I was pulling my hair out today, wondering why the bios screen was going by SO much faster since I upgraded to 3.5, even when I connected directly to the ESX box. Turns out that by default the bios screen is set for 0 milliseconds on a new machine. But you can chance this this is via the VM options in the VI client GUI. Remember the time is in milliseconds, plus there is a checkbox to force it to the bios setup on next boot!
Thanks for the heads up vinternals: VM boot screen timeout
I’m ready to start planning my upgrade to virtual center 2.5. I’m looking through old post on this site and searching other vmware blogs to make sure I have all my bases covered. I’m going to start collecting all the links and post I find right here. So if you have any to add that I missed. Please leave a comment.
Thanks,jb
RTFM Education – Upgrade Guide to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5
Upgrade to ESX 3.5 without leaving your desk
ESX 3.0.1 VMs reboot when adding host to VC 2.5
Customization fails after VC 2.5 Upgrade
Potential Problem with ESX 3.0.x and VirtualCenter 2.5
VMware ESX 3.5 upgrade path: Where to start
VirtualCenter 2.5 upgrade issue with SQL 2000
I’m going to upgrade my Virtual Center next week, this is a really good tip to keep handy.
A few people have notice that since upgrading to Virtualcenter 2.5 deploying a Windows 2003 VM from template no longer gives them the ability to customize. The option is disabled.
The fix for this is simple. You need to grab the new deployment tools from Microsoft’s site here also referred to as the sysprep files. You will be downloading WindowsServer2003-KB892778-SP1-DeployTools-x86-ENU.cab
This file needs to be extracted on the Virtualcenter server and placed in the following folder-
All Users\Application Data\Vmware\VirtualCenter\sysprep\svr2003
Once these files exist in the correct folder, you will be able to deploy your W2K3 template.
For more details read the Virtual Center 2 Template Usages and Best Practices http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vc_2_templates_usage_best_practices_wp.pdf
This post brought to you by: VMwarewolf
Customization fails after VC 2.5 Upgrade
vmwarewolf
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:30:02 GMT
I just upgraded to wordpress 2.5.1 tonight. I’ve only skimmed over everything. So far so good. I’ll put the site through its paces tomorrow, its late (yeah a great time to upgrade, right before I go to bed 
I don’t think this theme includes gravatars by default, so I’ll have to test adding it or look for another theme.
later,jb
Category : technology
Did EMCWorld kill twitter, after taking a nice long lunch break. I’m back online to prepare for the next sessions and checking what’s going on in the twitter world. But twitter seems to be offline. I saw someone post about twitter doing upgrades soon. But I checked the twitter blog and nothing about an outage…hmmm
Category : Post from around the Net, microsoft, technology
This is some incredibly usefully information. I’m posting this just for my own need.
If you are running into environments and working on aspects of them such as Exchange, OCS, PKI, or other Active Directory integrated applications, you will encounter situations where you may need to update the AD schema. Of course, the first question is, what version am I at today?
Here’s a handy way to find out:
Query for the objectVersion attribute of the CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere of your Active Directory domain and compare the value to the table below.
I’ve provided links to the schema update information (where available), if you are curious as to what is updated in each.
objectVersion
AD Schema Update13
Windows 2000 Server30
Windows Server 2003 **** The Windows Server 2003 upgrade from 2000 also adds the CN=Windows2003Update,CN=ForestUpdates,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere and sets its revision attribute to 9. This hasn’t been used again, yet.
Exchange Server saves the current version of its schema updates in an attribute of two locations.
For /forestprep operations, query the rangeUpper attribute of the CN=ms-Exch-Schema-Version-Pt,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomainhere object.
For /domainprep operations, query the Microsoft Exchange System Objects object in each domain for its objectVersion value.
The table below provides the number to version translation.
Value
Exchange Version4406
Exchange 2000 Server6936
Exchange Server 200310628
Exchange Server 2007
Category : twitter
- @linuxchic did you do an upgrade or a fresh install of vmware? #
- wow the snow really came down last night. Hope it clears up so we can get to GR for dinner and a movie tonight #
- why doesn’t netflix also rent video games? #
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Category : Post from around the Net, technology, vmware
Once I’m ready to make the jump, I’m always looking for good information from people that have already done it. Here’s some good steps to follow when you start your upgrade.
VMware’s flagship products ESX 3.5 and Virtual Center 2.5 have been available for a little over a month now. When the upgrades were made available, there was much excitement on the newly touted features. So, many IT professionals quickly hurried off and downloaded their product updates and then came to a collective stopping point. How do we upgrade ESX while in use? Sure we upgraded from ESX 3.01 to 3.02 with very little impact. But the change from 3.0x to 3.5 may seem worthy of more preparation because the scope of the change is larger with some of the new features, like Storage VMotion. With the release, here is a simple upgrade strategy that many are adapting:
- Allocate two ESX 3.0x systems as 3.5 candidates (not everyone will be able to do this, I realize).
- Carve these two systems into their own cluster or data center.
- Make sure all existing VMware DRS rules would be okay with two systems removed.
- Upgrade or fresh install one of the systems to ESX 3.5.
- Test migration from ESX 3.0x to the new ESX 3.5 system.
- Test VMware tools versioning and test any upgrade virtual machine tasks.
This strategy will replicate what you will likely face in a real upgrade situation, as you may not be able to. Because you may only be able to have a limited number of systems available for maintenance at any given time, it is good to be able to replicate that in a test datacenter or cluster. In smaller implementations, this could be repeated with one host where the migration test would be from a live ESX host. Evaluation software may also be a consideration to make available the correct number of hosts to simulate the co-existence of ESX 3.0x and 3.5.
Keep it moving
Should your configuration allow seamless migration between your ESX 3.0x and 3.5 hosts – that should not be a crutch for undefined periods of mixed versions. A good practice would be to have all hosts on the same version of ESX within a cluster. Larger environments may have difficulty moving all systems to the new version, but strategize within your Virtual Center configuration to determine the best configuration for temporary mixed versioning. The goal should be to get all systems on the same version enterprise wide – but only after you are completely comfortable with 3.5 in your infrastructure.
The horse’s mouth
VMware provides many quality resources online, I’ve saved some work for you and collected some of the highlighted pieces here for review in relation to ESX 3.5 upgrades:
What’s new for storage in ESX 3.5
VMware Consolidated Backup improvements in ESX 3.5
These resources are a good strategy in being well informed for the what your plan for ESX 3.5 will entail. Simply installing without preparation is surely a recipe for mis-configuration or incorrectly applying your configurations as intendend. And the test upgrade procedure to become familiar with a mixed environment will allow you to clear the way for an end-state configuration of a single version of ESX.
VMware ESX 3.5 upgrade path: Where to start
Rick Vanover
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:48:44 GMT
I allows find it good to wait at least a few weeks before I do any major upgrades. I’ll let other people shake out the bugs. Its a good thing because we are running our vcenter on SQL 2000. Follow the link for the fix before you try the upgrade or if you already tried and failed. Big note from the KB, if you don’t follow the steps in the KB, it will over write your database, you do backup your database before you do any upgrade, right?
I’ve not yet got my hands really dirty on ESX 3.0.x to ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.0.x to 2.5 upgrades. Although crudely “play” with the process under the Release Candate. Initially, I had a permissions problem with the VirtualCenter upgrade and my SQL 2000 server. There’s been a length forum thread on this which I have been involved with. It’s become clear that if you have a SQL 2000 server additional permissions are required for an upgrade, which were not previously required in previous upgrades from VC 1>2 or the intra-upgrades from say 2.0.0>2.0.1>2.0.2
A KB article from VMware outlines this issue. As far as I know its not an issue for SQL 2005…
Link: ID: 1003346
VirtualCenter 2.5 upgrade issue with SQL 2000
mikelaverick
Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:09:15 GMT
