I wanted to share this handy script i created when you have a need to extend a disk.

This script can be extremely handy as it will take care of extending the VMDK and then going to the OS and then performing the expansion there as well. This has been helpful when needing to extend a large batch of servers (60+).

Syntax: .\ExtendVMDKandGuest VMNAME

You will then be prompted to enter in the Hard Disk #, the size you want to be extended, and then which drive letter that volume belongs to.

I thought I would share this script, its been circulating a bit but I feel it is a nice one to have in your toolkit.

Have you ever had to remove a LUN from a cluster and thought “Do I really need to detach all the LUN’s, before un-mapping from my SAN?”

1. Unmount Datastore
2. Detach LUN
3. Un-map from SAN
4. Rescan Cluster

Well here is a handy script with output. All you need to do is unmount your datastore(s), and then enter in your naaid of your LUN’s and the cluster you want to remove it from, save it an execute. All the LUN’s will be detached without having to manually …

So as always things change across multiple Window’s operating systems and VMware revisions. I had a need to extend the drives on about 50 VMs today and really didn’t want to do all that clicking. I remember awhile back it was easy to do this with a Basic Set-Harddisk and use the -ResizeGuestPartition but alas that has been removed from the current functionality. So I took my search to google and found a couple scripts that worked ok, but nothing that was a seamless experience.

I use a customized version of http://www.virtu-al.net/vcheck-pluginsheaders/vcheck/ by Alan Renouf to connect to multiple servers. However a coworker of mine was trying to run it, and the script would only return data from the 2nd vCenter we were connecting to.

Doing some troubleshooting we noticed their DefaultVIServerMode was set to single. This means that only a single servers connection will occur at once. Changing this setting is very easy, there are 3 scopes, but only one really needs to be set. You can review the 3 scope options …

I had a need to enable CPU and Memory hotadd to many virtual machines prior to a template being updated, doing some research there is no easy way, however there are some functions out there to do it. You can copy and paste each function into a powershell window and then run the associated command.

1Enable-MemHotAdd $ServerName
2Disable-MemHotAdd $ServerName
3Enable-vCPUHotAdd $ServerName
4Disable-vCPUHotAdd $ServerName

Enable Memory HotAdd

1Function Enable-MemHotAdd($vm){
2$vmview = Get-vm $vm | Get-View
3$vmConfigSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
4$extra = New-Object …

We had a strange issue that any time a VM was snapshotted it then forced a reboot and sysprep. Reviewing the customization logs(C:\windows\temp\vmware-imc\guestcust.log) I noticed the following error..Unable to set customization status in vmx.

Upon further research it seems this is a known issue and is resolved in ESXi 5.1 Express Patch 5 KB2077640 as referenced in this article KB2078352.

However the hotfix only fixes future occurences, you still need to fix all the VMs affected. See below for the powercli script I created to connect to all my vcenters, get VM’s that are affected and …

Thank you to everyone who listened to me on the EMEA vBrownbag. Here are copies of documentation and scripts on how to configure ESXi to use the remote dump collector.

Check the ESXi Dump Collector Configuration Example:

1Foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost)){
2$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -vmhost $vmhost
3$esxcli.system.coredump.network.get()}

Setting the ESXi Dump Collector Example:

1Foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost)) {
2$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -vmhost $vmhost
3$esxcli.system.coredump.network.set($null, “vmk0″, “IPtoDumpCollector″, “6500″)
4$esxcli.system.coredump.network.set($true)}

Thank you to everyone who listened to me on the EMEA vBrownbag. Here are copies of documentation and scripts on how to configure ESXi to use the Syslog collector.

Check the ESXi Syslog Collector Configuration Example:

1Foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost)){
2$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -vmhost $vmhost
3$esxcli.system.syslog.config.get()}

Setting the ESXi Syslog Collector Example:

1Foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost)){
2$esxcli = Get-EsxCli -vmhost $vmhost
3$esxcli.system.syslog.config.set($null, $null, $null, $null,"udp://IPtoSyslogServer:514″)
4$esxcli.system.syslog.reload()}

Post-Installation …

For upcoming testing there was a need to create 140 datastores on a cluster for testing. Who wants to do that much clicking and typing? Not me! You can use the below PowerCLI commands to get the SCSI ID’s,  Create the Datastore and then Rescan all hosts in the cluster.

How do i get the CanonicalName for allocated disks?

1Get-SCSILun -VMhost 192.168.1.103 -LunType Disk | Select CanonicalName,Capacity

How do I create a VMFS datastore for the CanonicalName I identified above?

1New-Datastore -VMHost Host -Name Datastore -Path CanonicalName -VMFS

How do i rescan all the hosts in the cluster …

This is a great script to keep handy. If you have multiple RDM’s on a VM and need to get the NAA_ID for them the below PowerCLI command will get you that information.

1Get-VM VMNAME| Get-HardDisk -DiskType "RawPhysical","RawVirtual" | Select Parent,Name,DiskType,ScsiCanonicalName,DeviceName,CapacityGB | fl

If you then need to match the SCSI virtual disk to the Guest OS this is a great article on how to do so.

KB2051606