While testing a vCenter Heartbeat (vCHB) installation, I cloned the Windows VM used for vCenter Server, but did not use guest customization as the vCHB directions stated not to. Since guest customization was not selected, sysprep was not run on the new Windows system.

Once the clone was complete, I followed the directions and disconnected the vNICs. Next, I powered the system up and changed the IPs. Finally, I reconnected the vNICs. I tried a ping to an outside address and to an IP configured on the VM and received:

PING: transmit failed, error code 1232.

Why?

The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy for me and thus my lack of posts. Part of what has been keeping me busy is a transition from one company to another. I am happy to officially announce that as I am today I am a VMware employee! So what am I doing now? Well, I am actually doing exactly what I have been doing for the last year, but instead of working for Mozy, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC, I work for VMware, which is majority owned by EMC. Based on my strong passion for VMware technologies, this is a welcome change and I feel a great opportunity to grow professionally. I look forward to the challenges and learning experiences ahead as well as the ability to contribute and assist in any capacity.

I was recently playing around with my Zimbra installation and was specifically trying to figure out how to configure administrator accounts. By default, a single global administrator is configured during installation. While this is good, I needed the following:

• Change the global administrator to a different domain / account
• Add multiple administrators, one per domain
• Grant certain administrators administrator access to multiple domains

While playing around with the Zimbra configuration, I navigated to https://<FQDN>:5480 (I am running the appliance version) and logged in with the vmware user account. Upon selecting the Zimbra Administration tab, I was greeted by:

HTTP ERROR 400
Problem accessing /service/preauth. Reason:
invalid request: domain is not configured for preauth

I had no issues in the past so I knew it had to have been something I changed. So what was causing the problem?

I enabled HA on a new cluster the other day and one of the hosts came back with the following error:

Cannot complete the configuration of the HA agent on the host. Misconfiguration in the host network setup.

On ocassion, I have seen weird HA errors where simply selecting the 'Reconfigure for HA' on the host fixed the issue. I tried this, but the same error was seen. I next selected the host and went to Tasks & Events - Events. From there, I found the following error message:

HA agent on <host> in cluster <cluster> in <datacenter> has an error: Cannot complete the HA configuration. 

Selecting the message and under Related Events selecting Show displayed:

Host <host> has the following extra networks not used by other hosts for HA communication: <IP>,.
 Consider using HA advanced option ads.allowNetworkto control network usage.

Looking at the VMkernel interface, everything appeared to be configured correctly. I ensured the IP configuration was correct and that no duplicate IP issue was being experienced. So what was causing the problem?

I have been meaning to blog about the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) for sometime now. OVF is a VM packaging standard that was created by VMware. OVF is not supported on all VMare products. One such product that does not support the feature is VMware Fusion. This means by default, VMware Fusion is not capable of importing or running VMs in OVF. I am not sure how VMware expects others to adopt OVF when they do not support it on all of their own products. If Fusion or OVF were new and integration was complex I may understand the rationale behind the lack of support. However, OVF is neither new or complex. As such, it not being supported by Fusion is restricting OVF's adoption.

The good news is, someone has figured out how to get an OVF VM running on Fusion (and Duncan has now blogged about this at:http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/02/26/converting-open-virtualization-format-ovf-virtual-machines-to-vmware-fusion/). However, this is only good news for users who need to run a VM in OVF on Fusion. The fact that the VMware community is able to solve this relatively simple issue and yet Fusion has not yet incorporated the functionality is another slap in the face to OVF. I am personally a fan of OVF so VMware please incorporate it into all of your products!