esxcli

esxupdate Error Code 99

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So I’ve got a VMware ESXi 6.0 host that’s been causing me pain lately. It had some storage issues, and now it won’t let VMware Update Manager scan it, throwing the error: The host returns esxupdate error code:99. An unhandled exception was encountered. Check the Update Manager log files and esxupdate log files for more details. A little Google action later and it’s clear there isn’t a lot of documentation, recent or otherwise, about this out there. People suggest rebuilding Update Manager, or copying files from other hosts to repair them. The VMware KB has documentation of the particular error but only in context of the Cisco Nexus 1000V, and only for ESXi 5.0 and 5.1. Here’s another thought, if you’re …

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Change the Default PSP in VMware vSphere 5

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One thing I do to my VMware ESXi hosts is set the default Path Selection Policy (PSP) for certain Storage Array Type Plugins (SATPs) to do the right thing. This eliminates my need to reconfigure each datastore’s multipath settings on each host, and helps guarantee that a new LUN added by someone other than me will function correctly from the start. Consider it part of my “make it easy to do the right thing” sysadmin mantra. This has been covered by others at various points for older vSphere versions, but the vMA & esxcli changed some with version 5, so here are the commands I use. I have two different arrays, one that is active/active without a specific SATP (so …

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Use 'for' Loops with the vSphere Management Assistant

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The VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) claim to fame is that it has a UNIX shell and the vSphere CLI installed, making it handy for a lot of things, and makes cutting & pasting comands real easy when it’s paired with a decent SSH client. One of my favorite ways to use it is with ‘for’ loops in the shell, to make the same change to all of my ESXi hosts. Let’s say you have a list of servers you want to make a change to, like using esxcli to set the HBA queue depth. My list is a text file I create in nano or vi (see my post on installing nano on the vMA), one host per line: …

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