Category Archives: ESXi 5.5

Installing or Updating OpenManage on ESXi Hosts

Assuming you are using Dell Servers, you might be interested to know that you can install and use the Dell Open Manage Server Administrator application on your ESXi hosts and manage their hardware in nearly the same way you can use it on your windows servers’ hardware. First, OpenManage needs to be downloaded,  you can find it here: OpenManage. Make sure to download both the windows version (for the system that will be managing the ESXi host) as well as the version that matches your ESXi version.

Next, we need to move the vib over to the host. The way i do this is with a tool call WinSCP which can be found here

Enabling SSH on ESXi host

  1. Connect to the host with the vSphere Client
  2. Select the Host, and then click the “Configuration” tab
  3. Click “Security Profile” from the bottom right-hand box
  4. Click “Properties…” in the row titled “Services”
  5. Highlight “SSH” and then click “Options…”
  6. Click “Start”
  7. Click “OK”

Moving file to host with WinSCP

  1. Open WinSCP and enter the following:
    1. File Protocol: SCP
    2. Hostname: <IP Address of Host>
    3. Username: root
    4. Password: <root password>
  2. When prompted click “Yes” to accept the private key of the server
  3. In the right hand pane find the folder called /tmp and double click on it.
  4. In the left hand pane, locate the .vib on your PC and then copy it into the /tmp folder.

Installing OpenManage

  1. place the host in maintenance mode
  2. SSH into the host using putty
  3. Enter the following command, making adjustments to the file name to match that of your vib:

Now reboot the host.

Updating the OpenManage on the host

  1. place the host in maintenance mode
  2. SSH into the host using putty
  3. Enter the following command to confirm open mange is installed on host, scroll up looking for VIBs from “Dell” and then verify that “OpenManage” is in the list
  4. Next, run the following command to remove the existing version of the open manage:
  5. Lastly follow the installation instructions above, to install the newest version.

Managing the Host

  1. Install the windows version of the software that was downloaded earlier on you management system
  2. Double click on the OpenManage application once installed,
  3. Enter the following:
    1. Hostname/IP Address: This is your host’s IP
    2. Username: root
    3. Password: root password
    4. Ignore Certificate Warnings: Checked

Now you can manage your host’s Dell hardware as if it were any windows system with Open Manage installed.

NOTE: Annoyingly, both the MGMT system and the hosts must be using the same version of the software, in this example that was OpenManage 8.2

Exchange Error: Unable to initialize the Information Store service…

Over this past weekend I ran into an issue with Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3. Even though my Exchange server’s clock was sync’d with my Domain Controller the Exchange server was unable to start the Exchange IS service, and instead was logging the error:

Event 5003: Unable to initialize the Information Store service because the clocks on the client and server are skewed. This may be caused by a time change either on the client or on the server, and may require a restart of that computer. Verify that your domain is correctly configured and is currently online.

After a few reboots, and verification that the windows clocks were actually in sync, I thought to check that the clock in the BIOS was properly configured. Since these machines are VMs on VMWare ESXi, I logged into vCenter and checked my ESXi host. Sure enough one of the three hosts was not configured to use an NTP server, and it’s local clock was off. I fixed that setting and rebooted the exchange server one more time, the server was then able to start the Information store service.

vSphere 5.5 Client cannot be installed on a domain controller

Running into this error?

vSphere 5.5 Client cannot be installed on a domain controller

Here is a quick and easy solution:

  1. Note location of VMware-viclient-all-5.5.x-xxxxxxx.exe
  2. Open command prompt and CD to proper directory
  3. enter the following command:

VMware-viclient-all-5.5.x-xxxxxxx.exe /VSKIP_OS_CHECKS="1"