Note to Self:

Sometimes I get a stuck or repeating task that prevent’s operations.  This seams to clear it up almost every time:

service mgmt-vmware restart

service vmware-vpxa restart

I don’t think servers should ever need to be rebooted.  I have a cluster set up with VMotion, but I just don’t like the idea that I need to reboot the server to stop one VM.  That’s why I got so frustrated when one of my VM’s got a repeating message saying the redo log was corrupt.  Every time I clicked OK, I got the same message.  Normally I would need to reboot the host and remove the redo logs.  Here is a better way I found on a blog:
1. Log into your box and find the VM.
#cat /proc/vmware/vm/*/names

2. Your VM will have a 4 digit number.  Then, find the ID to kill (replace 1111 with your number):
# less /proc/vmware/vm/1111/cpu/status

3. Under “group” find the vm.2222. Then type this command to kill the machine:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmkload_app -k 9 2222

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For ESX 4:

1. List all running virtual machines to find the vmxCartelID of the affected virtual machine with the command:

   # /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmdumper -l

2. Scroll through the list until you see your virtual machine’s name. The output appears similar to:

   vmid=5151       pid=-1  cfgFile=”/vmfs/volumes/4a16a48a-d807aa7e-e674-001e4ffc52e9/mdineeen_test/vm_test.vmx”  uuid=”56 4d a6 db 0a e2 e5 3e-a9 2b 31 4b 69 29 15 19″  displayName=”vm_test”  vmxCartelID=####

3. Run the following command to shut the virtual machine down with the vmxCartelID:

   # /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmkload_app -k 9 ####

A good summery from VMware:

If you change from a multi-processor system to a uni-processor system you need to manually change the HAL on the Windows server after the conversion. To do this go into Device Manager after the machine first boots and discovers it’s new hardware and then click on Computer then right-click on the processor and select Update Driver. Then select Install from specific location and then Don’t search I will choose the driver to install. Then select show All compatible hardware and select the appropriate processor. For example, if you went from a dual cpu to a single cpu then select ACPI uni-processor PC instead of ACPI multi-processor PC. You will need to reboot once you change this. To verify what HAL you are using you right-click your hal.dll in c:\windows\system32 and select the Version tab and select Internal Name and it should say halmacpi.dll for multi-processor acpi and halacpi.dll for uni-processor acpi.

Next clean up all the non-present hardware after the P2V conversion. To do this go to a CMD prompt and type SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1 and then DEVMGMT.MSC and then select Show Hidden Devices. Delete any old grayed out hardware.

Next remove any vendor specific applications/drivers. For example on a HP server you should go to Add/Remove programs and remove any HP management agents, survey utility, array config utility, version control agent, etc. Also check your NIC and make sure there are no vendor specific drivers there (ie. teaming). Check the Services to see if all there is anything vendor specific related there and disable any services that are.