Tech journal on converting NT and 2000 machines from physical to virtual in vSphere

I've been working on converting all legacy development workstations from physical to virtual for enhanced security and administration. Here are some notes to self:

1. NT4 and Windows Server 2000 networking would not work until AFTER VMware Tools is installed.

2. NT4 would require manual installation of network driver. Here's the link to the KB article from VMware.

3. As a reminder, Windows Server 2000 already has Terminal Service available, but must be installed via Add/Remove Programs->Change Windows Components.

Cheers!

My vSphere 4 Virtual Hardware Upgrade Notes...

Borrowed and learned a lot from Scott Lowe's post at: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/06/01/vsphere-virtual-machine-upgrade-process/

After analyzing and summarizing Scott's post and the comments that follow, here's my procedure (main steps are directly taken from Scott's post):

1. On the VM, open up Command Prompt, and type "netsh interface ip dump > c:\ipconfig.txt" to record the IP configuration of the guest operating system in c:\ipconfig.txt.
   
2. Upgrade VMware Tools in the guest operating system if it has not already been done.
   
3. After the guest operating system reboots and is back up again, first take a snapshot. For SQL Server/Exchange Server, the "Quiesce guest file system" option is recommended. Then shutdown the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Power > Shutdown Guest.
4. Upgrade the virtual machine hardware by right-clicking the virtual machine and selecting Upgrade Virtual Hardware.
5. In the virtual machine properties, add a new network adapter of the type VMXNET3 and attach it to the same port group/dvPort group as the first network adapter.
6. Remove the first/original network adapter.
7. Click OK to commit the changes you’ve made to the virtual machine.
8. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted, log in and recreate the network configuration you recorded for the guest back in step 1. Per Dave O. in Scott's original post, "Since Windows will most likely see the new NIC as “Local Area Connection 2” (or something similar) you have to modify the above text file and change the NIC name to match the new NIC’s name. Or change the new NIC’s name on the host to match what’s in the file above. Either way works. " Open Command Prompt and type "netsh –f c:\ipconfig.txt" to re-import the network configuration to the new vmxnet 3 adapter.
   
9. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted up, log in.
10. Create a new system environment variable named DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES and set the value to 1.
11. Launch Device Manager and from the View menu select Show Hidden Devices.
12. Remove the drivers for the old network adapter and old SCSI adapter. Close Device Manager and you’re done!

Thanks a lot for Scott Lowe's post and Dave O.'s comment. Hopefully this combine version would give myself and fellow admins a reference point should this becomes necessary

Deleting virtual machine snapshots without wasting disk space

Great article for VI3 administrators:

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1311854_mem1,00.html?track=NL-921&ad=638720&asrc=EM_NLN_3586418

ESX 3.5 Host unable to restart

In my new VMware Infrastructure 3 environment, there were times were an ESX host crashed and failed to restart. Here's the solution provided by VMware:

1. Reboot and start (Troubleshooting) console.
2. Login as "root"
3. At the commmand prompt, type the following:
"esxcfg-boot -p" (Enter)
"esxcfg-boot -b" (Enter)
"esxcfg-boot -r" (Enter)
4. The above would clear the boot ini and log files. Type "reboot" (Enter) to reboot the ESX host.

For proactive monitoring, here's what could be done:

1. Login as "root"
2. At the command prompt, type "df -h".
3. This command would display the size and % utilized for each partitions. The /boot partition should be below 50% utilized.
4. If the /boot partition is above 50%, use the procedure above and reboot the ESX server to avoid a crash.

Cheers!