8.0U2 – en.vmik.net

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2b is out

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2b is out and contains a lot of bug fixes. One of the fixes I want to mention is a bug in CBT:

Changed Block Tracking (CBT) might not work as expected on a hot extended virtual disk:

In vSphere 8.0 Update 2, to optimize the open and close process of virtual disks during hot extension, the disk remains open during hot extend operations. Due to this change, incremental backup of virtual disks with CBT enabled might be incomplete, because the CBT in-memory bitmap does not resize, and CBT cannot record the changes to the extended disk block. As a result, when you try to restore a VM from an incremental backup of virtual disks with CBT, the VM might fail to start.

As a workaround, there were two options: not to use hot extend and perform disk extend operations when the VM is powered off, or create periodically full backups to reset the CBT.

So, if you’re running ESXi version 8.0 Update 2, you should consider updating to the 8.0 Update 2b as soon as possible.

You can read about other release notes here.

Protecting vCenter Server using vCenter HA functionality

In some cases, when we need a highly available vCenter Server, we can use vCenter HA functionality. In short – it’s a second copy of your vCenter VM (and a witness node), with configured replication between active vCenter node and passive vCenter node.

If something happens to the active node, the standby node will take over the entire process and it will reduce the overall downtime of the vCenter Server.

Let’s look at how to enable vCenter HA, and what we need to do.

Backing up and restoring VMware vCenter Server. Part 2 – Veeam Backup and Replication

In the previous article, we talked about how to restore vCenter using native backup. In this part, we will talk about how to restore VMware vCenter Server using Veeam Backup and Replication.

Although restoring a VM using Veeam is a simple task, but when we are talking about vCenter Server a few moments should be considered.

Let’s get started.

Quick Tip: How to change the MAC address on a vSphere VM by editing the VMX file

Someone may know that a vSphere 8.0 Update 2 bug prevents you from setting a static MAC address for a VM (KB 95189).

The symptom is simple – you change the MAC address in the VM’s network interface settings, but after you click OK, nothing changes.

As a workaround, there is a solution – do the same using vSphere Host Client (ESXi Web interface). But in my case, this workaround doesn’t help, I’ve received an error:

Failed to reconfigure virtual machine pleasechangemymac. Invalid configuration for device '4'.

If you are in this situation and you need to change a VM MAC address, one good old hack still works – edit the VM’s VMX file.

Next – how to change the MAC address.

Backing up and restoring VMware vCenter Server. Part 1 – Native backup

vCenter server is a critical part of the VMware infrastructure stack, and most components and 3rd-party solutions depend on it. Although downtime of vCenter may not cause a problem with overall infrastructure and will not cause a VMs downtime, it will affect the provision of new resources, management, backups, and so on. So, keeping your vCenter up and running is a priority task in most cases.

In the few articles, we will look at how to backup and restore the vCenter server, if something goes wrong. There are a few strategies for protecting the vCenter server, but all of them depend on the required availability of the service. It can be backup, replication, vCenter HA functionality, or even deploying a new vCenter and connecting hosts manually.

We will look at two options – backup and restore vCenter using the native backup function and backup and restore vCenter using 3rd party backup software.

In this article, we will take a closer look at how to backup vCSA using native backup, available in VAMI.

Updating the VMware vCenter server from version 8.0 U1 to 8.0 U2 using the Reduced Downtime Upgrade procedure

With the announcement of vSphere 8.0 Update 2 a new interesting feature called vCenter Reduced Downtime Update (RDU) was introduced.

This feature can reduce overall vCenter Server downtime during updates and upgrades.

In a nutshell, RDU is a vLCM feature that creates a new already updated vCenter Server virtual machine and copies all data from running vCenter to the new copy. After data is copied, all we need to do is to switch over to the updated copy of vCenter. Switchover takes less time than the full upgrade procedure and minimizes the downtime of vCenter.

In this article, we will look at how to update the vCenter server from version 8.0 Update 1 to version 8.0 Update 2 using RDU.

VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 2 is out

VMware vSphere 8.0 Update 2 is out with a number of interesting features. If you don’t know what’s new in this release you can start with What’s new article, released right after the announcement of U2.

Release notes for vCenter Server 8.0 Update 2 are here.

Release Notes for ESXi 8.0 Update 2 are here.

Please note, that at the time of writing this post, vCenter Server was released as GA (General Availability) and ESXi was released as IA (Initial Availability). You can read about the differences between GA and IA here.