VMWare vSphere 5.5 – Showing incorrect information in vSphere Web Client

 ESXi, VMware, vSphere  8 Responses »
Apr 112014
 

Earlier today I was doing some work in my demonstration vSphere environment, when I had to modify some settings of one of my VMs that are setup as the latest version (which means you can only edit the settings inside of the vSphere Web Client).

To my surprise, when logging in, immediately I received an error: “ManagedObjectReference: type = Datastore, value = datastore-XXXX, serverGuid = XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX refers to a managed object that no longer exists or has never existed“. Also, after clicking OK, I noticed that lots of information being presented inside of the vSphere web client was inaccurate. Some Virtual Machines were being reported as sitting on different datastores (they were at one point weeks ago, however since were moved). Also, it was reporting that some Virtual Machines were off, when in fact they were on and running.

Symptoms:

-Errors about missing datastores on log on to the vSphere Web Client.

-Virtual Machines were being reported as off (turned off) even though they were running.

-Viewing VMs in vSphere client, reporting they are being stored on a different datastore then they actually are.

-Disconnecting and (re) connecting hosts have no effect on issue.

 

This freaked me out, it was a true “Uhh Ohh” moment. Something was corrupt. Keep in mind that ALL information in the vSphere client was correct and accurate, it was only the vSphere Web client that was having issues.

 

Anyways, I tried a bunch of things to fix it, and spent hours working on the problem. FINALLY I came up with a fix. If you are running in to this issue, PLEASE take a snapshot of your vCenter Server before attempting to fix it, so that you can roll back if you screw anything up (which I had to do multiple times, lol).

The Fix:

1) Stop the “VMWare vCenter Inventory Service”.

2) Delete the “data” folder inside of “Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service”.

3) Open a Command Prompt with elevated privileges. Change your working directory to “Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\scripts”.

4) Run “createDB.bat”, this will reset and create a Inventory Service database.

5) Run “is-change-sso.bat https://computername.domain.com:7444/lookupservice/sdk “[email protected]” “SSO_PASSWORD”. Change the computername.domain.com to your FQDN for your vCenter server, and change the SSO_PASSWORD to your Single Signon Admin password.

6) Start the “VMWare vCenter Inventory Service”. At this point, if you try to log on to the vSphere Web Client, it will error with: “Client is not authenticated to VMware Inventory Service”. We’ve already won half the battle.

7) We now need to register the vCenter Server with the newly reset Inventory Service. In an elevated Command Prompt (that we opened above), changed the working path to: “Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VirtualCenter Server\isregtool”.

8) Run “register-is.bat https://computername.domain.com:443/sdk https://computername.domain.com:10443 https://computername.domain.com:7444/lookupservice/sdk”. Change computername.domain.com to your FQDN for your vCenter server.

9) Restart the “VMware VirtualCenter Server” service. This will also restart the Management Web services.

 

BAM, it’s fixed! I went ahead and restarted the entire server that the vCenter server was running on. After this, all was good, and everything looked great inside of the vSphere Web Client. I’m actually noticing it’s running WAY faster, and isn’t as glitchy as it was before.

Happy Virtualizing! 🙂

SBS 2011 – RWW 404 File or directory not found

 Small Business Server  18 Responses »
Nov 142013
 

So you’re running SBS 2011, and recently you notice (or an end user reports) that when trying to log in to your SBS 2011 Remote Web Workplace (RWW) you receive:

404 – File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Screenshot below:

File or directory not found SBS 2011 Remote Web Workplace

File or directory not found SBS 2011 Remote Web Workplace

 

You check your server, all is good. You test internally, and all is good. Absolutely no errors! What’s going on?

Well, as Microsoft pushes out updates to it’s Internet Explorer web browser (and with users upgrading to Windows 8, or Windows 8.1), the compatibility with the Remote Web Workplace is broken and/or lost.

To fix this, you need to add your RWW site to your Internet Explorer Compatibility list:

1)    Open Internet Explorer, and go to your Remote Web Workplace login page. (DO NOT LOG IN YET)
2)    Press the “Alt” button which brings up the internet explorer menus
3)    Drop down “Tools” and then go to “Compatibility View Settings”.
4)    Your internet domain should be in the “Add this website” box, just press the “Add” button, then hit Close.
5)    Close out of Internet Explorer, and then go back in and try getting on remotely.

Note: If you clear your internet history, you will lose the above settings and have to re set them!

And BAM! It should now work without any problems whatsoever!

If you need help with your SBS deployment, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I provide consulting services to help organizations with their Microsoft Small Business Server deployments, including migrations. More information can be found at https://www.stephenwagner.com/2020/02/28/microsoft-small-business-server-migration-upgrade/.

Shaw FTTP (Fiber to the Premise) Business Install

 Internet  5 Responses »
Aug 232013
 

Most of you have heard about Shaw’s announcement in the past regarding their new Fiber to the Curb, or Fiber to the Premise offering, however for some reason there are no pictures, or documented customers that actually claim to have this service.

Well, I can officially say that one of my clients now has the Fiber to the Premise offering for businesses.

This all started out with me being brought on board to provide them with Managed Services. One of the main problems we’ve been having is with the current internet connection (I’m not going to mention who provides it) and how horrible the speeds and reliability are. One of my first initiatives was to see if there was any alternatives. Unfortunately, due to their location (The Foothills Industrial Area), Shaw coax was not available. I sourced out numerous other providers and we were just about to switch to a wireless internet service provider, until I decided to call Shaw one last time a week before we pulled the trigger.

To my surprise, they mentioned they just launched their Fiber offering for small businesses. The offering provided their basic coax internet service tiers and pricing, however it was provided over fiber. This is EXTREMELY attractive due to the reliability, and pricing! We had the option to go all the way to the Business Internet 250 package. Higher products were available, however these were way more expensive, included SLAs, and just wasn’t what we needed. My client opted for the Business Internet 100 package.

This morning the Shaw guys showed up, quickly brought the fiber in to the office, mounted the equipment, and we were up in running in no time (and as always they were EXTREMELY friendly, clean, and took care in setting everything up). I love Shaw for those of you who don’t know…

Anyways, here’s some pics! I’ll update this post in a week or two with average speeds.

Shaw Fiber Drop

Shaw Fiber Drop

The above picture, is the first device the Fiber plugs in to. I don’t know it’s exact purpose, but I believe it provides Shaw’s coax network over the fiber line. The coax cable then went to a Shaw Home Phone Cable modem for 2 phone lines. I believe the device also repeats, and provides a fiber connection to the Shaw Fiber modem as pictured below.

Shaw FTTP Fiber Modem

Shaw FTTP Fiber Modem

Synology DS-1813+ iSCSI/NFS – Review

 ESXi, iSCSI, Storage, VMware, vSphere  11 Responses »
Jul 082013
 

Recently I needed to upgrade and replace my storage system which provides basic SMB dump file services, iSCSI, and NFS to my internal network and vSphere cluster. As most of you know, in the past I have traditionally created and configured my own storage systems. For the most part this has worked fantastic, especially with the NFS and iSCSI target services being provided and built in to the Linux OS (iSCSI thanks to Lio-Target).

A few reasons for the upgrade…

  1. I need more storage
  2. I need a pre-packaged product that comes with warranty.

Taking care of the storage size was easy (buy more drives), however I needed to find a pre-packaged product that fits my requirements for performance, capabilities, stability, support, and of course warranty. iSCSI and NFS support was an absolute must!

Some time ago, when I first started working with Lio-Target before it was incorporated and merged in to the linux kernel, I noticed that the parent company Rising Tide Systems mentioned they also provided the target for numerous NAS and SAN devices available on the market, Synology being one of them. I never thought anything of this as back then I wasn’t interesting in purchasing a pre-packaged product, until my search for a new storage system.

Upon researching, I found that Synology released their 2013 line of products. These products had a focus on vSphere compatibility, performance, and redundant network connections (either through Trunking/Link aggregation, or MPIO iSCSI connections).

The device that caught my attention for my purpose was the DS1813+.

DS1813+
Synology DS1813+

Synology DS1813+ Specifications:

  • CPU Frequency : Dual Core 2.13GHz
  • Floating Point
  • Memory : DDR3 2GB (Expandable, up to 4GB)
  • Internal HDD/SSD : 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA(II) X 8 (Hard drive not included)
  • Max Internal Capacity : 32TB (8 X 4TB HDD) (Capacity may vary by RAID types) (See All Supported HDD)
  • Hot Swappable HDD
  • External HDD Interface : USB 3.0 Port X 2, USB 2.0 Port X 4, eSATA Port X 2
  • Size (HxWxD) : 157 X 340 X 233 mm
  • Weight : 5.21kg
  • LAN : Gigabit X 4
  • Link Aggregation
  • Wake on LAN/WAN
  • System Fan : 120x120mm X2
  • Easy Replacement System Fan
  • Wireless Support (dongle)
  • Noise Level : 24.1 dB(A)
  • Power Recovery
  • Power Supply : 250W
  • AC Input Power Voltage : 100V to 240V AC
  • Power Frequency : 50/60 Hz, Single Phase
  • Power Consumption : 75.19W (Access); 34.12W (HDD Hibernation);
  • Operating Temperature : 5°C to 35°C (40°F to 95°F)
  • Storage Temperature : -10°C to 70°C (15°F to 155°F)
  • Relative Humidity : 5% to 95% RH
  • Maximum Operating Altitude : 6,500 feet
  • Certification : FCC Class B, CE Class B, BSMI Class B
  • Warranty : 3 Years

This puppy has 4 gigabit LAN ports, and 8 SATA bays. There’s tons of reviews on the internet praising Synology, and their DSM operating system (based on embedded linux) on the internet, so I decided to live dangerously and went ahead and placed an order for this device, along with 8 X Seagate 3TB Barracuda drives.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to get your hands on a DS1813+ in Canada (I’m not sure why). After numerous orders placed and cancelled with numerous companies, I finally found a distributor who was able to get me one. I’ll just say the wait was totally worth it. Initially I also purchased the 2GB RAM add-on as well, so I had this available when the DS1813+ arrived.

I was hoping to take a bunch of pictures, and do thorough testing with the unit before throwing it in to production, however right from the get go, it was extremely easy to configure and use, so right away I had it running in production. Sorry for the lack of pics! 🙂

I did however get a chance to setup the 8 drives in RAID 5, and configured an iSCSI block based target. The performance was fantastic, no problems whatsoever. Even maxing out one gigabit connection, the resources of the unit were barely touched.

I’m VERY impressed with the DSM operating system. Everything is clearly spelled out, and you have very detailed control of the device and all services. Configuration of SMB shares, iSCSI targets, and NFS exports is extremely simple, yet allows you to configure advanced features.

After testing out the iSCSI performance, I decided to get the unit ready for production. I created 2 shared folders, and exported these via NFS to my ESXi hosts. It was very simple, quick, and the ESXi hosts had absolutely no problems connecting to the exports.

One thing that really blew me away about this unit, is the performance. Immediately after configuring the NFS exports, mounting them and using Storage vMotion to migrate 14 live virtual machines to the DS1813+ I noticed MASSIVE performance gains. The performance gains were so large, it put my old custom storage system to shame. And this is really interesting, considering my old storage system, while custom, is actually spec’d way higher then the storage unit (CPU, RAM, and the SATA controller). I’m assuming the DS1813+ has numerous kernel optimizations for storage, and at the same time does not have the overhead of a fully Linux distribution. This also means it’s more stable since you don’t have tons of applications running in the background that you don’t need.

After migrating the VMs I noticed that the virtual machines were running way faster, and were may more responsive. I’m assuming this is due to increased IOPS.

Either way I’m extremely happy with the device and fully recommend it. I’ll be posting more blog articles later detailing configuration of services in detail such as iSCSI, NFS, and some other things. I’m already planning on picking up an additional DS1513+ (5 bay unit) to act as a storage server for VM backups which I perform using GhettoVCB.

Update – August 16, 2019: Please see these additional posts regarding performance and optimization:

Omni 3D Seismic Software on the Windows 10 Microsoft Surface Pro Tablet

 Microsoft Surface  No Responses »
Jun 132013
 

As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet. I’ve been using it since day 1 of the release and absolutely love it. This thing has become such a valuable tool in my life, if anything were to happen to it, I’d replace it in a flash.

Since I’ve had mine, I’ve had numerous clients ask about it. After demo’ing the device, most have actually gone out and pulled the trigger. They all compare it to their various old tablets, and say hands down the Surface Pro is #1.

Recently one of my clients was thinking of purchasing a Surface so he didn’t have to lunk around his high performance laptop. One of the most important questions he had were the spec’s of the device and if it could handle the seismic software applications he and his business use. Since the Surface Pro is essentially a higher performing computer in the form factor of a tablet, I said chances are it would work. He went out and bought one.

For the most part, most applications worked right off the bat. However we had a few issues with Omni 3D from Gedco. The application would install fine, however we were receiving errors when launching the application:

The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0150002). Click OK to close the application.

We tried contacting Omni 3D support, however they mentioned running Omni 3D on Windows 8 or later was unsupported and untested, especially running it on a Tablet. They mentioned they’ve never recalled getting Omni 3D to run on a tablet. Well, we wanted to make history! 🙂

Trying different compatibility configurations had no affect. Ultimately, I researched the error and noticed it had something to do with C++ runtime’s. Although none of the posts had a solution to our problem, it at least pointed us in the right direction. I noticed we already had the 64-bit and 32-bit C++ 2010 runtime’s installed (I believe a different application installed these), so first and foremost, I re-installed these. It had no affect. I then decided to try installing the C++ 2008 run time installs. In our case, we installed the 64-bit version of Omni 3D, so I installed the 64-bit version of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Runtime components available here.

After installing this, we went to open up Omni 3D and it worked!

Keep in mind that this should not only work and apply to Surface Pro tablets, but to anyone trying to install Omni 3D on Windows 8 or Windows 10.

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