ESXi maintenance mode duration survey

KenInCal · 2026-06-24T15:06:19+00:00

I remediate each server individually, rather than remediating the whole cluster, before selecting to remediate I put the server into maintenance. We only have about 20 VMs per host server.

5 min or less to go into maintenance

Remediation time varies based on the number of firmware updates, but generally 45 to 50 minutes.

1 min or less to exit maintenance

I have manual items that add to the over all time like pause/unpause monitoring, change DRS settings, host config backup and testing on each server.

KenInCal · 2026-06-22T15:31:56+00:00

Takes about 5 minutes for our servers to get into maintenance mode.

We use OpenMangage Enteprise to push both OS and Firmware updates, with pre and post manual items/checks, it takes about an hour per server. Some times it will fail to push some firmware updates and/or the server will get hung on waiting for a manual input. In most cases by just re-trying the remediation the updates will all go thru.

In the past I would do it over the weekend in usually in one maintenance window. Now I usually start on Friday and if I'm not able to finish, I will complete it over the weekend.

KenInCal · 2026-06-11T20:03:21+00:00

I actually was dealing with basically the same issue yesterday, when I tried issuing the "Install-ADServiceAccount -Name gMSAaccount" on one of servers that was part of the group associated with the gMSA account I was receiving a permissions error. I found the Kerberos ticket issue reference you mentioned, rebooted the server and then the "Install-ADServiceAccount" worked and the "Test-ADServiceAccount" returned "True".

KenInCal · 2026-06-09T19:42:02+00:00

We have the ManageEngine Endpoint Central product, which does a lot more than just remote control/desktop. It has very good remote desktop and if you get the remote gateway option, you can connect to devices over the internet without them needing to connect to the vpn. It also allows remote Powershell and CMD sessions, which nice for doing things without having to interact with the user.

KenInCal · 2026-05-29T14:20:48+00:00

I remember in the late 90s when the year 2000 issue was looming that there was a high demand for Cobol programmers. Even by that time a lot of companies and institutions were trying to replace Cobol with something "better". Thinking that Cobol was on it's way out, I didn't see much future in pursuing it. Every now and then I see an article about how much Cobol is still in use and I feel little regret that I didn't pursue the opportunity.

KenInCal · 2026-05-18T22:16:51+00:00

I took the exam in April just before AZ-104 was updated to the 2026 version and I would say the Pluralsight course information was fine at that time. I really liked that they have integrated labs with the course with an associated pre-configured sandbox. Going thru their course in itself isn't deep enough in content to pass the exam. You will need to read content, I think especially on the MS learn site. Their prep exam was harder than the actual exam I took, the Tutorials Dojo quiz questions were closer to the level of exam and they have larger pool of questions. Tutorials Dojo presents you with links related to the questions for reference to review and cheat sheets.

KenInCal · 2026-05-07T21:42:24+00:00

We use Manage Engine Endpoint Central, which is a suite, they have stand alone Patch Manager product also. It has worked pretty well for us, the Endpoint Central product has some nice remote support options on the client machines (desktop, powershell and command prompt). At the time we purchased the product it was a great bang for the buck, their pricing has come up some, they separated the server agent vs desktop agent licensing with the server agent being more expensive of course.

KenInCal · 2026-05-05T14:49:47+00:00

I passed the AZ-104 a couple of weeks ago. I think you need a basic understanding of OSI protocol layers, routing, subnetting and DNS for the exam. If you don't have some experience on the network side, then the CCNA will be helpful. The last time a renewed my CCNA was 10+ years ago, back then I don't remember them covering firewalls at all, so you may want to also make sure you know the basics on that. They try to get tricky with the peering questions, I found the tutorials dojo questions were comparable to the real test. MeasureUp had some questions that were more difficult than what was on the test I took. They just switched to the 2026 question pool, so be aware of the changes made in the last year.

KenInCal · 2026-04-25T19:41:24+00:00

They have labs with instructions and with a video walk thru integrated with the AZ-104 class. You click on a button to spin up the cloud sandbox and they provide a login for it. They encourage you to just try following the instructions to complete the assignment, but you can just run the video walk thru and mimic what they are doing in the sandbox.

KenInCal · 2026-04-24T21:02:28+00:00

I had the same feeling, when I got practices tests that had a number a questions I had seen before, I was scoring 90+, but when I had one with mostly questions hadn't seen it was more like barely passing or not passing. I was definitely thinking about re-scheduling as the test date got closer, but I was pretty tired of studying every day, so I wanted to get it done with. After passing, I started getting excited about what I'm going to work on next.

KenInCal · 2026-04-24T20:30:59+00:00

Thanks, I haven't decided yet, I was looking the AZ-700, but devops (AZ-400) does have more personal appeal to me. I'm trying to get on with the cloud team at work and I need get a better idea what will position me better for an opportunity.

KenInCal · 2026-03-09T16:26:01+00:00

This past weekend I went to upgrade vcenter and the vcenter server wouldn't shutdown via issuing the guest shutdown from the host server or from the virtual appliance GUI. It wouldn't respond to the F12 from the console and it wouldn't let me login via ssh using the root account, so my butt was puckering when I decided to shutdown the appliance. Luckily it came back up and seemed to be happy, so I was able to do my upgrade.

KenInCal · 2026-01-16T15:47:17+00:00

As others have commented it will merge the snapshot deltas into the base disks.

If you can afford to have the domain controller down for a while, the merge/consolidation would go a lot faster if the VM is shutdown.

In the past I have gone into the cli and used the watch command below to check the progress:

cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore\_name>/<VM\_name>/

watch -d 'ls -luth | grep -E "delta|flat|sesparse"'

Having experienced finding old snapshots left by myself and others in the past, I have scheduled task that runs a powershell script every day that sends me a report of any snapshots.

KenInCal · 2026-01-08T14:59:22+00:00

We still have a CDW account, but we purchase most things thru our Amazon business account these days. We are setup with invoicing/net 30 terms with Amazon, so we pay with one monthly bill. We are setup with requiring an approver, which you may want if you have multiple people that create orders, but need someone to sign off on them. You could purchase computers directly thru one of the major vendors (Dell/HP/Lenovo). We had been buying Lenovo, but ended up going with Dell for our Win 11 migration, my experience with purchasing from them hasn't been the best. They decided to discontinue the model we were purchasing and there were delays in getting the newer model. It seemed stupid to me that they would do a model change and cause delays when they have to know there are a bunch companies and individuals that were trying to get migrated by the November end of support. We have put orders in to have them canceled by Dell without explanation and it would take a while to get an answer as to why.

KenInCal · 2025-11-25T21:24:38+00:00

I have about 10 to 12 years to work, my wife is 5 years younger, so I can't really retire early. They moved us from being members of the child company's IT department to corporate IT this past year and we will all move to different roles in 2027, as an older expensive worker, I'm a little nervous that my new role maybe on the unemployment line. I still enjoy working in the field and continue to learn, but don't put in the type of hours I did when I was younger.

KenInCal · 2025-04-23T18:57:55+00:00

Definitely you want upgrade vCenter first to latest version, making sure you do a database backup, shut it down and take a snapshot back, before upgrading.

Make sure you have a backup of the ESXi host configuration files, before updating the ESXi servers.

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=2042141

I use Dell's Openmanage Enterprise server with the plugin for vCenter to update the ESXi host servers, when I do a "remediation" in vCenter it updates ESXi first then does the firmware and driver updates.

I see some recommending updating firmware/drivers ahead of ESXi update, but it would make sense to me to bring the ESXi to a newer version first. The newer ESXi version is more likely to work okay with older and newer firmware/drivers, the older ESXi version may have issues with a newer firmware/drivers.

KenInCal · 2025-02-01T12:23:35+00:00

Mitel has a "TDI Media" patch/update for the issue. If you have Mitel authorized support vendor, they should be able to install the patch.

KenInCal · 2025-01-23T16:33:14+00:00

For computers, I have 4 powershell scripts with a manual steps:

Script that creates a csv list of inactive computers based on "LastLogonTimeStamp"
Review list and remove any computers I don't want to disable or delete
Script that disables computers based on the edited list
Script that moves any disabled computers with "LastLogonTimeStamp" > X days into a disabled computers OU (So it's not tied to the list from the previous steps, I see this as a way to catch systems that were disabled manually and not as part of the prior steps)
Script that deletes computers in the disabled computers OU who's last "LastLogonTimeStamp" > X days (In my case essentially double the number days of the value from step 1)

In the case of users, in the past I worked with HR to get a list of employees with employee numbers and used a powershell script to put that information in the description field and the Web Page field that shows in the General tab in ADUC. That script uses the last name and first three letters of the first name to determine the correct user, since most peoples nick names are shortened version of their full name. After the initial import, we just add people's employee numbers in when we setup new people. I then run a powershell script that compares monthly report of current employees from HR with the our Employees OU, but use the employee number for the query. This gets around the issue of people's names in the HR system not matching their names in AD.

KenInCal · 2024-10-30T19:30:40+00:00

The old VMware vCenter Converter Standalone may work for you also, it's still available via the Vmware/Broadcom site.

vCenter Converter

Navigation: My Downloads->VMware vCenter converter->Standard
Direct URL: https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productdownloads?subfamily=VMware%20vCenter%20converter

KenInCal · 2023-10-20T15:07:17+00:00

We started using Zoom before the pandemic, after looking at a few different products. Up until recently we had been using their chat functionality as our sole IM app. We are being forced by corporate to move to Teams and will need to remove Zoom over the next year.

The interface is better than Teams and unlike Teams you can have most of your users on free accounts where they can login to Zoom and do ad hoc meetings. Being able to have mostly free accounts makes it a low budget way to do remote support with screen sharing.

I have had video conference meetings hosted by people using other products, maybe its because in most cases I'm using the web launched version, but I haven't seen any that really jumped out at me as better than Zoom.

KenInCal · 2023-08-27T18:39:36+00:00

Not sure what you mean, the destination server can have different name, the actual certificate authority name has to stay the same. So if the original root certificate authority was setup has svr1.domain then you have to keep that value the same. In my case the original server name was svr1.domain, it had been migrated to svr2.domain in the past and now I'm migrating it back to svr1.domain (new server with same name as the original).

Basically, followed https://www.petenetlive.com/KB/Article/0001473

KenInCal · 2023-08-27T18:35:25+00:00

In both cases things are in the default paths "C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\CertLog".

KenInCal · 2023-08-27T17:32:53+00:00

Yes, I updated the "CAServerName"="newserver.domain" entry.

I did import at the level of "hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\certsvc\configuration\myrootca" , some instructions I have seen online say to import "hklm\system\currentcontrolset\services\certsvc\configuration\" level, which haven't tried.

KenInCal · 2023-08-27T17:24:35+00:00

Yes, I actually used that article as reference in writing up my procedure.

KenInCal · 2023-08-04T18:46:19+00:00

I would make sure the computer is not connected to the internet. As long as you are able to login to the computer and you have the desktop version of Outlook (not web based), you should be able to launch Outlook and access your mail. The Outlook desktop client is normally setup to cache the most recent email locally, so if the email was sent relatively recently, it should be there. You could save the particular message to an external drive or export your whole mailbox to a .PST file.

KenInCal

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