ESXi – Removing a stubborn Nexus 1000v VIB

Happened upon an unusual error while wrestling a Nexus 1000v out of a ESXi 5.1 host. All seemed to progress well, the host was removed from the dvs without issue.  The next step was to remove the Cisco vem VIB from the host in preparation for upgrade. esxcli software vib Continue Reading

ESXi – An oldie but a goodie – CDP info via PowerCLI and Host CLI

When you don’t use something for a while, you tend to forget how valuable it can be. Even from its very early iterations, ESXi has been able to display CDP information so you can quickly establish “what’s patched where “.  Easy to get from the gui, but far more useful Continue Reading

vSphere/ESXi: When good tasks go bad – Fix with ESXCLI via PowerCLI

Most of the time, tasks we start in vSphere just work. That’s why we love it. Queue ’em up, and move onto something else. Sometimes though, they go bad. They freeze, stick, die or just plain error out. This happened to me last week. After changing the scratch location for Continue Reading

ESXi – Driver VIB update using ESXCLI

Nothing groundbreaking here folks, but this is a quick and easy way to upgrade the drivers (in this case Network Intel & Broadcom) on your host(s) I’ve done this many times for various reasons: Misbehaving drivers after upgrades, Version control, “’cause I wanna’”. etc Login to your host with the Continue Reading

VAAI- Hear me now, believe me later

VAAI (vStorage API for Array Integration) was first introduced into vSphere in v4.1 with promises of deeper integration and control over supported storage Arrays.  Each feature (or Primitve) was designed to help us gain benefits from our Arrays. Vendors who didn’t support VAAI were frowned upon and those delivering on Continue Reading

vSphere – “Another task is already in progress..” fix with esxcli

I recently had the ‘pleasure’ of an unresponsive vm that had basically turned into a ZOMBIE ! It could not be restarted, edited, snapshot’d and was of course, unresponsive from an OS perspective (No RDP, ping or comms just totally off the air) Any attempted operation from the vSphere client returned Continue Reading