Paul Bryant A virtual machine file lock issue rarely shows up at a convenient time. It usually appears when a VM refuses to power on, a consolidation task is stuck, a backup window has overrun, or vCenter and an ESXi host disagree about the VM’s state. That is exactly when bad habits get expensive. The temptation is … Explore: Finding VM File Locks on ESXi: A Production-Safe…
There are times when the normal ESXi patching path is exactly what you should use: SDDC Manager, vSphere Lifecycle Manager, a tested cluster image, prechecks, staged remediation, and a maintenance workflow that keeps inventory and compliance aligned. Then there are the other days. A host might be standalone. A lab host might not be attached … Explore: Command-Line ESXi Patching: A Controlled Workflow for Hosts…
A purple screen on an ESXi host creates an immediate operational problem, but the bigger risk is what happens next. The first reaction is usually to get the host back online. That is understandable, especially when workloads are down, HA is recovering virtual machines, or a cluster is running hot after losing capacity. But if … Explore: ESXi PSOD Triage: Turning a Purple Screen into…
A full /storage/log partition on a vCenter Server Appliance is not just a housekeeping problem. It is a management-plane risk. In a standalone vSphere environment, it can interrupt administration, log collection, patching, and service stability. In VMware Cloud Foundation, the blast radius is larger because vCenter is tied into SDDC Manager workflows, workload domain lifecycle … Explore: The vCenter Log Partition Runbook: Find Growth, Preserve…
Certificate changes in vSphere environments rarely fail in only one place. The obvious place to look is the browser warning, the expired certificate alarm, or the service that recently had its Machine SSL certificate replaced. But in production VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere environments, certificate changes can also break something less visible: the extension and … Explore: EAM Certificate Trust Failures: Why vSphere Extensions Break…
vVol migrations are easy to misread. When a VM migration fails, the first instinct is usually to look at host load, vMotion networking, datastore latency, DRS behavior, or the backend array. Those checks still matter, but vVols introduce another dependency that can become the bottleneck before the data path is the real problem: the VASA … Explore: vVol Migration Failures and VASA Provider Pressure: How…
Raw Device Mappings tend to show up in the places where infrastructure history is still attached to the workload. A database server was moved from physical hardware years ago. A file server needed a very large LUN before VMDK limits improved. A clustered application depended on shared storage. A storage team wanted array-level tooling to … Explore: Converting RDMs to VMDKs: A Practical Migration Pattern…
Disable vCLS on a Cluster via Retreat Mode KB 316514 vSphere Cluster Services usually stay in the background until they get in the way of something operational. Most teams first notice vCLS when a cluster task is blocked, a warning appears after maintenance, or a handful of small system VMs show up and someone asks … Explore: vCLS Retreat Mode: When to Use It, What…
There are storage incidents where the host looks half-recovered. The fabric switch is back online. The link light is good. The array port is healthy. Some paths may even show up again. But inside ESXi, the storage view still does not match reality. A datastore has fewer paths than expected. An RDM-backed workload is not … Explore: When Fibre Channel Paths Lie: A Safe Fabric…
VLAN issues in VMware environments are rarely caused by one mysterious setting. More often, they come from a translation problem. The network team thinks in terms of access ports, trunks, allowed VLAN lists, native VLANs, port channels, and upstream gateways. The virtualization team thinks in terms of vSwitches, distributed port groups, VMkernel adapters, VM network … Explore: VLAN Design Translation for VMware: Physical Trunks, Port…
A vSphere Distributed Switch upgrade can look deceptively simple in the vCenter UI. Select the switch, choose the target version, confirm the warning, and move on. That is not how it should be treated in a brownfield environment. The risk is not that a DVS upgrade is always dangerous. The risk is that old distributed … Explore: DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old…
Virtual machine network problems rarely arrive with a clean label. The ticket usually says something like “the VM is unreachable,” “the application cannot connect,” “ping fails,” “internet access is down,” or “VMs on different hosts cannot talk.” The underlying cause might be inside the guest OS, on the VM’s virtual NIC, in the port group, … Explore: VM Network Troubleshooting from Guest OS to Uplink:…
Patching vCenter should not feel dramatic. The workflow in the Appliance Management Interface is straightforward: log in to VAMI, check for updates, stage, install, validate. Broadcom KB 316584 documents that basic path for vCenter Server 7.x and 8.x, including two patching options: using a URL-based repository or mounting a patch ISO as a local CD-ROM … Explore: Patching vCenter Through VAMI Without Turning It Into…
Quick answer: In vCenter, No Healthy Upstream means the vSphere Client front end cannot route the request to a healthy backend service. Broadcom describes it as an alternate HTTP 503 symptom, not a diagnosis. Common causes include stopped services, expired certificates, disk-space or memory pressure, session exhaustion, a changed /etc/hosts file, and Lookup Service problems. … Explore: vCenter “No Healthy Upstream”: Causes, Diagnosis, and Recovery
Storage failures in vSphere are rarely just “storage is down.” That phrase may be accurate from the application owner’s point of view, but it is not precise enough for the operator who has to decide what happens next. A host that has lost all paths to a datastore behaves differently from a host that has … Explore: PDL vs APD: The Storage Failure Model Every…
Large VM migrations usually fail at the worst possible time: late in the change window, after the task has already consumed hours of storage, network, and operator attention. When the error is something like “Invalid configuration for device ‘##’,” the first instinct is to look for a broken virtual NIC, a missing port group, an … Explore: Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail:…
vCenter certificate failures tend to show up at the worst possible time: during an upgrade precheck, after a maintenance window has already started, when services will not start cleanly, or when a certificate alarm has been ignored long enough to become someone else’s emergency. The mistake is treating certificate recovery as a button-click exercise. The … Explore: Using vCert Without Guesswork: A vCenter Certificate Recovery…
Certificates in vSphere are easy to underestimate until they become the reason vCenter will not authenticate, services will not start cleanly, NSX loses trust in its Compute Manager, or SDDC Manager stops interacting with the management domain the way it should. That is why a VMCA reset should not be treated as a generic “renew … Explore: The VMCA Reset Decision: When Regenerating vSphere Certificates…
Quick answer: Fixcerts or vCert? Broadcom has deprecated the Fixcerts certificate-replacement script and directs operators to vCert. Identify the affected certificates and confirm your backup and rollback plan before remediation. The current vCert guidance says the tool is intended for use under Broadcom Global Support direction. Start with prerequisites and safety checks, then review post-recovery … Explore: From Fixcerts to vCert: A Safer vCenter Certificate…
The VCF Upgrade Planner converts your current vSphere or VMware Cloud Foundation deployment into a tailored VCF 9.1 upgrade workflow. Select the products and versions you run today, choose the target destination, and use the generated phases as the starting point for engineering review. VCF Upgrade Planner quick start Important: The planner is a planning … Explore: VCF Upgrade Planner: Build Your VMware Cloud Foundation…
