vCenter Server

Protecting the Recovery Control Plane: A VCF 9.1 Management-Component Backup and Fleet DR Runbook

by

TL;DR Protecting workload virtual machines does not automatically protect the VMware Cloud Foundation services needed to discover, authorize, network, orchestrate, and validate their recovery. A complete VCF 9.1 recovery strategy needs several distinct mechanisms: native file-based backups for components such as SDDC Manager, vCenter Server, and NSX Manager; image-based protection for VCF Operations; backup and … Read more

Newer VKS Versions Missing from vCenter: Finding and Registering Asynchronous Releases

by

TL;DR A newer VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service version may be fully released and still not appear in the vCenter upgrade dropdown. Broadcom KB 439327 explains that this is expected for asynchronous VKS releases. The dropdown automatically shows the VKS versions embedded in the installed vCenter build, while later asynchronous releases must be registered manually by … Read more

KB 439327: How to Find and Register Newer VKS Releases in vCenter

by

TL;DR A newer VMware Kubernetes Service version may be missing from the vCenter upgrade interface even when the environment is functioning correctly. VKS versions bundled with the installed vCenter build appear automatically. Newer asynchronous VKS releases must first be downloaded from the Broadcom Support Portal and registered by uploading the release’s package.yaml file. Registration does … Read more

The vCenter Log Partition Runbook: Find Growth, Preserve Evidence, Restore Headroom

by

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 … Read more

EAM Certificate Trust Failures: Why vSphere Extensions Break After Certificate Changes

by

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 … Read more

vCLS Retreat Mode: When to Use It, What It Breaks, and How to Exit Cleanly

by

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 … Read more

DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old Distributed Switches Move Forward

by

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 … Read more

VM Network Troubleshooting from Guest OS to Uplink: A Layer by Layer VMware Runbook

by

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, … Read more

“No Healthy Upstream” Is Often a Certificate Problem: A vCenter Triage Runbook for KB 316619

by

You open the vSphere Client and instead of the inventory, you get a blunt message: Sometimes the symptom is more explicit. The login flow may fail with: Other times the vCenter Server Appliance looks partially alive from the outside, but core services will not come up after a reboot. In Broadcom KB316619, this pattern is … Read more

Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail: Device Limits, Config Hygiene, and PowerCLI Prechecks

by

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 … Read more

The VMCA Reset Decision: When Regenerating vSphere Certificates Is the Right Move

by

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 … Read more

From Fixcerts to vCert: A Safer vCenter Certificate Recovery Path

by

vCenter certificate problems rarely arrive as clean, isolated maintenance tasks. They usually show up as failed logins, services that refuse to start, upgrade prechecks that suddenly block progress, or downstream trust failures in NSX, SDDC Manager, backup tools, monitoring platforms, or automation. By the time an operator is searching for “Fixcerts,” the environment is often … Read more