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jround

6 Posts

2506

April 30th, 2019 09:00

Dell Storage Manager Virtual Appliance - Corrupted VMWare tools

One of our engineers got into a bit of a panic when they ran automated VMWare Tools upgrade on our CentOS based EM Virtual Appliance VM, and rebooted it forcefully before the upgrade completed - result is now VMWare Tools are corrupt and reporting as not installed and won't let me run another automated upgrade to try and repair, only a mount of the Tools image.

I was hoping I could login to the console as some form of root user but when I login as 'em' then 'Admin' (EM Local Admin credential) I only get a menu to appear

1.Maintenance

2.Configuration

3.Diagnostics

4.Logout

So there is no way seemingly to get a console prompt up so I can run the usual commands I would in a Linux VM to manually mount the Tools and install them!

Is there any way I can do this or am I out of luck?  Could I roll back the VM to a backup from several days ago or would that screw up the management of all our storage?  (The database is on a separate SQL server by the looks)

FrostyAtCBM

57 Posts

April 30th, 2019 22:00

I'm interested in any answers you might get about this question, but unfortunately I don't know how to answer it myself, sorry! I'm also running the VM appliance for DSM and upgraded it to v18.something a few days ago. I thought it might have upgraded VMware Tools at that time, but it didn't. Was thinking about trying the automatic upgrade as you have done, but now that I have read this, I've changed my mind. I think I'll wait for the outcome of your situation before attempting anything. Do you have the option of calling Dell for support for this issue? i.e. if your storage is under warranty ... they helped me a few weeks ago with a Dell SupportAssist problem with DSM and resolved the problem. My plan B was going to be to deploy a new VM appliance to replace the old one.

DELL-Bob Mi

230 Posts

May 1st, 2019 09:00

If you have a snapshot of your virtual machine that you can roll back to I would use that first. I am guessing you do not or you would have already. In which case I would call support and open a case. Copilot has steps to log in as root and access areas not available for users. 

Since your database is on a separate host you can also work with them to set up a new Virtual Machine and connect to your existing database. Either of these steps will NOT affect your SAN. The SAN configuration is stored on the SAN itself, and this VM is used specifically for management of the SAN. Replication connections are not affected since those were previously created between 2 SANs. This VM is only used to manage and monitor.

FrostyAtCBM

57 Posts

May 1st, 2019 14:00

So I am now curious ... what is the method for upgrading VMware Tools on these DSM appliances?

I decided to take a snapshot and attempt the automatic upgrade via vSphere Web Client.  Didn't work.  So I reverted back to the snapshot.

Worth trying to upgrade the tools, or just leave them alone?

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