power on virtual machine hangs at 0%

What if a task submitted from the Virtual infrastructure client hangs ?  Reboot the vmware management service with this command :

service mgmt-vmware restart

howto resize a disk in Vmware ESX

There are multiple ways to resize or enlarge a disk in Vmware ESX.

One way would be by using the vmware converter.  Easy!  This enlarges your disk both on the ESX as on Windows.

If you’re using ESX 3.5, you can resize the disk using the VI client, while the VM is online!  After this, you still have to resize the disk in Windows.  (or *nix.)

If you’re using a previous version of ESX, you can resize the disk with this command.

• vmkfstools –X 20000M /vmfs/volumes/volumename/machinename/xxx.vmdk
  where 20000M is the new size, not the amount you’re adding!
  

After this you still have to resize the volume by using a disk management / partition utility.  You could also boot with Bartpe and use diskpart, or add the disk to another VM, and run diskpart from there.

• diskpart
• list volume
• select volume X (x being the volume)
• extend

However you cannot resize the active boot volume.  In this case, boot with a BartPE cd of add the disk to another machine).

Another way is to resize the disk with vmkfstools, as described above, and then resize the disk in windows using extpart (tool from dell).  works on VM’s http://ftp.dell.com/app/ExtPart.exe

Another solution, would be to resize the disk with vmkfstools, and then resize the disk with Gparted.  You can download a bootcd here : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

Doesn’t matter how you do it, just always take a good backup!!!!

Howto get a list of port groups in VMWARE

I recently added an article on how to change the ipaddress of the service console.

But what if the service console has another name then service console?

you can get a list of all port groups by typing this command :

esxcfg-vswitch -l