VMware Horizon View – Remote Access Error : You are not entitled to use the system.

In one of the recent Horizon view project the client want to access VDI over Internet or VPN.

Security server is used in DMZ and the VPN users also land-up in DMZ with a different Subnet than used by servers in DMZ.

When they try to access using FQDN (view.domain.com) from Internet, they are asked for credentials. Once credentials are provided they are faced with the following error : “You are not entitled to use the system”Apart from Desktop Pool Entitlements, you have to add the users under “Remote Access” tab found in “Users and Groups” section (left navigation menu). These are the users whom you want to be able to access desktops over internet or VPN.

OVFTool.exe – Entry Point not found

An error that I came across when trying to deploy VCSA 6.5 on VMware Workstation 12
I did face this error before as well but instead of troubleshooting, I replaced workstation 12 with version 11.
For some reason I needed to switch to VMware Workstation 12 and here the error shows up again!

0271

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ESXi 6.0 Nested Lab–NIC not detected

In my nested lab of ESXi 6.0 on vmware workstation, the host was prepared using 4 NIC, the setup was a breeze as usual and no issues.

I needed few more NIC, and added them as usual.

Once the host is up, I check in vSphere web client, and unfortunately the NICs did not get detected. ( That’s what I thought 1st)

Upon check the KB1034782 I checked if host really did detected them or not by using lspci -v | grep -A1 -i ethernet

So, the output shows the New NICs were showing as AMD instead of Intel
I went ahead and to check what esxcfg-nics –l will show up.

What caught my eyes was the “Driver” Column showing value of e1000 for NICs what are detected.
Immediately I thought of checking .vmx file. What I found was an entry
ethernet1.virtualDev = “e1000”

This entry was available for detected NICs and un-detected NICs did not have it.
I added the entries for each NIC and rebooted the host.
Upon checking again, the NICs were detected

 

 

Synology DS1515+ SSD Cache (Read/Write)

As everything is real world has time limit, so does the HDD in my Synology DS1515+, one HDD failed and lost all of the entertainment media.
1515+ got 5 drive bays and had to use a single HDD for entertainment, truth is non of the data I put on synology really matters as its for vmware vSphere HomeLab!

Anyways, stories aside.

Got 2 x Kingston v300 240GB SSD for R/W cache to speed up my Lab. Though 240GB is not listed on Synology compatibility list, but 120GB v300 is listed here.

The Firmware is also different than what is listed for 120Gb v300 (FW: 605ABBF2)
SSD that I got are running on FW: 603ABBF0

I will not go into much details about the IOPS, throughput and all that.
What matters to me is that VM performance has improved to a good extent, nothing jaw dropping, but yes Guest OS is responding fast as compared to before. Got what I was expecting.

One thing that I noticed when using “SSD Cache Advisor” on Synology that I gives a vague message “The memory on your Synology NAS is full so it is not possible to create SSD cache” Though I have 8GB memory installed.
I ran Advisor with/without installed into bays. But it did finally create Cache volume.

There is requirement about RAM that you can read on Synology website here.

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Migrating vCenter 5.1 SQL Express to SQL 2008 R2 server using backup and restore method

I am using vSphere 5.1 and SQL Server 2008 R2, maybe soon I will work on 5.5 and SQL 2012 scenario and will update.
As mentioned I have a vCenter 5.1 server and a standalone SQL Server 2008 R2 in lab with 2 ESXi Hosts, these hosts are part of a cluster and connected to a distributed switch.

We will start with preparing SQL Server 2008 R2.
1. Configure Ports:
Using SQL Server configuration manager, we will change the dynamic port to static. Remove any entry present in IP1 “TCP Dynamic Ports” and enter 1433 for “TCP Port”. Same changes in IPAll (scroll down to end), after the changes are done we need to restart the SQL service.
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