Monday starts with the knowledge of plugin the new colored patchcables. Now you can see that the connections on a VI3 environment are important. The most machines are running well as a virtual machine.
One problem with the HA agents on esx002 is still there. All checks did not find where the problem is located. FQDN checked, hostsfiles, gateways, all OK (after changed the DNS record from exs002 in esx002 ) I decided to reinstall the server 2. Only 20 min need to a fresh server.
After the reinstall there was a strange problem: VM’s are running, but editing the virtual machine doesn’t work. Believe me: you can destroy easily a SAN VMFS by reinstalling the server with connected FC. Your local disc is the last found. Amazing that the VM’s still running and reachable by RDP. I have contacted Jan Willem Lammers from VMware. Ok, do nothing, VM’s are running because the files are locked. Only possible to P2V again a live running machine ore copy data out. Reboot will destroy the VM. We decided to roll back the old production machines. They are still there. No snapshot-software off the SAN is in use, so no recovering from snapshot is possible. Our P2V technique is improved. We wil again P2V the NT4 servers and Windows2000. Only the few Windows 2003 servers are saved from the LUN. (SQL server and Virtual Center server and w2k3 templates.)
6 new servers can be fast deployed from templates on the new installed VI3. Today the VI3 system is running fine including the HA. Also the extra dual port NICS are installed. The network is now redundant. We P2V the NT4 servers by coldboot with BartPE CD with Ghost. Move the Ghost image to a share on a Vitual server. Startup a Ghost VM with the same CD (ISO) and restore the image. Change the CD to the Coldboot CD from the VMwareconverter. Start the Ghost VM and P2V this server to the final VM. All is running on a fast server in the same ESX server. Actions are very fast: ca. 2 x 5 min for 6 Gb. After testing the server is migrated. Some servers could not P2V directly with Coldboot CD, because some servers run on a PC with 128 Mb memory. Minimum need is 280 Mb. In the Ghost VM you can install enough memory. This helper VM can be used for every image.
With new lessons learned, a new VI3 is reinstalled in 3 days. Nice training for the local IT staff (and me also). Do and don’ts.