How to Fix vCenter 5.5 upgrade to 6.0 VCSServiceManager failed with error code 1603?

I decided to upgrade my home lab‘s vcenter 5.5 to 6.0 few days ago and what I thought would be a straight forward process turned into a 3 days of researching and scratching my head as to what was wrong with the upgrade and more troubling, what was I doing wrong? I knew that with… Continue reading How to Fix vCenter 5.5 upgrade to 6.0 VCSServiceManager failed with error code 1603?

vNEST: Home Lab Upgrade, enter the vSAN!

Dell C6105 Cloud Server

Ever since VMware introduced VSAN, I’ve been anxious to test it out, deploy it in my lab and see what it does and how it functions. Few months ago one of my Dell Poweredge 1950 GenIII server died so I was considering upgrading my home virtualization lab anyway… if you are like me, we just need… Continue reading vNEST: Home Lab Upgrade, enter the vSAN!

Fix Vmware ESXi vMotion Fails at 14% and error ESX hosts were not able to connect over the vMotion Network

We recently deployed 5-6 new hosts in one of our production Vmware ESXi clusters in order to migrate VMs off older hosts and upgrade them. If you are attempting a vMotion migration between two ESX/ESXi hosts, and the vMotion task reaches 14%, then times out with this error message: The vMotion migrations failed because the… Continue reading Fix Vmware ESXi vMotion Fails at 14% and error ESX hosts were not able to connect over the vMotion Network

How to setup Multi Site SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Cluster with Two FCIs Across Datacenters?

In this how-to tutorial, we will look at implementing multi-node, multi-site SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) with two Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) across two geographically dispersed datacenters for High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR). I am currently working on a project where we’re going to upgrade from previous version of SQL… Continue reading How to setup Multi Site SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Cluster with Two FCIs Across Datacenters?

VMware Vcenter Sysprep Error: Customization of the guest operating system ‘windows7Server64Guest’ is not supported

I ran into an issue in VMware vcenter in my lab where sysprep would not start on virtual machines (VMs) deployed from a windows server 2008 R2 template. The template along with the sysprep file were created before the lab was upgraded to 5.1. I created new sysprep config, changed VM settings and pulled my… Continue reading VMware Vcenter Sysprep Error: Customization of the guest operating system ‘windows7Server64Guest’ is not supported

How to upgrade VMware VDS using vSphere Web Client 5.1

This how-to will go through steps on upgrading virtual Distributed Switch in VMware vSphere 5.1. I wanted to test and enable some of the new features in the new Vmware vSphere 5.1, particularly those related to VDS, such as LACP and Health check so decided to perform an upgrade on vDS in my home virtualization… Continue reading How to upgrade VMware VDS using vSphere Web Client 5.1

How to create new VM in vSphere 5.1 Web Client

In this how-to tutorial we will look at how deploy a new virtual machine (VM) using the new VMware vSphere 5.1 Web Client. The new vSphere 5.1 web client is web/browser based full featured, intuitive and provides all the features of the installable client. This is going to be one of the first how-to guides… Continue reading How to create new VM in vSphere 5.1 Web Client

VMware vSphere 5.1 Upgrade Guide

VMware vSphere 5.1 is now available for download. This vSphere Upgrade guide describes how to upgrade VMware vSphere™ to version 5.1. To learn how to simplify and automate your datacenter upgrade, see the vSphere Update Manager Installation and Administration Guide. If you want to move to vSphere 5.1 by performing fresh installations that do not… Continue reading VMware vSphere 5.1 Upgrade Guide