{"id":115,"date":"2008-12-15T08:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/virtual-machine-heartbeat-state-band-aid.html"},"modified":"2008-12-15T08:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T15:58:00","slug":"virtual-machine-heartbeat-state-band-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/virtual-machine-heartbeat-state-band-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Machine Heartbeat State – Band Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"

From time to time, I get one of these:
\n<\/p>\n

Target: VirtualMachine1 <\/span>
\nOld Status: Green <\/span>
\nNew Status: Red<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Current value:
\n<\/span> Virtual Machine Heartbeat State – (State = Red)<\/span><\/p>\n

Alarm: Virtual Machine Heartbeat State
\n<\/span>([Yellow State Is Equal To yellow; Red State Is Equal To red]) <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Description:
\nAlarm Virtual Machine Heartbeat State on VirtualMachine1 changed from Green to Red<\/span>
\nJust one of those alarms from vCenter that tells me that a VM’s Heartbeat isn’t being heard.<\/p>\n

It is kind of a pain to look into these after hours, and when you aren’t paying attention to the alerts… So I figured I’d put a band-aid on the problem, until I get a chance to look deeper into the problem.<\/p>\n

So I wrote a .VBS that will stop and restart the VMTOOLS service through a WMI call, and saved it to C:SCRIPTS on the vCenter Server.<\/p>\n

Here’s the .VBS (restarttools.vbs):<\/p>\n

‘Get the Guest Name from {targetName}
\nTargetServer = Wscript.Arguments(0)<\/p>\n

‘The Domain User used to connect to the target guest via WMI
\nUsername = “DOMAINUsername”<\/p>\n

‘Get the Password from the 2nd Script Argument
\nPassword = Wscript.Arguments(1)<\/p>\n

Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject(“WBemScripting.SWbemLocator”)<\/p>\n

‘Connect using the Username and Password
\nSet objWMIService = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer & _
\n(TargetServer, “rootcimv2”, Username, Password)<\/p>\n

‘Grab all of the services named vmtools
\nSet colServices = objWMIService.ExecQuery (“Select * ” & _
\nfrom Win32_Service Where Name = ‘vmtools'”)<\/p>\n

‘Stop the vmtools service
\nFor Each objService in colServices
\nerrReturnCode = objService.StopService()
\nNext<\/p>\n

Wscript.Sleep 20000<\/p>\n

‘Start the vmtools service
\nFor Each objService in colServices
\nerrReturnCode = objService.StartService()
\nNext<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I then created an alarm that runs the .VBS when the Heartbeat State changes:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Make sure the “Run A Script” option has the following syntax:<\/p>\n

cscript \/nologo c:scriptsrestarttools.vbs {targetName} Password<\/p>\n

I also have an e-mail alert to notify me when this happens. Typically, when this occurs, I’ll get a a Green to Red or Yellow, followed by a Red or Yellow to Green about a minute later.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the little script does the trick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From time to time, I get one of these: Target: VirtualMachine1 Old Status: Green New Status: Red Current value: Virtual Machine Heartbeat State – (State … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasemccarty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}