ESX: Remove hidden devices after converted VMs

I had to move a VM from an older stand-alone ESX to a customers new ESX 4.1 cluster, and I decided to use Vmware Converter through the new Virtual Center. The conversion process was insanely slow, but its nothing new, Vmware Converter tend to be on the very slow side, and moving them manually with Veeam SCP or something similar would be preferred.

Anyways, when the clone was done the server was booted on new host, and it discovered new hardware. I let it run, then upgraded Vmwaretools, and rebooted. Problem then was the same as often, you get the hidden NIC taking the default IP, and you get DHCP on the new one. To sort this problem you need to do the following.

Start -> Run -> Cmd -> Enter
Type in "set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1" and press Enter
In the SAME Cmd window, type "DEVMGMT.MSC" and press Enter
Then go to View, select Show hidden devices and then go find your missing NIC under Network Adapters

The key here is to run the DEVMGMT.MSC in the same Cmd window as the first command, or it wont work. You can no do Start -> Run -> command cause it wont work. So do it all in the same window before closing it.

After you remove the adapter you can change IP settings for your real adapter and its ready to run. I reboot just in case though, but thats up to you.

Disconnected Vmware ESX hosts in VC

When I came in this morning I logged on our VC console to find some info for a friend, and discovered that one of our ESX hosts was in disconnected mode. I tried reconnecting but that did not work, so I had to dig deeper. I logged on my disconnected host through SSH and ran the following commands.

service mgmt-vmware restart
service vmware-vpxa restart

That took care of it, it seemed the management services on my host had gone into vacation mode, and I could now reconnect the host in my virtual center.

However I discovered a few minutes after when I had reconfigured HA that I could still not migrate one of my VMs while online. I verified my connectivity by using "vmkping" and did not find anything wrong with my IPs or my hostnames, but when I checked the servers time, they were roughly 12 minutes out of sync.

It seems my previous NTP setup did not work as it should, so I ran through the process of the previous article posted here, synced my servers back up and voila, the VM could migrate as it should.

So keeping your systems in sync is not just a directory service necessity, but also very important for any systems talking together.