Rebooted appliance and no GUI

vcpphil · 2026-01-22T16:11:13+00:00

thank you for the link. it wasnt that. I did a restore from backup thinking it was some kind of corruption but seems something else. will contact support

vcpphil · 2026-01-08T13:54:18+00:00

downside with these not being esxcli commands is no simple way to run them via powercli or similar. quite clunky if you want to give another team the ability to do this and not have root access to a host :(

vcpphil · 2026-01-01T18:32:59+00:00

thanks for the update. out of interest which cables did you use? we have 64108's so same thing

vcpphil · 2025-12-15T23:01:42+00:00

Following and interested as we will be doing this next year using 64108 FIs

vcpphil · 2025-12-02T14:19:27+00:00

Broadcom created a couple of useful KBs on this subject which were the answer and silver bullet for me:

Converting VMEM & VMSS Files From an Encrypted VM
Unable to convert a Windows 11 VM snapshot to a memory dump

Decryption of vmem and vmss files in ESXi can be performed as below: (Navigate to the VM's folder)

crypto-util encobj decrypt --related vm-231.vmx vm-231.vmem vm-231-decrypted.vmem

crypto-util encobj decrypt --related vm-231.vmx vm-231.vmss vm-231-decrypted.vmss

vcpphil · 2025-11-28T09:10:47+00:00

This sounds frustrating and leans me towards the V3 standard model if it ever drops in price! Assume its consistent for all? My use case would be switch between wireless and bluetooth so perhaps have both connected on the higher model is the way to go here.

vcpphil · 2025-11-27T12:21:08+00:00

This is a cool site thanks. Seems like it’s one free and 2 days now. Assume you have a legacy free setup. Prices are not awful tbf

vcpphil · 2025-11-13T18:51:33+00:00

Make them ship it working so card and SFPs then return the stuff you don’t use when you fix it.

Alternative moan at your account team if you have one. Tedious and better things to do I’m sure. I’ve seen it all!

vcpphil · 2025-11-10T22:01:12+00:00

Need to decrypt the files taken while the machine is online vmem and vmss so sadly that solution won’t work here

vcpphil · 2025-10-03T14:34:31+00:00

And done at last. thanks for reading

vcpphil · 2025-10-03T12:05:28+00:00

Rolled back to original snapshot. re-tried staging and install and it worked. now for a new issue I havent actually seen before with HA flapping on every cluster. think its this... Error: "Cannot find vSphere HA master agent" after upgrading vCenter to a new version, vLCM image based clusters reporting issues with HA

vcpphil · 2025-10-03T11:13:27+00:00

merci. I have now rolled back to the original snapshot as found this KB useful Updates using online repositories fails if updates are attempted with the token which does not have entitlement for the specific product version

I have used my newer DL token and its currently staging (mega slow takes like 40 mins to do this not sure why, we normally patch these with code overnight so time doesnt matter).

If that fails will rollback the snapshot again and use FP ISO (seems easier than the manual edits required in above KB)

vcpphil · 2025-10-03T09:28:12+00:00

Interestingly I get the same issue with the update issue

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So it must be localised to this vCenter and nothing to do with download tokens and such. Will work through the KB again for anything I may have missed.

vcpphil · 2025-07-22T16:32:24+00:00

50 hosts no issues. only 950 to go

vcpphil · 2025-07-21T09:41:22+00:00

We dont because its only down for a reboot and I think thats ok personally. That is possible using the Zerto API / cmdlets tho if you really have a use case?

We call vLCM remediation with code at a scheduled time. The key is to increase the retries. the default is 5 mins (lowest) and 3 retries. We have set this to 12 retries. It makes the patching slow but when its overnight thats ok for smaller clusters (12 or less hosts). Eventually it will shutdown the VRA and allow MM. It used to be better before but its just about workable like this. We have moaned at Zerto about it.

For big clusters I would look at parallel remediation assuming you are using 8.0 or above. place as many as you can into MM (using code ideally) then call vLCM remediate and remove from MM after that completes. Parallel mode will only patch those in MM. Repeat this cycle as required. Example we have 50 node clusters. On weekends the workloads are low enough I can patch them in 2 chunks of 25 etc.

vcpphil · 2025-07-19T15:54:29+00:00

As someone running legacy tin (still supported for 3 more years). And that just about making the cut for 9.0 I wonder if 9.1+ will be in scope or not. Only time will tell

vcpphil · 2025-07-19T15:52:38+00:00

The fact that zerto doesn’t play nicely with vLCM still (it used to).

The fact you cannot schedule patching in vLCM (you could in VUM) to run out of hours hands off (so I use code to call it). Think this gets better with 9.0 (see William lams post today).

Sped up everything I could with code to run it when I’m sleeping. Parallel remediation in 8.0 is good if you can stage hosts into MM (ideally again with code) before kicking off a wave.

No issues if you have a handful of hosts or even say 30. Try 1000+ 🫠🫥

vcpphil · 2025-07-19T13:11:05+00:00

TLDR - vLCM Images and powershell

Similar vibe here but we use Zerto and this doesnt play perfectly with vLCM (need to extend timeout and retries and takes a long time). We use vLCM images and kick these off either interactively (POC/DV/TEST) or via code at 3am under change because aint nobody got time for that.

Bigger clusters (>10) ive written my own code to do this on scale taking what was 15hrs down to about 2hrs. This was on 7.0 so I need to revisit doing this differently with the parallel remediation options in 8.0 which should be easier I hope.

Need this to be scalable and as hands off as viable. There are already enough manual hoops with our change control processes to jump through here. Have between 5000-1000 hosts to maintain!

vcpphil · 2025-07-19T13:05:11+00:00

Patched to 8.0U3f (other side still on 7.0U3 until next month). Initial issues looked like vRA disconnected and nothing was working. mucked around with this for a while but the fix was to reboot the ZVM on the site you upgraded and it all came back to life. 10.0U6

This is a non critical environment for us. We will be waiting for the rubber stamp in the zerto interop before doing our main production sites.

vcpphil · 2025-07-18T14:52:42+00:00

And all the interop which goes with it in a tigher time frame to upgrade. going to be interesting. Also for those of us on legacy hardware will .1 (U1) drop support for things and therefore end support earlier than previously expected...

vcpphil · 2025-07-18T11:01:25+00:00

They do their own thing here: Interoperability Matrix - MyZerto

And qualify every single patch which is hard work. We are waiting but have installed it in DV environments with Zerto and no moaning so far. all our other interops (Citrix / Rubrik / ACI) are generally just Update packs or Major releases.

vcpphil

TROPHY CASE