/usr/local.com

Error 25113.Setup failed to generate the JRE SSL keys.

April 19th, 2012 | by | vmware

Apr
19

While working on an upgrade from vSphere 4.1u1 to vSphere5.0, I ran into the following error when I got to the upgrade manager portion of the upgrade.

Error 25113.Setup failed to generate the JRE SSL keys.

If you do any sort of googling for this, you’ll find people that suggest looking for openssl.exe and renaming it temporarily. I didn’t have openssl.exe so that wasn’t going to work. Another person gave the old windows “fix” of just reboot the box. Guess what, that didn’t work either.

In the end, the fix was pretty straight forward. Remove the old Update Manager install and do a fresh install of the update manager. Pretty painless and works like a champ.

 

Comments Closed

vmkfstool for the win

December 14th, 2011 | by | sysadmin, vmware

Dec
14

Got a call tonight concerning a VM that was having some issues. We had p2v’d our Virtual Center and when the new vCenter came online, apparently DRS decided to balance the heck out of things and somewhere in the process, a VM got squished and had a variety of issues.

When I was brought in, it wasn’t powering up and throwing an error concerning a lock. So here is what I tried.

  1. Remove the VM from inventory and re-add it. Based on past support calls with VMware, this trick seems to be a tried and true ‘do this first’ method of debugging a VM. I’m not going to go into great detail on why this might work, but needless to say, I’m dealing with a file system lock and re-adding it really does nothing for me here. In theory, it might remove the lock, but unfortunately method failed.
  2. Snapshot shuffle. This is where you take a snapshot of the VM and then attempt to do a Delete All in the snapshot manager. The VM was acting as though it had a snapshot on the system and wasn’t letting it go. By doing a delete all, VMware will look for other snapshots and remove them if they are in the chain, even if they are not showing up in the snapshot manager. This method also failed.
  3. vmkfstools for the win. I’m a unix admin so getting in the shell doesn’t bother me. For others, you might be a bit afraid by this. But I ssh’d into the host, found my VM directory and did a check on each of the VMDK files using vmkfstools. Each came back clean so then I moved onto the breaking of the lock file also with vmkfstools. The command technically stated that it didn’t complete successfully but I found that it did indeed work and I was able to power on the VM. Mission accomplished! Here is a run down of the commands used in this method:
    To check a VMDK:
    vmkfstools -x check virtualMachine.vmdk

    To remove a lock:
    vmkfstools -B virtualMachine.vmdk

    To list all vmkfstools options:
    vmkfstools -h
    -or-
    man vmkfstools

Hopefully you don’t run into this issue anytime soon, but if you do, try a few of these methods and see where you end up. If all else fails, build a new VM and restore from backup. Or…call VMware support, they’re really good at this sort of thing.

Comments Closed

VCP5

November 29th, 2011 | by | vmware

Nov
29

Today I can add a few more letters to the old signature line. I passed the VMware Certified Professional 5 test!

Overall, I thought that the test was pretty fair. This test was rumored to test more on your real world experience with vSphere and it didn’t disappoint. I would say that the test was easier for me than the VCP4 test but I also have 2 more years of experience under my belt and had a chance to go to VMworld 2011 with some great sessions and labs that dug into the nitty gritty of 5.

I will fully admit that I’m not the greatest of test takers and these things stress me out way more than they should. But if you have your stuff down cold, you’ll be alright and I felt my preparation allowed me to walk in there fairly confident that I could pass the test without issue. With that, I thought I would offer up some tips that helped me prepare for the test without giving away actual questions.

 

  1. Read the blue print I know this sounds crazy, reading what is exactly going to be on the test, but it does help you figure out what you need to study. VMware puts out a LOT of material and being able to focus on certain things (though it will still be a lot) will help you out. Once you have the blue print, start breaking it down. Grab the resources that VMware provides and start absorbing as much as possible. I found that if there is a note or a best practice in one of their guides. Think of a question of what happens if you configure XYZ and don’t follow the best practice. Because then you’re thinking along the lines of the test writers.
  2. Books! If I had to recommend one book above and beyond all others, I think going with Scott Lowe’s Mastering VMware vSphere 5 would be my hands down recommendation. Since I had some experience with vSphere, I didn’t read this book cover to cover. But I dug deep in all the new sections and I’m glad that I did. You can pick up the book at Amazon by clicking the book image.
  3. Lab Something I think is widely known is that the VCP5 test is much more geared on real world experience. And this doesn’t come easy. There are a lot of things that you may do in your day to day VMware admin job that will never be on the test. And there are things that you may have done months or even years ago that you have forgotten about that are suddenly re-appearing on the test. Questions along the lines of screens that you look at day in and day out that you never give a second thought to. All of a sudden, you have to name the parts of that screen to show that you know your stuff. Not that easy when you don’t care to really memorize everything on that particular screen. My recommendation is to lab stuff up and play with all the stuff that you may not play with. Play with the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance, play with the vSphere Storage Appliance, HA, DRS, FT. If its on the blue print, you should have it in your lab at some point in your preparation.
  4. Cram Sheets There are many resources out there on the web. One that I found useful was Cosonok’s Cram Sheets (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) Now, I don’t think that his cram sheet was 100% correct, but it did help review things before the test and for those quick 5 minutes of reviewing material. Part 1 is the general overview of everything you would need to know about vSphere, Part 2 is made up of the configuration maximums, and part 3 is more of a summary of how it went for him and some more resources.
  5. Sleep I studied pretty hard for the test over my Thanksgiving break. I know, great timing right? One thing I made sure to do on my last night of studying was to get a good nights sleep. Either you know your stuff at that point or you don’t. Get a good nights sleep and tackle the test like the badass you are!

So there you you have it. This is what I did to prepare and pass the VCP-510 exam.

Good luck!

Comments Closed

Update Manager Blues

July 13th, 2011 | by | vmware

Jul
13

As I wrapped up the migration from vSphere 4.0 to 4.1, I had one host that for the life of me wouldn’t upgrade. It kept giving me the following error:

Host cannot download files from VMware vCenter Update Manager patch store.  
Check the network connectivity and firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details.

I can see the ESX host just fine. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The firewall ports look exactly the same as the other 6 hosts in this particular cluster. Why the hell won’t it download the updates.

Well, time to roll up the sleeves and log into the esx host with ssh. It didn’t take long for me to realize the issue.

[root@esx128744 ~]# ping cdalnvci01
PING cdalnvci01<snip> (10.6.1.152) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from cdalnvci01<snip> (10.6.1.152): icmp_seq=1 ttl=127 time=0.255 ms
64 bytes from cdalnvci01<snip> (10.6.1.152): icmp_seq=2 ttl=127 time=0.242 ms

Crap! Old IP address. Checked the /etc/hosts file and sure enough, there was an old entry sitting there mocking me. As soon as I commented out that line, the update manager was able to communicate with the host and all was well again.

I’m sure that there are others out there that at one time had a goofy setup so if this bit me, I’m sure it might bite you. Especially those of us that walk into a clients site to do some consulting and lord knows what all they have hacked in to get things to “work”.

Comments Closed

Older Posts