution

Microsoft has a different version of Sysprep for each release and service pack of Windows. You must use the version of Sysprep specific to the operating system you are deploying. The differences are not immediately visible in the packaging and documentation of the service packs, so it is necessary to manually investigate.

The contents of the Sysprep deploy.cab file must be extracted to the Sysprep Directory on the VirtualCenter Server host. If the file downloaded from the Microsoft Web Site is a .cab file, the Installing the Microsoft Sysprep Tools appendix of the Basic System Administration guide details how to install the Sysprep Tools.

If the file downloaded from the Microsoft Web Site is a .exe file the following additional steps must be executed to extract the files from the .exe:

1. Open a Windows command prompt. For more information, see Opening a command or shell prompt (1003892).
2. Change to the directory where the .exe file is saved.
3. Enter the name of the .exe file with the /x switch to extract the files. For example: WindowsServer2003-KB926028-v2-x86-ENU.exe /x 
4. When prompted, choose a directory for the extracted files.
5. Browse the directory and copy the extracted files directly to the Sysprep Directory or extract the files from the deploy.cab and copy to the Sysprep Directory.

When the contents of the of the Sysprep deploy.cab file have been extracted to the Sysprep Directory on the VirtualCenter Server:

1. Log in to the VirtualCenter Server as Administrator.
2. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer.
3. Navigate to the Sysprep Directory as listed in the table below.
4. Right-click on the sysprep.exe file and choose Properties.
5. Click the Version tab. Record the number at the top next to File Version:.

The table below lists the Sysprep Version for the Windows Versions that are supported for Image Customization. Compare the Sysprep Version number with the Windows Version it is intended for:

Notes:

• If vCenter Server is installed on Windows Server 2008, <directory_path> is %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep which translates to C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep by default.
• If vCenter Server is installed on any other Windows operating system, <directory_path> is %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\ which translates to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\ by default.

Additional Information

For additional information, see:

• The Basic System Administration guide, which contains further information regarding the installation of Sysprep tools
• The Operating System Compatibility for vSphere Client, vCenter Server, and VMware vCenter Update Manager table in the vSphere Compatibility Matrixes for a list of supported operating systems for virtual image customization.
• Troubleshooting template deployment or cloning when it fails (1004050), which provides troubleshooting information for template deployment or cloning

Source: VMware knowledge base http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005593

Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 Update 1 on HP Proliant systems can fail or time out and leave the host in an unusable state if the host has HP Insight Management Agents running

Last week I posted an articel about running the vSphere client on a Windows 7 workstation. This was a problem, but now after Update 1 for vSphere Windows 7 and Windows 2008R2 are now supported.

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VMWare released Update 1 for vCenter Server 4.0. The release notes are found here : Link.

VMWare has recently launched a work around for the problem of running the vSphere client on a Windows 7 workstations.

Link to the document : http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011329

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Installing HP Insight Management Agents on ESX Server

In this case, I am using HP Insight Management Agents for VMware 8.2.5 (available here). I am also using a HP DL380 G6 Proliant servers with VMware versions 4.0.

Note: do not include the quotes (”) when entering commands.

PREPARE:

1. Download the correct Insight Manager agents for VMware.
2. Unzip the tgz file using WinRAR or something similar, and peruse the readme for up-to-date info.
3. Using the ILO utility or the physical console, hit Alt-F1, login as root at the command line.
4. To allow root ssh access in ESX as well as enable sshd client access (SFTP, SSH), we have to change the local sshd_config file.
5. At the command line, type: “vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config”
6. Go to the line that says PermitRootLogin, change from “no” to “yes”
7. If you are unfamiliar with vi, use arrow keys to navigate, put cursor on the “n” of “no”, hit the i key to insert, then type in “yes” and delete/backspace “no”. Then hit ESC twice to exit Insert mode. Type colon (:) to get the in-editor command line, type “wq!” and hit enter. This will save the doc and exit vi.
8. Back at the command line type: “service sshd restart”, hit enter.
9. After the service restarts, type “logout” to exit the console, hit alt-f11 to go back to the esx screen.

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