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New install of ESXi 6.5 creates VMFS5 datastore instead of VMFS6 !! To upgrade the ESX boot datastore to VMFS 6 version, please follow below steps !! 1. Note down the NAA ID of the data store. 2. Put ESX host into maintenance mode. 3. Unmount the data store from ESX host. 4. Delete the data store from ESX host.. 5. Go to ESX host and choose New Datastore option and re-add the same data store.  6.Choose type VMFS, give name, choose VMFS 6 version this time and finish the wizard. 7. Successfully upgrade the data store to VMFS 6.

How to upgrade the ESX data store from VMFS 5 to VMFS 6. Upgrading the VMFS 5 data store to VMFS 6 is quite simple. Follow below steps:- Note:- Before upgrade the data store  to VMFS 6 make sure all ESX host has been upgraded  to ESXi 6.5 version . 1. Migrate all VMs from the data store to another data store. 2. Move all ISO/Orphaned data from data store to another data store if exist. 3. Note down the NAA ID of the data store. 4. Unmount the data store from all ESX hosts. 5. Delete the data store. 6. Go to any ESX host and choose New Datastore option and re-add the same data store.  7.Choose type VMFS, give same name as earlier, choose VMFS 6 version this time and finish the wizard. 8. Successfully upgrade the data store to VMFS 6. 9. Move back the VMs to this data store.

ESX host is not able to scan the baseline and throw error like " Host cannot download files from VMware vSphere Update Manager patch store.  Check the network connectivity and firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details ." Check the ESXupdate log at /var/log/esxupdate.log location and will you find the error for this issue. There are multiple issue like firewall port block, DNS misconfiguration on ESX host, Primary DNS not reachable and secondary DNS not configured. 1. To check and resolve firewall port issue. Check if port 9084 is able to telnet from ESX host to update manager IP. Port 9084 should be allowed between ESX and VC/VUM server. Command:- # nc -z VC/VUM IP port number  #nc -z 10.10.10.5 9084 if port is not blocked the you will get output like " Connection to 10.10.10.5 9084 port [tcp/*] succeeded! " But if port is blocked then you will get output like " nc: connect to 10.10.10.5 port 9084 (tcp) failed: Connection timed ...

This is to update a vCSA 6.7 with Embedded PSC to 6.7 U1b version via CLI (Command Line Interface). 1. First download the 6.7 patch ISO from VMware portal. 2. Take a full backup of vCSA appliance. 3. Take a snaphsot with memory option of vCSA appliance. 4. Mount the downloaded patch ISO on vCSA appliance. 5. SSH vCSA appliance and check the current vCSA version as per below command. 6. Enable appliance shell via command-  chsh -s /bin/appliancesh root 6. Run the following command to stage the ISO. 7. Here, ISO mounted successfully but Root password of vCSA appliance expired. we need to change the password first before proceeding further. Reset Root password as per below command lines. 8. Password has been reset successfully, now Run the following command to stage the patches. 9. Run command to see the stage patches details like release date,version and build number etc. 10. Now, we are ready to install the patch package...

How many hosts can be managed by a cluster in vSphere 6.0? A single cluster can manage maximum 64 hosts How can maximum VMs be managed by a single cluster? A single cluster can manage the maximum of 8000 VMs. What is VVol? Virtual Volume a new VM disk management concept introduced in vSphere 6.0 that enables array-based operations at the virtual disk level. VVol is automatically created when a virtual disk is created in a virtual environment for a VM. How many licensing options for vSphere 6.0? There are three licensing options for vSphere 6.0: Standard Edition: Contains 1 vCenter Server Standard license, up to 2 vCPUs for Fault Tolerance, vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, VVols etc. Enterprise Edition: Same as Standard Edition additionally APIs for Array Integration and Multipathing, DRS, and DPM. Enterprise Plus: Includes all features of Standard and Enterprise Editions with additionally Fault Tolerance upto 4 vCPUs and 64GB of RAM. It also includes Distributed vS...

This article is for how to upgrade a ESXi 5.5 U3 to ESXi 6.5 via update manager. I know, upgrading a ESXi host via update manager is very easy task but you may face some issues while upgrading due to some incompatible "VIBs". To overcome from this situation, you need to manually remove these VIBs from ESXi host and then proceed further for upgrade. Below is the screenshots of errors. Below scan result showing compliance status as " Incompatible " not " non-compliant ". As per below screenshot, some vibs are conflicting and needs to be removed before upgrade. " Remove the conflicting VIBs or use Image Builder to create a custom upgrade ISO image that contains the newer versions of the conflicting VIBs, and try to upgrade again . " 1. Check the ESXi host hardware compatibility with ESXi 6.5. 2. Download ESXi 6.5 ISO from VMware portal. 3. Upload ISO in update manager. 4. Create a Host upgrade baseline with the ESXi 6.5 ISO. 5. Put...

What is VMKernel and why it is important? VMkernel is a virtualization interface between a Virtual Machine and the ESXi host which stores VMs. It is responsible to allocate all available resources of ESXi host to VMs such as memory, CPU, storage etc. It’s also controlled special services such as vMotion, Fault tolerance, NFS, traffic management and iSCSI. To access these services, VMkernel port can be configured on ESXi server using a standard or distributed vSwitch. Without VMkernel, hosted VMs cannot communicate with ESXi server. What is the hypervisor and its types? A hypervisor is a virtualization layer that enables multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host.  Each operating system or VM is allocated physical resources such as memory, CPU, storage etc by the host. There are two types of hypervisors Hosted hypervisor (works as application i-e VMware Workstation) Bare-metal (is virtualization software i-e VMvisor, Hyper-V which is installed direc...