VMware Horizon View Composer Installation Failure (Error Code: 1603)

If you see a VMware Horizon 7.x View Composer installation failure with the error code 1603 when you install it on a Windows Server VM, you should check if an audit failure event is logged with the following message in the Windows Security log:

Code integrity determined that the image hash of a file is not valid.  The file could be corrupt due to unauthorized modification or the invalid hash could indicate a potential disk device error.

File Name: \Device\HarddiskVolume4\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\VMware Universal File Access\vstor2-ufa.sys 

Also check the View Composer installation log to see if the following error is shown in the log:

CustomAction InstallVstor2Driver.5ACA97E0_7C64_4970_A763_840E81DAAF0B returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)

If yes, disable the secure boot option in the VM.

1. Shut down the VM
2. Go to Edit Settings -> VM Option -> Boot Option
3. Uncheck the Secure Boot option

4. Save the setting, and power on the VM.
5. Install View Composer.

This time, there should be no issue with the Composer installation. Secure Boot can be enabled after a reboot, and check if the View Composer service is still running with Secure Boot enabled.

Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.0 U3e Released

Fujitsu has released the latest ESXi 6.0 custom image (ESXi 6.0 U3e Build 7967664, Fujitsu v382-1). You can download the ISO image and the offline bundle from My VMware.

• Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.0 U3e (v382-1) ISO and Offline Bundle Download
  (You need a My VMware account to download the files)
• Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.0 U3e (v382-1) Readme Download

Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.5 U1 Released

Fujitsu has released the latest ESXi 6.5 custom image (ESXi 6.5 U1 Build 7967591, Fujitsu v412-1). You can download the ISO image and the offline bundle from My VMware.

• Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.5 U1 (v412-1) ISO and Offline Bundle Download
  (You need a My VMware account to download the files)
• Fujitsu Custom ESXi 6.5 U1 (v412-1) Readme Download

Enabling the serial console for ESXi on Fujitsu PRIMERGY

If you can't boot ESXi for some reason, or have some firmware/driver issues when booting ESXi, you can enable the serial line output via iRMC on Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers.

Here is how to enable the serial output through iRMC, and capture ESXi boot logs.

1. Enable BIOS Console Redirection under Console Redirection.
You can do this in the BIOS setup menu (hit the F2 key during BIOS POST), or on the iRMC Web GUI.

Here is the example of iRMC. Check the Console Redirection Enabled option, and change the Serial 1 Multiplexer option from System to iRMC.

2. Enable IPMI over LAN under Network Settings if it is not enabled.

3. Activate Serial-Over-LAN through iRMC.
In this example, I use the ipmitool command, but you can use ipmiutil or other IPMI utilities which support SOL.

$ ipmitool -I lanplus -H <iRMC IP address> -U <iRMC User> -P <iRMC Password> sol activate

Example)

$ ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.10.77 -U admin -P admin sol activate

4. Boot the ESXi with the console options enabled.
You can see how to enable the console options for ESXi on VMware KB 1033888. In the following screenshot, I added the options to the boot options during startup (SHIFT+O).


Now you can see the ESXi boot log on your IPMI SOL session.

vCenter Server Event Log is Filled Up with Log in/Log out Events from Fujitsu ServerView Operations Manager

If you monitor Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers running VMware ESXi with Fujitsu ServerView Operations Manager (SVOM), you probably notice that there are many log in/log out events from your SVOM server recorded in the event log (see the following screenshot for example):
By default, SVOM checks the host status through Fujitsu ServerView CIM provider which is included in Fujitsu Custom ESXi 5.x/6.0 images every five minutes (300 seconds). That is why you see the log in/log out events in every 5 minutes. In case you want to see some important events/messages in the event log like when a failure occurs, these unimportant login/logout events make you harder to find what you are looking for. You can change the monitoring interval or even disable the polling. To do this, follow the procedure described below.

1. Log in to your SVOM.
2. Open up a ServerList window.
   
3. Select the host where you want to change the interval, and bring up the Server Properties window.
   
4. Go to the Network/SNMP tab, and change the interval in Poll Interval. In this example, I changed it to 600 seconds (10 minutes). If you set this value to 0, that means the polling will be disabled for this host. Once you confirm the value, click the OK button to apply the change.

If you are using Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers and all are running ESXi, it would be better to use ServerView plugin for vCenter Server. With the plugin, you can monitor all your PRIMERGY server hardware status within vCenter Server. Also you can launch iRMC which is baseboard management controller on PRIMERGY (similar to DELL iDRAC, or HP iLO), open a remote KVM, and update BIOS and firmware.
You can download the latest plugin (as of 3/2/2016, it's V2.2.8) from the Fujitsu download site. Here is the direct link to the download page.

• FUJITSU Software ServerView Plug-in for VMware vCenter V2.2.8

IPMITOOL on VMware ESXi

The IPMITOOL command is a great tool to configure the local BMC network, get the sensor/FRU information, etc. I use this command a lot on my Linux systems. Since virtualized servers (mostly VMware ESXi) are increasing, I want to use the ipmitool command in ESXi.
There are lots of blog posts talking about creating an ipmitool binary for ESXi out there. I would like to take a (little) further step to integrate the tool to my standard ESXi image so that I can deploy ESXi to my servers with the ipmitool command integrated.
Here is what I did.

1. Create an ipmitool binary. See the following blogs for details:
   • ESXi ipmitool(works on any Linux system as well)
   • Make Ipmitool Working For ESXi 5.1
2. Create an ipmitool vib. I used VIB Author on my Linux system (CentOS 6.7 x86_64). If needed, you can download the ipmitool vib I created from here (ipmitool-1.8.15-1.vib).
3. Create a custom ISO (and an offline bundle) with the ipmitool vib. Read the vSphere manuals on how to create a custom ISO/offline bundle using Image Builder. This VMware blog entry would help:
   • Using the vSphere ESXi Image Builder CLI
4. Deploy the new image to servers.

I used the VIB I created in step 2 with ESXi 5.5 U3 and ESXi 6.0 U1, and it worked on both versions.

Here are some outputs.

~ # vmware -vl
VMware ESXi 5.5.0 build-3248547
VMware ESXi 5.5.0 Update 3
~ # esxcli software vib list |grep ipmitool
ipmitool                       1.8.15-1                               IPMItool  CommunitySupported  2016-01-14
~ # /opt/ipmitool/bin/ipmitool mc info
Device ID                 : 52
Device Revision           : 2
Firmware Revision         : 1.00
IPMI Version              : 2.0
Manufacturer ID           : 10368
Manufacturer Name         : Fujitsu Siemens
Product ID                : 1062 (0x0426)
Product Name              : Unknown (0x426)
Device Available          : yes
Provides Device SDRs      : no
Additional Device Support :
    Sensor Device
    SDR Repository Device
    SEL Device
    FRU Inventory Device
    IPMB Event Receiver
    IPMB Event Generator
    Chassis Device
Aux Firmware Rev Info     :
    0x07
    0x52
    0x00
    0x46
~ # /opt/ipmitool/bin/ipmitool lan print
Set in Progress         : Set Complete
Auth Type Support       : NONE MD2 MD5 PASSWORD OEM
Auth Type Enable        : Callback : MD5 PASSWORD OEM
                        : User     : MD5 PASSWORD OEM
                        : Operator : MD5 PASSWORD OEM
                        : Admin    : MD5 PASSWORD OEM
                        : OEM      : MD5 PASSWORD OEM
IP Address Source       : BIOS Assigned Address
IP Address              : 192.168.14.37
Subnet Mask             : 255.255.255.0
MAC Address             : 90:1b:0e:80:70:a9
SNMP Community String   : public
IP Header               : TTL=0x40 Flags=0x40 Precedence=0x00 TOS=0x10
BMC ARP Control         : ARP Responses Enabled, Gratuitous ARP Disabled
Gratituous ARP Intrvl   : 10.0 seconds
Default Gateway IP      : 192.168.14.1
Default Gateway MAC     : 00:00:0c:07:ac:40
Backup Gateway IP       : 0.0.0.0
Backup Gateway MAC      : 00:00:00:00:00:00
802.1q VLAN ID          : Disabled
802.1q VLAN Priority    : 0
RMCP+ Cipher Suites     : 0,1,2,3,6,7,8,11,12,15,16,17
Cipher Suite Priv Max   : XaaaaaaaaXXaXXX
                        :     X=Cipher Suite Unused
                        :     c=CALLBACK
                        :     u=USER
                        :     o=OPERATOR
                        :     a=ADMIN
                        :     O=OEM
~ # /opt/ipmitool/bin/ipmitool fru print 2
 Chassis Type          : Blade
 Chassis Part Number   : ABN:K1467-V200-54
 Chassis Serial        : YLSR000000
 Chassis Extra         : BX2580M1
 Chassis Extra         : FUJITSU
 Board Mfg Date        : Mon Dec  8 22:02:00 2014
 Board Mfg             : FUJITSU
 Board Product         : D3321
 Board Serial          : SQ1449MA00000
 Board Part Number     : A3C40161777
 Board Extra           : D3A
 Board Extra           : 02
 Board Extra           : BX2580 M1
 Product Manufacturer  : FUJITSU
 Product Name          : PRIMERGY BX2580 M1
 Product Part Number   : ABN:K1467-V200-54
 Product Version       : C
 Product Serial        : YLSR000000
 Product Asset Tag     : 02
 Product Extra         : a26799
 Product Extra         : 0426

Update on 02/26/2016: I changed the link to the VIB package. You should be able to download it without asking me for access permissions.