mainesysadmin.com

This vague message turned into a nightmare for myself this past Sunday.  I was able to get the problem fixed with minimal downtime as the issue only came up during a Sunday maint. window (ironic).

I had patched my ESX hosts to Update2 (patched version) and started receiving the error “VMware HA Agent has an error” in my virtual infrastructure client.  First step is to make sure you’re running a compliant version of Virtual Center with your ESX.  Ok, Check.

Next check your host files in each esx host located here:  /etc/hosts

You should see the default line of 127.0.0.1 for localhost, below there needs to be at least one linewith the host your working on.

192.168.1.103     esx9.yourdomain.com     esx9

Over the past 3 years I’ve seen conflicting guidance over the configuration of the host files .  In 3.0.2 I was required to enter all my hosts in each host file, but now that seems to be resolved and only requires the local details of the host you’re working with.  In short make sure that you can ping your hosts from each host with the FQDN and/or friendly name and you should be all good there.

The next steps were found on some vmtn.net postings, and I lost the URL amongst all my troubleshooting but I saved the resolution.  For myself I found the following steps helpful in resolving the problem….

The problem in my situation was specifically around the Virtual Center agents and conflicting versions.

• Check the vpxa version on your host:  rpm -qa |grep vpxa
• That will give you the current version of vpxa that you’re running. eg:  VMware-vpxa-2.5.0-104215
• Stop the VMware mgmt service:  service vmware-mgmt stop
• Stop the vpx agent:  /etc/init.d/vmware-vpxa stop
• The vpx agent error can be ignored (warning: /etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg saved as /etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg.rpmsave)
• Remember your vpx version from the first step and use it here to remove the vpx agent.
• rpm -e VMware-vpxa-2.5.0-104215
• Switch over to your Virtual Center client and remove the host you just modified (guest vms will remain)
• Reboot the host (vm’s will go down)
• After boot reconnect the host to VC and the latest vpx agent will be intstalled.
• Enable HA and the error should disappear.

Luckily my event occurred on a Sunday.  This was the first time that the guest vm’s experienced unplanned downtime without being able to vmotion in 3 years.  Be careful with those VMware patches!

For a task that is REALLY easy it took a more googling than I had anticipated to come up with the solution.  Once your volume has been delivered to the server it is important to initialize the disk but not to create any partitions.

1. Open Windows Disk management.
2. Click Action -> Rescan disks to make your new disk appear, if greater than 2tb it will appear as 2 partitions on 1 disk
3. Right click on the disk and initialize the disk
4. Open a windows command prompt
5. type “diskpart”
6. type “list disk”
7. select the new disk that’s over 2tb
8. convert gpt
9. Now from windows Disk Management you should see a single disk greater than 2tb

Information on the diskpart utility:   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/300415

The most important prereqs include Windows 2k3 is up to at least sp1 and that no partitions exist on the disk.

Scott featured a nice write up comparison of ESX nic utilization and vSwitch configuration the other day.  The article is specifically around the Guest VM vSwitch and compares the differences between Link Aggregation and the opposite.  It’s a useful reminder of the load balancing characterists of the different settings in the vSwitch.

This was a two part series on his webpage:

Part 2: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/10/08/more-on-vmware-esx-nic-utilization/

Part 1: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/07/16/understanding-nic-utilization-in-vmware-esx/

I love lifehacker.com.  I always find usefull posts like this one below.

http://lifehacker.com/5057484/remove-u3-to-speed-up-your-flash-drive

This is very useful for us Linux users.  It’s so annoying to plug a u3 drive into a linux o/s.  Anyhow download the utility and clean up your U3 enabled usb thumb drive here:  http://www.u3.com/uninstall/default.aspx

Before recently I had not required to publish any flash animations with a windows server running IIS6.  Come to find out that it is really easy to do.  I ran across the following blog below with the correct information.  I’ll include the steps below the url for posterity.

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/rymoore/adding-flv-mime-type-in-iis-4198

Adding .flv MIME type in IIS

1) Select the site to configure in IIS, right click and select “Properties”
2) Under HTTP Headers Tab, select “File Types” under the MIME Map section and select “New Type”
3) Type “.flv” as the associated extension and “video/x-flv” as the content type.
4) Select “OK” and you’re ready to fly!

There is so much great software available for ubuntu. This weekend I ran into subsonic, an excellent music streaming website you can host from your own PC. This can be used over LAN or WAN (be careful with security).

I followed the following url’s excellent instructions, but I’ll include them for future usage.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=920178

URL: http://subsonic.sourceforge.net

Step1: Dependencies

sudo apt-get install tomcat5.5

cd; wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/subsonic/subsonic-3.4.zip

Step2: Modify Init For Tomcat & Start

sudo nano /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5

Change TOMCAT_SECURITY=yes to TOMCAT_SECURITY=no

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat5.5 start

Step3: Unzip/Install Subsonic

unzip subsonic-3.4.zip

mv subsonic.war /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps/

mkdir /var/subsonic

chown tomcat55:nogroup /var/subsonic

Step4: Test

firefox http://127.0.0.1:8180/subsonic

Browsing around lifehacker.com I ran across an article on how to create a bootable linux usb thumbdrive. This is by far the easiest method that I’ve run across.

• Download the utility.
• Open the utility and download one of the supported linux iso’s.
• Plug your usb thumb drive into your computer (utility is linux or windows, so you can do this from either)
• Point the utility at the iso you downloaded and the correct usb thumb drive.
• execute, wait and reboot off of your newly created bootable thumb drive.

article with better detail on process:
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/08/27/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-or-memory-card/

direct link to the utility download page:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/