Wu's Blog

My IT Adventure

Category: English

English version of my posts.

  • Adobe Flash Player Out of Date on vSphere Web Client

    You may see ‘Adobe Flash Player Out of Date’ on Chrome when you open vSphere Web Client. Click the text Chrome will update Flash Player automatically. But in some cases it doesn’t work due to maybe your Chrome is controlled by company policy or internet problem to Adobe.com. I found an article to show how to offline fix the issue. You can download Flash Player for Opera and Chromium-based browsers – PPAPI in official Adobe KB article.

    You may also want to check out my other articles about Flash issue on browsers.

    Flash menu appears when right click on vSphere Web Client in Chrome

    Cannot open vSphere Web Client on IE11 on Windows 8.1

  • Network Latency on Virtual Machine

    Slight network latency may cause application problem  on sensitive virtual machines. Even the network responding time is just 3 or 7 ms. There is a way to improve the  stability of responding latency – Enable RSS on NIC.

    Network traffic is handled by single CPU core when RSS is disabled. Enable it will distribute the workload to 4 cores by default. You can increase CPU for RSS by change registry.

    To summarize the solution. Go to Device Manager -> NIC properties -> Advance -> Find RSS option  and enable it. You will see 2 – 3 network drops when applying it.

    You can refer following articles for detail.

    Poor network performance or high network latency on Windows virtual machines

    Virtual Receive-side Scaling in Windows Server 2012 R2

    Regarding increase CPU for RSS. Read following article to learn how to modify it.

    Setting the Number of RSS Processors

  • vRealize Operation Manager Installation Pending on install.sh

    If your company implemented firewall and blocked public NTP server, you may see installation of vRealize Operation Manager pending on ./install.sh on console. That’s because the installer tries to negotiate with NTP server www.iana.org. The firewall blocked the traffic.

    VMware TAM Manager Shan told me  there are two options on firewall to block traffic: REJECT and DROP. REJECT means firewall responding to the request and let source device knows it’s rejected. DROP means firewall immediately ignores the request and no responding to source device. Looks like there is a bug in vROPs code that it hung if NTP request gets drop and no responding.

    The workaround is create a port group without physical uplinks and install vRealize Operation  Manager. Then move it to proper network after installation  is completed. You can configure correct IP addresses when import the OVF file so later on you just need simply move the network.

  • ESXi 6.0 and 6.5 hosts no responding issue!

    The smartd service  can leads to ESXi 6.0 or 6.5 hosts no responding due to out of memory. I see that issue on ESXi 6.0 U2 and U3 both. I would recommend stay on  ESXi 5.5 U3 at this moment.

    We do see the issue persist even after stop smartd service.

    Check out VMware official KB.

  • Windows 2016 is not available in OS option when create virtual machine

    Just noticed a gap here. If your  ESXi host is 5.5 Update 2 or earlier version, you are not able to choose ‘Windows Server 2016’ as operating system  when  you create virtual  machine. It’s addressed in  KB https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2132789.

  • Flash menu appears when right click on vSphere Web Client in Chrome

    There is a KB describes how to fix right click issue in IE on vSphere Web Client. But my problem was in Chrome. I searched a lot in internet but no lucky till today.

    The problem was flash menu appears when I right click anything in vSphere Web Client in Chrome. I have two computers that both has Chrome installed but one has issue, other one works fine. I compared version of Chrome, noticed working one was 55.x, problematic one was 49.x. The issue gone after upgraded to 57.x.

    After dig into that problem, looks like Google fixed the problem on version 54.0.2840 that there was a bug related to right click. Check out release notes here.

     

  • My New Toy Raspberry Pi 3

    I own Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 both. I used to do some small projects and learn Python on its. It’s great computer to learn scripting and Linux. But not something can be used in daily based.

    I was excited when I hear Raspberry Pi foundation released Pi 3. Thanks foundation brought our world a powerful, cheap and flexible computer that can replace my laptop. In general, I think Pi 3 can be used for daily work in GUI interface. It comes with embedded WiFi, Bluetooth and quad-core 1.2GHz CPU! It frees up the 4 USB ports so I can use it for other purpose.

    I have a laptop that motherboard was dead, screen still works. So I bought driver board for the LED screen. Connected Pi 3 to the driver board by HDMI cable. The official Pi 2 case is compatible with Pi 3 except power LED in the other side. I use the latest OS “RASPBIAN JESSIE WITH PIXEL“. I have to say the graphical interface is awesome! It’s more like a modern, real computer. I use default browser Chromium which is similar with Chrome PC version. I also installed “Google Input Tool” extension on Chromium so I can input Chinese. Since most of my work on websites so I don’t have to install input tool on OS. And I saw some interface problem when use Chinese input tool for Linux. I also tried bluetooth headset, not working well. So I turned to USB headset, it works perfectly.

    I opened 10 more tabs in Chromium just like how do I use my PC. I also ran a online website to streaming music to USB headset. Wrote blog, brows photos, edit files…etc. I didn’t see any performance issue so far. I guess my high performance TF card may helped. I bought Samsung 64GB UHS-1 Class10 for my Pi 3.

     

  • vSphere Data Protection End of Availability

    Just a quick update that VDP will discontinued in future release of vSphere. It doesn`t impact to existing customers till 2022. VMware offers free migration to Dell EMC Avamar Virtual Edition in limited time if customers want to move to other backup solution. Customers can also use other 3rd party backup solutions to integrate with vCenter Server via storage API.

    Read this FAQ for detail. VMware products lifecycle matrix for your reference.

  • “No host data available” Reported in Hardware Status Tab

    Just noticed a issue that nothing reported in ‘Hardware Status‘ tab of ESXi hosts in vSphere Web Client. KB 2112847 gives a solution but not works for me. The feature can be used to monitor hardware failures. I figured out a way to workaround it. You just need to login by Administrator account and click ‘Update‘ button under ‘Monitor‘ – ‘Hardware Status‘ for each ESXi host. You will get the status after few minutes.

  • Host Cannot Download Files From VMware vSphere Update Manager Patch Store

    You may see following error when you scanning ESXi hosts by vCenter Update Manager.

    Host cannot download files from VMware vSphere Update Manager patch store. Check the network connectivity and 
firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details.

    You also see similar logs in /var/log/esxupdate.log.

    [Errno -2] Name or service not known

    The root cause could be following:

    1. ESXi host cannot resolve DNS name of vCenter Update Manager Server.
    2. One of the DNS servers incorrect if you set multiple DNS servers on ESXi host.