VMware Knowledge Base Blog

One aspect of virtual machines that often leads to confusion is the snapshot. What is a snapshot? How do snapshots work? What products use the snapshot feature? What files are involved in snapshots?

These questions and more are all discussed in the new Knowledgebase article: Understanding virtual machine snapshots in VMware ESX. This is a fairly big topic so many links are provided to other relevant information.

Ever Since Windows 7 has come out we've been seeing a lot of customer interest in running the vSphere Client on it. The same goes for Windows 2008 R2. The trouble is, Microsoft changed the .Net loading mechanism in these releases, breaking our vSphere Client.

We have just posted a Knowledgebase article which outlines how to deal with this change and make the client work.

One caveat: watch for the warning that one of the workarounds is not officially supported.

Read: Cannot launch vSphere Client after installing in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 (1011329).

Licensing is by far, the most misunderstood, confusing, and sometimes frustrating part of vSphere and vCenter, and generates a ton of calls into support. And we've noticed. Today the Knowledgebase Team released another video KB: Licensing ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0  We anticipate this KB will become a heavy-hitter before long.

If you are:

• Unable to remove ESX 4.0/ESXi 4.0 from Evaluation Mode
• Unable to upload the license file for vSphere
• Unable to connect vSphere 4 to vCenter Server
• Unable to activate vSphere

…proceed directly to Licensing ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0 (1010839). The KB guides you through steps to add, assign, and remove the licenses of  ESX 4.0, ESXi 4.0, and vCenter 4.0, in video form with accompanying detailed test instructions.

You are welcome to leave your Star rating and/or feedback in any KB including this one.  Enjoy!!

All VMware Fusion users take note, two new KB articles we just posted today deal with two common problem customers are currently experiencing with upgrades from Windows XP to Windows 7, as well as the creation of new VMs using media. This is generating a spike in calls to our call center. If other customers are running into these problems, there's a good chance you are too.

If you are experiencing this:

• You cannot install Windows on a newly created virtual machine.
• A PXE boot screen displays during the creation of a new virtual machine.
• A newly created virtual machine does not recognize Windows installation media when booting

  then proceed to this KB: Cannot install Windows on a newly created virtual machine (1015406)

On the other hand, if you are experiencing these symptoms:

• Unable to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.
• Errors during or after upgrade process from Windows XP to Windows 7

  then proceed directly to: Upgrading a VMware Fusion virtual machine from Windows XP to Windows 7 (1015396)

Here is our monthly update of the Top 20 KB articles for the month of October, based on use by customers.

1. Upgrading to ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices (1009039)
2. Restarting the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server (1003490)
3. Downloading and Installing VMware Fusion (1005466)
4. Uninstalling, reinstalling, and upgrading VMware Fusion (1014529)
5. Best practices for using and troubleshooting VMware Converter (1004588)
6. Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (1003212)
7. Powering off a virtual machine on an ESX host (1004340)
8. Upgrading an ESX 3.x virtual machine to ESX 4.0 (1010675)
9. Increasing the amount of RAM assigned to the ESX Server service console (1003501)
10. Virtual machine does not power on because of missing or locked files (10051)
11. Recreating a missing virtual disk (VMDK) header/descriptor file (1002511)
12. Troubleshooting VMware High Availability (HA) (1001596)
13. Installing ESX 4.0 and vCenter 4.0 best practices (1009080)
14. Decoding Machine Check Exception (MCE) output after a purple screen error (1005184)
15. A CPU of the host is incompatible error appears and VMotion stops working after upgrading to vSphere 4.0 (1011294)
16. Virtual machine memory usage alarms triggered for virtual machines when guest operating system memory usage is low (1013206)
17. Resignaturing VMFS3 volumes from VMware Infrastructure Client (9453805)
18. FAQ: Supported/Unsupported Devices and Configurations (1184)
19. Pegasus (cimserver) memory leaks reported in ESX 3.5 Update 2 and later (1009607)
20. Committing snapshots when there are no snapshot entries in the snapshot manager (1002310)

VMware Fusion® 3 launched just two days ago and we're starting to hear some comments in social media circles. There are tons of accolades and we appreciate everyone saying how much they love the new release!

As with any product however there might be an annoyance here or there that we didn't think about. Here's an example Tweet we heard this morning:

Don't like how VMWare Fusion 3 adds a menu bar item that I can't get rid of

That was enough for the Knowledgebase Team to spring into action to publish a new KB on how to turn this menu bar item off. Some people want the control of whether they want to see this icon or not, and we did put this option into the product. It's just not obvious how to change this setting.

Presenting KB article: Modifying the VMware Fusion 3 menu bar item

We went one step further and also created related KB: Understanding Unity and the Windows System Tray in Fusion 3 (1015362) in case there is any confusion about that change to the product too.

Hopefully these two KB articles will help many of you get Fusion setup just the way you want it, so you can get down to really using it. We are committed to monitoring social networks for customer feedback about our products, and responding. We benefit directly from your reactions to our products – so please keep up the chatter!

Follow us on Twitter!

@vmwareKB
@VMwareCares

On October 27th VMware launched VMware Fusion® 3 as well as Workstation 7. Unfortunately, our servers were not up to the task of dealing with the demand. Not only that, customers were not able to retrieve their serial keys or access the Licensing site. It was like a perfect storm was brewing.

While our IT Teams scurried to resolve the issues, the Knowledge Base Team too responded by creating an up-to-the-minute live document:

Alert: Licensing and upgrading VMware Fusion 3.0 / VMware Workstation 7

This KB article is still being updated as new information becomes available. If you have been affected by this, please read the KB. If you know how to spread the word to your friends and colleagues, please do so.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

UPDATE: Please read the Fusion Team's Response here…

You may already be familiar with our popular KB article: VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 Comparison (1006543).  A lot of you weren't quite sure of which product had which specific feature. We know you all love wading through our marketing material but some of you are strangely drawn to just plain facts.

Just for you folks, we have created a new KB which talks about the latest version of VMware ESX and ESXi, that is, version 4. The article provides a detailed comparison of VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0. It is separated into capabilities or features and compared at that level.

Here you go, enjoy!: VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0 Comparison (1015000)

We have an announcement today!

The VMware Knowledge Base now features Answer Wizards!

What is an answer wizard you ask? An Answer Wizard is an easy-to-use tool that guides you through the process of resolving your problem.  You start by picking the problem that most closely resembles your problem. After that, you are guided through a series of checks and tests in a logical order to help resolve your problem in the simplest way.

Look for the new link to the Answer Wizards on the main Knowledgebase page shown here to get started.

Watch for the number of Answer Wizards available to grow as we roll this out!

Mac OS X (10.5 and above) includes Time Machine, a utility that makes backups of all changed files on your Macintosh HD. This is suitable for Mac files, but many customers are unaware that Time Machine is not a suitable solution for virtual machine files. If you have ever tried restoring a VM from a Time Machine backup it will most likely fail.

Below are some highly recommended Knowledgebase articles that address these very issues for Mac users and help you backup your virtual machines.