Upgrade VMWare from 5.0U1 to 5.1U2

We recently upgraded our vCenter and ESXi Hosts to 5.1 U2.

This pretty much consisted of:

1. Creating an SSO database including usernames and passwords
2. Upgrading vCenter
3. Upgrading the ESXi Hosts

Creating an SSO Database including usernames and passwords

This was probably the easiest part if the upgrade once I realized the SQL scripts were already available on the CD. Since I am using SQL they were located here: 

D:\Single Sign On\DBScripts\SSOServer\schema\mssql

*Replace D:\ with your CD ROM Drive.*

The two files you need are:

1. rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupTablespaces
2. rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupUsers

All you need to do is open SQL Studio Management and open a new query. Drag and drop rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupTablespaces to the query and it will auto fill. Execute the query and it will create the SSO database (although it is really called RSA).

Do the same for the rsaIMSLiteMSSQLSetupUsers. Remember you will need to change the default passwords for the users. Remember the password as you will need those later.

Side note: Make sure you have a SQL version that is supported. I am using 2005 and had to update to the latest Service Pack. I have my SQL server on a separate server than my vCenter.

Upgrading vCenter

I did the simple install for upgrading vCenter. This installed everything, the SSO service, inventory service and vCenter itself. This was pretty straight forward. Since I had my SQL server on another server I had to supply the server name, usernames and passwords when it got to the point of installing SSO and upgrading vCenter database

Upgrading the ESXi Hosts

Even though this probably should have been the easiest part, it proved to be the most challenging. I'll explain why at the end. But first let me show you how to upgrade using the offline bundle:

First you will need to download the ESXi offline bundle for your version. This is usually a few hundred meg file.

Once you have the file, upload it to your local ESXi Host datastore. Once you do this, you will need to run:

esxcli software sources profile list -d /vmfs/volumes/4d810055-10da4bf6-16f3-f04da23d2982/5.1/VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-depot.zip

This will list the files inside the depot zip file that are available to use for an update.It will look something like this:

 ESXi-5.1.0-799733-no-tools

 ESXi-5.1.0-799733s-no-tools

 ESXi-5.1.0-799733-standard

 ESXi-5.1.0-799733s-standard

You will need ESXi-5.1.0-20130402001-standard.

Side Note: you will notice i had to use 4d810055-10da4bf6-16f3-f04da23d2982 variation instead of the name datastore. to get this name all i had to do was change directory to the datastore. ie, cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore. when i hit enter to change to that directory it changed the folder datastore to the 4d810055-10da4bf6-16f3-f04da23d2982 variation. You may not have to but I did. For some reason it didn't like the folder name datastore when I ran the next command. Remember, that the filename will be different for you as well. 

Once you have the file name you will need to run:

esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/4d810055-10da4bf6-16f3-f04da23d2982/5.1/VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-depot.zip -p ESXi-5.1.0-799733-standard

Once you hit enter it will update the ESXi Host. It should take less than a minute.You will need to reboot the host once the update is done.

Seems pretty easy. What happened in my case was after a day the ESXi hosts started disconnecting from the vCenter and I couldn't install/update VMWare Tools on the VM's. I kept getting SCSILinuxAbortCommands for driver LSI Logic SAS based MegaRAID errors. After some searching I found out its because my Perc H700 RAID Controller Card needed a firmware update from 12.10.1 to something higher than 12.10.3.

I hope this helps someone out if they are updating vCenter and ESXi.

Tor and Tortilla

I was finally able to get around and test Tortilla. Tortilla allows you to send all traffic through TOR when using a virtual machine.No need for additional software or VPN's

Download the Tortilla software HERE

You will need TOR Expert Bundle. Download that HERE

When installing the TOR expert bundle i had to install it as an administrator. Right click the EXE and choose Run As Administrator.

Once you have TOR and Tortilla installed, run TOR and once it loads up, run Tortilla. The first time Tortilla runs it will take a couple minutes to install the adapter.

Once both pieces of software are running you will need to add or adjust your VMNET on your virtual machines. Those of you who have VMWare Player will need to somehow extract the vmnetcfg.exe and library file from VMWare workstation. Below are some helpful links:

Link 1
Link 2

Once you have the ability to edit the network configuration you can modify and exisitng VMNET or create a new VMNET and bridge the Tortilla adapter to it. Please note, I was only able to modify the VMNET0 since I did not have the option to select the Tortilla adapter when i created a new VMNET to bridge to. I am not sure why.

Once all of this is setup (Installing Tor expert bundle, Tortilla and modifying a VMNET to bridge to the Tortilla adapter) you should be able to select Custom in your VM network settings and select the VMNET that is bridged to the Tortilla Adapter. In my case this is VMNET0:

At this point in time power on your VM and all traffic will be sent to Tor using the Tortilla adapter.

File is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore '

I got this error when trying to take a snapshot of a VM with a 1TB Thin Provisioned HDD:



Create virtual machine snapshot VM NAME


File <unspecified filename> is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore '<unspecified datastore>


The used space was only around 9GB.

The problem here is VMFS block size. When I formatted the VMFS LUN I did it using 4MB block size (seeing as how my largest VMDK file would be 1TB).

However (and I should have known this), the file size was just over 1TB (1,073,742,000.00KB). Had I created it with 900GB I probably would have been ok.

The solution? I moved the VM to a VMFS datastore that had 8MB block size (this allows for 2TB files).

Depending on who you talk to people will say that its a waste of space. I dont think it is. Yes, you do have several files attached to a VM that take only 20-30k (but because of the VMFS block size are actually taking 8MB for each file) but in the long run if you need a large VMDK file you need to do this. You lose more space when creating the LUN (my 1.5TB LUN is actually 1.36TB once I format) than you would by selecting a bigger block size.

For those of you not familiar with block size, you have a few options:


• 1MB block size – 256GB maximum file size
• 2MB block size – 512GB maximum file size
• 4MB block size – 1024GB maximum file size
• 8MB block size – 2048GB maximum file size

The block size determines the maximum size for any one file on the VMFS datastore. So, if you think you will need a VM with a hard drive size of 256GB you will need to have a 1MB block size, 512GB you will need 2MB, so on and so forth. Do not get this confused with the files that are INSIDE the VM (ie, windows OS files, etc). The block size is for the VMDK file and the files associated with the VM (config files, snapshot files, etc.)