The simple solution to this is to use the ‘Advanced’ option when using Storage vMotion. It allows you to granularly control where each of the VMs hard disks and configuration files go.

Take a look at these screenshots:

When you get to the select datastore part of the migration wizard, click on the “Advanced” button:

Storage vMotion Advanced Button

This will bring you to a screen that looks like the one below. On this window, you can click on “Current Location” to get a drop down menu with a list of available datastores and decide where the individual files go.

Click on "Current Location" to get a drop down menu with a list of datastores.

This feature simplifies sVMotions especially when you have a setup that has tiered storage and you want to preserve the storage tiering when moving between datastores.
Drop me a line if this has helped you.

To disable the LGTO Sync service:
Note: The LGTO Sync service is not applicable with Windows 64bit.

Open the Windows Device Manager.
Click View > Show Hidden Devices.
Expand Non-Plug and Play Drivers.
Find the Sync Driver device. To verify that you have found the correct device, edit the properties and click the Driver tab. The Driver tab shows information similar to:

Service name: LGTO_Sync
Display name: Sync Driver

Once you have found the correct service, Click Cancel to go back to the Device manager.
Right-click the device and select Disable.
Reboot the virtual machine.

1. vCenter Server.
2. VMWare Powershell.
3. Any UPS Software that can execute a script when a power loss has been detected by the UPS. (Eg- APC Powerchute)

Here’s the script:

Connect-VIServer -Server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -Protocol http -User [username] -Password [password]
# List All the ESX Hosts
$ESXSRV = Get-VMHost
# For each of the VMs on the ESX hosts
Foreach ($VM in ($ESXSRV | Get-VM)){
# Shutdown the guest cleanly
$VM | Shutdown-VMGuest -Confirm:$false
}
# Set the amount of time to wait before assuming the remaining powered on guests are stuck
$waittime = 240 #Seconds
Start-Sleep $Waittime
$ESXSRV | Foreach {Get-View $_.ID} | Foreach {$_.ShutdownHost_Task($TRUE)}
Write-Host "Shutdown Complete"


Do the following to run this script via a UPS shutdown utility:

1. Save the script to a location of your choice as a PS1 file – Eg: C:\Scripts\PowerOffAll.ps1
2. Replace [username] and [password] with the admin username and password for the vCenter server in the Powershell script.
3. Change the $waittime value to a high enough value (in seconds) that would allow all your VMs to shutdown. This value would vary from network to network. You might have to try shutting down your VMs to find out the server that shuts down last and use that time in this script.

To execute this powershell script from a UPS software you will need to create this batch file to be able to call this powershell script. Save the following code to a batch file (for example – C:\Scripts\PowerOffAll.bat):

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\vim.psc1" "& "C:\Scripts\PowerOffAll.ps1"

The above script assumes that the vCenter server is running a 64-bit OS (which would be the case if you are using vCenter server version 4.1)

For a x86 server, the code, for example would be:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\vim.psc1" "& "C:\Scripts\PowerOffAll.ps1"

If you face issues with running the script, you might need to check the Powershell execution policy by running: Get-ExecutionPolicy. If it is set to Restricted or AllSigned, you may have issues.
To ensure that you run this script without issues, change the execution policy by running this command: Set-ExecutionPolicy -bypass.

All you need to do now is to configure your UPS software to run this script when the low battery threshold is reached – and – TEST!

Drop me a line if this has helped you!

Here is a script compiled to generate an email report on the status of jobs (both successful and unsuccessful) and can be run as a cron job.

The script parses the operations_log.utx file under /var/vmware/datarecovery and checks for successful and failed jobs. The parse results are stored in temporary files under /root. These files are then used during subsequent runs to compare with the current run and will only report on jobs that ran after the last run.

Here is the content of the script:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Example usage of strings
# strings -e l /var/vmware/datarecovery/operations_log.utx | grep -i -B2 "error" | awk -F"$" '{print "[1: " $1 "] [2: " $2 "] [3: " $3 "] [4: " $4 "] [5: " $5 "] [6: " $6 "] [7: " $7 "] [8: " $8 "] [9: " $9 "]"}'
#
# Variables
domain=yourdomain.com
host=$HOSTNAME
smtphost=yourmailhost
mailto=you@domain.com
#
cat /dev/null >> /root/olderror.out
cat /dev/null >> /root/oldsuccess.out
err=0
succ=0
#
# List all Errors
strings -e l /var/vmware/datarecovery/operations_log.utx | grep -i -B2 "error" | awk -F"$" '{print substr($2,5,21) " " substr($2, 27, 100) " " $3 " " substr($6,17,20)}' > /root/newerror.out
#
# List all Successes
strings -e l /var/vmware/datarecovery/operations_log.utx | grep -i -B1 "success" | awk -F"$" '{print substr($2,5,21) " " substr($2, 26, 100) " " substr($3,5,100)}' > /root/newsuccess.out
##
# Compare new list of all errors to old list of all errors
if ! diff /root/olderror.out /root/newerror.out
then
diff /root/olderror.out /root/newerror.out | grep ">" > /root/differr.out
err=$(cat /root/differr.out | grep -c "error")
echo Failed Jobs - $err
mv /root/newerror.out /root/olderror.out -f
fi
#
if ! diff /root/oldsuccess.out /root/newsuccess.out
then
diff /root/oldsuccess.out /root/newsuccess.out | grep ">" > /root/diffsuccess.out
succ=$(cat /root/diffsuccess.out | grep -c "success")
echo Successful Jobs - $succ
mv /root/newsuccess.out /root/oldsuccess.out -f
fi
# Send email with any errors found
(
sleep 1
echo "HELO $host.$domain"
sleep 1
echo "mail from: vdrreport@$domain"
sleep 1
echo "rcpt to:$mailto"
sleep 1
echo "data"
sleep 1
echo "subject: VDR-Report - $host $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M") Jobs OK: $succ, FAILED: $err"
sleep 1
echo "from: VMWare Data Recovery on "$host
sleep 1
echo "to:$mailto"
sleep 1
echo ""
sleep 1
echo ""
sleep 1
echo "$host $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M") Jobs OK:$succ, FAILED:$err "
echo ""
sleep 1
echo "##### Successful Jobs ($succ) #####"
sleep 1
echo ""
sleep 1
if [ -f /root/diffsuccess.out ]
then
cat /root/diffsuccess.out
else
echo No successful jobs listed!
fi
sleep 1
echo ""
sleep 1
echo ""
sleep 1
echo "##### Failed Jobs ($err) #####"
sleep 1
echo " "
sleep 1
if [ -f /root/differr.out ]
then
cat /root/differr.out
else
echo No failed jobs!
fi
sleep 1
echo " "
sleep 1
echo "."
sleep 1
echo "QUIT"
) | telnet $smtphost 25

The script can be scheduled to run as a cron job. For example, the following cron job will run the script at 7:15 AM every day from Monday to Friday:

15 7 * * 1-5 /root/vDRreport.sh

There is a free script called ghettoVCB.sh that does the trick.

The script allows you to backup live virtual machines and also maintains only a selected number of snapshots that you would like to keep. Check it out!