Installation failed due to Exception in postInstallHook, 80% progress.

vCenter upgrade fails with Exception occurred in postinstallHook error

I was recently going through a vCenter upgrade and got stuck at an error Exception occurred in postinstallHook. I tried reverting from snapshot and trying again but i ran through the same issue. The issue in my case was that the catalina.properties had the wrong permissions. The fix was to change the permissions to perfcharts:cis and then resuming the update in the VAMI interface. The catalina.properties is located /usr/lib/vmware-perfcharts/tc-instance/conf/catalina.properties. The command to fix it is ...

October 19, 2021 · Cosmin Trif
vSphere Client shows "Authentication failed" and "Lifecycle Manager server not contacted.

Authentication failed, Lifecycle Manager server could not be contacted

I recently upgraded my vCenter to 7.0.3 18700403 and i noticed that when i went to Lifecycle Manager i was welcomed with this error. “Authentication failed, Lifecycle Manager server could not be contacted.” Im not aware of a fix for this issue however using the administrator@vsphere.local seems to be working.

October 12, 2021 · Cosmin Trif
A cartoon rabbit holding a carrot with "That's all, folks!" text.

Shutting down a vSAN Cluster

I have the need to completely shut down some of my vSAN clusters for various clusters and ive been having a hard time finding the proper procedure. As of 2/16/2021 VMware released guidance here Here are the steps i took to do it on my end. If you have the vCLS service enabled follow my other instructions here prior to starting the rest of this guide. Disable cluster member updates from vCenter on each ESXi host in the cluster by running ...

March 27, 2021 · Cosmin Trif
ESXi 7.0 patch versions listed, including standard and no-tools options.

Patching//Upgrading ESXi 7 to ESXi7U1 via esxcli

With the latest release of ESXi7U1 i wanted to get my lab up to date. I dont have enough resources in my lab to migrate the vCenter to another ESXi server so i want to perform the upgrade via cli. More details about the release can found here The first step was to open the firewall for outgoing traffic for http esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient Second step was to list the updates by executing ...

October 28, 2020 · Cosmin Trif
Failed to update bootloader due to no space left on device; refer to log for details.

ESXi No space left on device error when upgrading

While i was trying to perform an upgrade to my ESXi installation i ran in to the below error: The fix was pretty simple. The hypervisor doesnt have enough space to download and install the package so we need to enable one of the available datastores for the function. For vCenter go to the host in question to Configure -> System -> System Swap ...

October 28, 2020 · Cosmin Trif
Recent Tasks shows "Power On virtual machine" with "Insufficient resources" error.

vCLS not starting with Insufficient resources message

With the release of vCenter 7 Update 1, VMware introuced the vCLS (vSphere Clustering Service). More information can be found here. Looking at the error details it looks like it is looking for a feature called cpuid.mwait Reviewing the VMX file it seems like EVC is enabled on the vCLS VMs. I didnt want to enable EVC on the whole cluster so i wanted to do it only on the specific VMs. ...

October 10, 2020 · Cosmin Trif

Extracting SSL Thumbprint

I recently ran in to an issue where i had to re-register my NSX server with vIDM. The ask was to extract the Thumbprint from vIDM. The command i ran to extract it was: echo -n | openssl s_client -connect hostname:443 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -fingerprint -sha256 This can be used across multiple products where the Thumbprint needs to be extracted

October 10, 2020 · Cosmin Trif

vCenter update from the command line

Ive ran recently in to an issue where i couldnt perform an update from the admin UI, in order to get up and running i executed the following from a ssh shell. I was luky enough to find the documentation here /usr/lib/applmgmt/support/scripts/software-packages.py install --url Some of the additional options that could be used software-packages stage --url software-packages install --staged I like to perform the update from the command line because it gives me additional information that i might not be able to see in the UI ...

August 30, 2020 · Cosmin Trif
Login screen for VMware vCenter Server Management with update installation in progress.

vCenter Appliance Update installation is in progress

I recently ran in to an issue where the vCenter server appliance update timed out. Rebooting the vCenter server brought the server back up but i was unable to log in to the administration section due to an Update installation in progress error Doing some research i found that there is a file that holds this information fount at /etc/applmgmt/appliance/software_update_state.conf At this point all i had to do was edit the file using vi ...

August 30, 2020 · Cosmin Trif

Upgrading ESXi via command line

I recently ran in to a problem where i couldn’t update my esx server from the UI so i wanted to to it from the command line. After doing some research this is the way i was able to do it: Step 1 was to open the firewall by running: esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient Step 2 was to list the profiles available: esxcli software sources profile list -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep -i ESXi-7 or if i already have a bundle downloaded available: ...

August 27, 2020 · Cosmin Trif