Of course you can do this with the kill command: “kill -9 PID” …or you can do it in ESXTOP!

.) run ESXTOP
.) press “c” to open the CPU view
.) press “f” to add/remove fields
.) press “c” to add the field LWID Leader World Id (World Group ID)
.) press “k” to open the kill prompt:

.) type in the LWID from the target virtual machine
.) ENTER
.) wait 30 seconds and take care that the process is no longer listed

You want to learn more about ESXTOP?
Take a look at the “vSphere 5 ESXTOP quick overview for Troubleshooting”

You will find the release note for build 1087880 here, respectively you can download the Converter Standalone SDK 5.1 from here. In contrast to the past it is only available in English.

The new version has some interesting innovations:

• it supports Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
• support for machines with GUID Partition Table disks (GPT) – long awaited!
• and support for machines with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)
• support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
• support for virtual hardware version 9
• …

If you have to convert older operating systems (like Microsoft Windows Server 2000, NT,…) you should backup your older versions of VMware Converter Standalone, because this version is only supporting Microsoft Server 2003 and newer.

Links:

Releasenote VMware COnverter Standalone 5.1
Download VMware Converter Standalone SDK 5.1

You will find deeper information about the patch here: KB 2051212

You can apply the patch through VMware Update Manager as usual.

If you have to install it manually download the ZIP file and install the VIB using the command “esxcli software vib”.

If you search in the VMware Knowledge Base, you will find KB 1010574 (VMware support for USB/SD devices used for installing VMware ESXi) – but there is only a hint to use a device that is approved by the server vendor. Unfortunately it is very time consuming to search for this information on the vendors websites.

Therefore I have arranged a list where you will find information about supported devices from some well-known vendors.

If you have more information about supported devices from vendors not listed – please leave a comment or write me a short mail:

Hewlett Packard – HP:

HP 4GB SD Enterprise Performance Flash Media Kit #580387-B21

IBM:

Source: link to ibm.com

DELL:

You will find information about supported USB and SD devices in the VMware vSphere 5 on Dell PowerEdge and Storage Systems Compatibility Matrix at page 10.

Up to now seven new features were presented to the public:

#1 vCloud Director
#2 vSphere Web Client
#3 Veeam Explorer for MS SharePoint
#4 Virtual Lab for Hyper-V
#5 Archive to Tape
#6 Enhanced 1-Click Restore
#7 Virtual Lab for VMware Replicas

Feature number seven was the most exciting one for me. It enables you to create a functional but isolated copy of your production environment – or as Veeam says: Put your replicas to work.

If you take a look at the blog post you will see how this feature works. Veeam is using a Proxy Appliance which supports masquerading. Therefore, it is possible to connect to the virtual lab from your production network, but there is no chance for the Lab-VMs to establish a connections back as they are completely isolated.

Think about the opportunities this feature will offer to you:

• test new policies, patches and upgrades in a copy of your production environment without fear
• train and instruct new colleagues in a live environment
• troubleshoot issues without endangering your production
• try new software
• …

In the next days Veeam will announce some more new features – you can sign up for updates here: Veeam Backup & Replications v7.

Registration is already open – so do not hesitate to convince your boss that VMworld 2013 is a must-to-visit event for everyone working with the products from VMware.

Here are some top reasons why you should not miss VMworld 2013 this year:

• nowhere else you will get deeper information about virtualization and cloud computing technologies

• Get access to the Hands-on-Labs (HOLs) – try new and established products in an interactive learning environment

• learn more about VMware’s visions for the future in the General Sessions

• get in touch with the experts: a lot of experts from different vendors are available to answer your questions

• networking… meet with peers from around the world and across the industry

• Solutions exchange: discover the hottest virtualization trends, presented by more than 250 companies

• last but not least – have a great time at the VMworld Party and enjoy the city of Barcelona!

Open an ESXi shell or a SSH connection to your ESXi Host and type the following command:

esxcli storage core device vaai status get

Now you will get an detailed view which VAAI primitives are supported or not supported.

Can I use vCenter to display the VAAI status, too?

Yes. If you take a look at your vCenter (configuration tab – Storage) you will see the VAAI status from your datastores, too. Unfortunately it is not a very granular view because…

…if Hardware Acceleration is “supported”, it means, that all four primitives are supported.

…if you see “unsupported”, it means, that none of the primitives is supported.

…and last but not least you may see “unknown” – this means that one or more (but not all four) primitives are supported.

As long as the Hardware Acceleration Status is supported or unsupported there is no need to use the command line tool. But if the status is “unknown” and you need more information, the esxcli command will be the best way for you.

It is not really a feature – more a bug – but it was very helpful in the past. Till vSphere 5 Update 2 a Storage vMotion renamed the virtual machine files and folder to match with the display name in vCenter.

With vSphere 5 Update 2 this “bug” was fixed by VMware, although this was not entirely welcomed by the community.

But as you can see in the release notes, this will change now:

vSphere 5 Storage vMotion is unable to rename virtual machine files on completing migration
In vCenter Server, when you rename a virtual machine in the vSphere Client, the VMDK disks are not renamed following a successful Storage vMotion task. When you perform a Storage vMotion task for the virtual machine to have its folder and associated files renamed to match the new name, the virtual machine folder name changes, but the virtual machine file names do not change.

This issue is resolved in this release. To enable this renaming feature, you need to configure the advanced settings in vCenter Server and set the value of the provisioning.relocate.enableRename parameter to true.

Thank you very much, VMware!!!

Release notes vSphere 5.1 Update 1

“A specified parameter was not correct. spec.synchronizeImmediately”

Solution/Workaround:

Uncheck “Remove System Restore checkpoints on destination” in the VMware Converter Standalone Wizzard (Options – Post-conversion):

“The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing. The error code was: 5 The error message was: ‘VssSyncStart’ operation failed: IDispatch error #8472 (0×80042318)”

If you are in the same situation, just try to re-register the VSS components. No reboot is required – just run the following commands (copy them into a notepad and save it in a .bat file):

cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
regsvr32 /s ole32.dll
regsvr32 /s oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 /s vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /s /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /s /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 /s es.dll
regsvr32 /s stdprov.dll
regsvr32 /s vssui.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml4.dll
vssvc /register
net start swprv
net start vss

When you try to backup the VM after running the script again, it will hopefully work: