VMware lab - Reset trials vCenter & ESXi

Just a very simple way to reset the 60-day eval licenses for a VMware home lab.

On the ESXi hosts
1) Open a shell to each host
2) Delete /etc/vmware/vmware.lic & license.cfg
3) restart services



For vCenter
1) Create a DSN to your local SQL Express instance that holds your vCenter DB.
2) Uninstall virtual center
3) Re-install virtual center and point to your DSN making sure not to overwrite.

With this method, I have been able to refresh my 4.1 and 5.0 hosts.  Have not confirmed if this works for 5.1 first.

Sources
http://shanseworld.blogspot.com/2009/12/vcenter-reinstallation-after-60-days.html
http://yuridejager.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/reset-vmware-esxi-4-1-trial-license-period/

VMware image customization in progress

Full credit to this post for such a great find.
http://blog.laspina.ca/ubiquitous/vmware_image_customization_in_progress

I've been noticing this error while deploying some VM's using vCenter's guest customization wizard.  It kept appearing after each restart.



I had previously been using an older template that was sealed via sysprep at OS level which worked fine for the past few years.  It was only when I decided to switch my template to use vCenter's guest customization did I start having this problem.

The quick and easy fix was to remove sysprepDecrypter.exe from the regkey below.





Despite this problem, I didn't seem to have a problem with new SID generation.  PSGetSid was used to verify a unique SID on each new vm which seemed to work every time.  On a final note, I did have a intermittent problem with the hostname not being updated to what was specified during the guest customization wizard.  When this happened, I simply updated the hostname manually.

Module DevicePowerOn failed

Encountered this error when importing vmdks from VMware workstation or fusion to ESXi.

An unexpected error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM vm-1504.
Module DevicePowerOn power on failed.
Unable to create virtual SCSI device for scsi0:0, '/vmfs/volumes/4fcd0d6b-387b9d9a-520a-001a4b503824/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxx.vmdk'
Failed to open disk scsi0:0: Unsupported or invalid disk type 7.  Ensure that the disk has been imported.

Run vmkfstools -i to clone disk to an ESXi supported format.

# vmkfstools -i original.vmdk converted.vmdk
Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick
Cloning disk 'original.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

VM KB
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028943

If this doesn't work, use VMware converter to import the VM into a vCenter instance or directly to an ESXi host.  In most cases, it would probably be more simple to do this in the first place...