Vmware View, Vmware Vsphere, EMC VMX Storage, Wyse P20, Windows, - by Jeff Miller

Vmware Vsphere Host(s) suddenly show as disconnected

2012-02-01T08:58:00.001-05:00

I had an issue where my vsphere hosts would suddenly appear as disconnected in vcenter. I am running vsphere 5 esxi on cisco C200-m2 servers. Every guest that was running on that host would show as disconnected as well. This was a ticking time bomb, because if I left it in this scenario the guests would eventually crash and the host would stop responding all together as well. The heavier

Vmware view client not connecting for home users

2012-02-01T08:37:00.002-05:00

Vmware view 5 client and Norton internet securityI had a few users who had difficulty connecting to vmware view from their home pc. They were running windows 7, and after it installed they could launch the client, then they could type in their username and RSA passcode, and then after hitting connect the vmware view client would just disappear. After digging around I suspected that Norton

wyse p20 login to windows kicks back out to login screen

2012-01-13T09:31:00.001-05:00

I had users who had problems logging into their view desktops while using p20 wyse devices and vmware view 5. After typing in their username and password it would make the sounds for windows login, sometimes flash the login screen, the monitors would go black, and then it would kick them back out to the login screen. Before I figured out what was going on I found out that restarting their

Slow Windows 7 Desktops on View 5 vsphere 5 hardware v8

2012-01-13T09:14:00.003-05:00

After updating my windows 7 desktops to vsphere hardware version 8 (v8) all of my users began to complain of VERY slow activity in windows including delays in typing, delays in dragging windows around, and overall general responsiveness. VMware support passed along an INTERNAL KB that explains how to fix this issue, which did solve the issue for me.The following workaround has been verified where

Vmware view 5 and Wyse P20

2012-01-05T09:29:00.002-05:00

Add a disconnect icon for all users in a vmware view environmentI am using view 5 on wyse p20’s and I needed the ability for my users to disconnect from their desktop for receptionists who rotate desks, and for users connecting from home. View 5 seems to have a few issues allowing a user to connect from the p20 or from home is a session is already connected. After several attempts the user can

VAAI in Vsphere 4.1 is turned on by default and can break your recoverpoint constancy groups!

2011-01-19T10:06:00.001-05:00

Beware, VAAI in Vsphere 4.1 is turned on by default and can break your recoverpoint constancy groups!UPDATE: Scott Lowe just wrote me back and confirmed that the version of flare code that will resolve this issue is 4.30.000.5.509We recently had a problem where our Exchange Consistency groups in recoverpoint were all stuck at initializing 0% for several days out of the blue after running for over

How To Install and Configure EMC Fast Cache on a Clariion

2010-11-17T12:57:00.005-05:00

How to install and configure EMC Fast Cache on a ClariionThe first step is to make sure you are using Unisphere and are on Flare 30. Without flare 30 none of these steps are possible.Then connect your EFD disks, for me it was 5 100 gig flash disks, which will build 2 raid 1 mirrors and 1 hotspare providing us 200 gigs of fast cache.Once your fast software arrives you will receive it on cds.

Set time on Recoverpoint

2010-09-23T17:33:00.002-04:00

How to view the time of your RPASSH into your RPA (as a user, not boxmgmt)type set_time_displayselect 1 for localtype get_current_timeIf the time is off do the following to set itHow to set NTP serverFor RecoverPoint versions 3.1 and later:Use NTP menu option from the boxmgmt menu.Make a list of all Consistency Groups (CG). Take note on which RPA each CG is running.Note! This is an extremely

San Policy Server 2008 enterprise and advanced

2010-08-26T12:24:00.002-04:00

Windows server 2008 (enterprise and datacenter) has introduced a new default disk policy that causes a long delay to boot a server while using SRM to bring our servers online. The SAN policy determines whether a newly discovered disk is brought online or remains offline, and whether it is made read/write or remains read-only. The default setting of forcing all SAN disks to remain offline the

How to install and configure the EMC storage Plugin with Vsphere using the Solutions Enabler Appliance

2010-05-19T12:53:00.002-04:00

1. download the solutions enabler appliance from powerlink2. login to the appliance with the username seconfig and set the IP and password3. on the desktop that you use your vsphere client, install the VSI plugin from powerlink4. on the desktop install the solutions enabler x32 version (even if 64 bit desktop, vsphere client is 32 bit so SE must match)5. open dos and type the following set

EMC VPLEX

2010-05-12T11:03:00.003-04:00

I am here at EMC world and I have finally grasped the concept of VPLEX after attending the 2 hour Vplex hands on lab. VPLEX is the big buzz here at EMC world and to make it simple to understand, it is virtual raid that can go beyond the datacenter as well as also being storage agnostic. You simply carve up storage and present it to the vplex, the vplex then will claim storage from the backend and

Recoverpoint CAN corrupt your production data

2010-05-11T13:44:00.001-04:00

I had to expand a production lun, and of course when you expand a lun that is replicated by recoverpoint you also need to expand the CDP replica volume as well as the CRR replica volume if you are using CRR and CDP. I followed the steps listed in priumus article emc148277, however the steps listed aren't correct, you can't destroy the CG and then detach the luns from the splitters. If you try

Remove CDP or CRR from Recoverpoint

2010-05-11T12:10:00.003-04:00

This seems like a simple task however since I always err on the side of caution I dug around on powerlink on the correct procedure to remove either CDP or CRR from a recoverpoint consistency group. After my search came up empty, I called EMC support and they stated that it is safe to just remove either CRR or CDP without any issues and here is how you can do it.

Good monitoring/alerting solution for san storage and vmware

2010-03-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

One thing that our current monitoring solution solar winds orion was lacking was vmware and storage reporting. Solarwinds decided to fix this issue by acquiring a company called tek-tools. Right now they are two separate products however in the near future they will be fully integrated into a single pane of glass.Below are some screenshots of the tek-tools product and they are pretty self

Attach RDM to vsphere with Recoverpoint

2010-02-04T09:56:00.002-05:00

If you need to attach a recoverpoint volume to a guest through RDM you MUST select physical access in recoverpoint if you don't want to shut down the guest. If you select virtual access you must power down the guest and then attach the disk.1. enable physical access in recoverpoint2. ensure that your esx hosts can see this lun by verifying in navisphere storage groups3. rescan datastore4. edit

Problem with Users running Windows Vista or windows 7 with CISCO NAC release 4.6.1

2009-12-03T14:07:00.007-05:00

Here is a problem that my co-worker Mike Maron recently ran into along with the solution.If you have users or guest desktops/laptops with windows vista or windows 7 installed that cannot access the network via NAC, it is due to a problem with windows User account Control. When this feature is enabled (it is by default), it doesn’t work properly because NAC requires Internet Explorer to run in

Replication Manager Problem

2009-10-27T13:40:00.003-04:00

I had an RM job that suddenly stopped working with the following error2009 10 27 13:13:03 EMCRM01 INFO:Replica 2009 10 27 13:13:03 created from application set xxxxxxxx_db_logs, job VPMPRODDBSQLCL_no_Verify by cerbadmin.2009 10 27 13:13:03 EMCRM01 INFO:Starting RecoverPoint checkpoint of [application set:servername_db_logs / job: servername _no_Verify] at time 2009 10 27 13:13:03.2009 10 27 13:13

Rename Netapp Filer (useful for netapp to emc migration of NAS)

2009-10-26T12:03:00.002-04:00

The following steps are useful to rename a netapp filer, in order to preserve name space when migrating from netapp to emc. Unfortunately DFS wansn't used before I started working here, so I had 4 netapp filer names hosting CIFS shares that I had to migrate to EMC Celerra. After using rainfinity to replicate the shares from netapp to EMC, I had to perform the following steps to steal the name

Problem Adding New Host to Replication manager

2009-09-29T14:26:00.002-04:00

I ran into an interesting problem today when trying to connect a new host to Replication Manager. When I right clicked on the host and selected discover arrays I would get the following error (SymApi not present, but function "SymInquiry All" Invoked).It turns out that windows 2003 servers that are 64 bit must have the Solutions Enabler 32 bit client on them. The 64 bit Solutions enabler client

How To Create MetaLun on EMC Clariion

2009-09-24T15:59:00.015-04:00

Here are the steps invovled in creating a MetaLun on an EMC Clariion CX4. The steps below show creating 4 luns of size 6,400 MB which are then expanded into 1 lun of 25 gigs. Photos 1 and 2 will need to be performed 4 times in order to create all 4 luns, and I set these up as follows:LUN 3924 Raid Group 27 raid 1+0 LUN ID 3924 6,400 MBLUN 3925 Raid Group 26 raid 1+0 LUN ID 3924 6,400 MBLUN 3926

Winmail.dat exchange problem, trendmicro scanmail

2009-09-17T06:19:00.001-04:00

I just migrated all of my Microsoft Exchange users from one windows 2003 active passive cluster, to 4 windows 2003 virtual exchange servers. Suddenly users started having a problem with microsoft office attachments, they were replaced with a winmail.dat file. To make a long story short, trendmicro scanmail was the root cause of the problem.Here is the trendmicro support article I found that

Rename Netapp Filer, creates Snapdrive issue

2009-09-16T13:12:00.002-04:00

After renaming our Netapp FAS 3020C filer which I use for NAS and ISCSI storage, there was an issue with all hosts that connect to it. All hosts that had snapdrive and snapmanager for SQL suddenly all SQL backups failed and I got RPC errors when trying to open snapdrive from computer manager (this will also apply if using Snapmanager for Exchange). The fix was pretty simpleFrom DOSList the