So this week's DIY is kind of an excuse to post on VMware's big licensing bug that is prohibiting users running their enterprise virtual ESX server from accessing their systems, but its a good lesson in workarounds and where to find them.
This morning it was discovered that anybody powering up their VM servers on ESX 3.5U2 in enterprise configs will be met with a brick wall. That's a big uh oh for companies running their systems nearly entirely over the virtual servers provided by the software (ESX doesn't require an underlying OS, it simply runs directly on the server hardware). So, when you go to boot up, and you get a general error message and have no idea what to do? First, talk to your IT guy. But if he doesn't know? Go to the community forums for the company producing your software. In this case, its VMware Inc, and their community boards today are buzzing with this bug. The workaround comes courtesy of LeoKurz2, and has to do simply with setting the date back to any day prior to August 12 (today). Apparently the licensing bug runs an expiration error once it hits August 12, so you can set the date of all ESX 3.5U2 hosts back to the 10th, or even 11th of August, and it should work just fine. There are a couple of ways to do this outlined on the forum.
The lesson is to always go to the source. IT help desks aren't always the most efficient (certainly with regard to time) way to fix a technology problem, so go to a discussion directly related to the issue: forums hosted by the software provider. You'll usually find a lot of people with the same problem as you, and solutions provided by intelligent people who don't get paid to sit on phones all day. Of course, the problem itself is usually fixed with a patch released to users within a day or so (sometimes within hours), but if you need that "quick fix," so to speak, go forth and forum.
This morning it was discovered that anybody powering up their VM servers on ESX 3.5U2 in enterprise configs will be met with a brick wall. That's a big uh oh for companies running their systems nearly entirely over the virtual servers provided by the software (ESX doesn't require an underlying OS, it simply runs directly on the server hardware). So, when you go to boot up, and you get a general error message and have no idea what to do? First, talk to your IT guy. But if he doesn't know? Go to the community forums for the company producing your software. In this case, its VMware Inc, and their community boards today are buzzing with this bug. The workaround comes courtesy of LeoKurz2, and has to do simply with setting the date back to any day prior to August 12 (today). Apparently the licensing bug runs an expiration error once it hits August 12, so you can set the date of all ESX 3.5U2 hosts back to the 10th, or even 11th of August, and it should work just fine. There are a couple of ways to do this outlined on the forum.
The lesson is to always go to the source. IT help desks aren't always the most efficient (certainly with regard to time) way to fix a technology problem, so go to a discussion directly related to the issue: forums hosted by the software provider. You'll usually find a lot of people with the same problem as you, and solutions provided by intelligent people who don't get paid to sit on phones all day. Of course, the problem itself is usually fixed with a patch released to users within a day or so (sometimes within hours), but if you need that "quick fix," so to speak, go forth and forum.
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