vCenter 5.1 installation issues establishing ODBC connection

Problem: After successfully configuring SQL server 2008, installing vCenter single sign-on, I could not get thru installing vCenter server. I created the ODBC connection with the tests running successfully. Still during the vCenter install, I could not connect to a supporting database.

Realization: The SQL native client needed to be installed first...then recreate a new ODBC connection to the backend SQL database before proceeding with vCenter server installation.

Before you proceed with installing vCenter Server, you need to install SQL Native Client. This is located on the SQL ISO (the one you installed SQL Server on @ SQL VM). It can be found in folder 1033_enu_lp\x64\setup\x64and is called sqlncli.msi.

The installation is just a matter of Next, Next, Next, Finish

ODBC error when upgrading or installing vCenter 4 or later

Configured DSN is pointing to an unsupported ODBC driver error while upgrading to vCenter 4.0

One of the errors my customers repeatly complain about while upgrading to vCenter Server 4 or even when trying to install it from scratch is the following error:

“The DSN is pointing to an unsupported ODBC driver. Please re-configure your DSN to use one of the supported drivers.”

If you face this problem the first thing to do is to ensure that you are running a supported Database. Hint! Hint! SQL 2000 is no longer supported. If you are running SQL 2000 then you must upgrade to SQL 2005 or SQL 2008 before upgrading to vCenter Server 4.0

If you have a supported database & still got the error then you must download & install the Microsoft SQL Server Native Client for your particular platform. You can use this link to download Microsoft SQL Server Native Client. See the Image below to see what the download link look like:

After installing the required Microsoft SQL Server Native Client you will have to create a new ODBC connection using the just installed Microsoft SQL Server Native client as per the image below.

After following the above steps, you will have to restart the installation of vCenter Server 4 using the newly created ODBC connection.

The above steps should get the error out of the way & get you started. I hope this help, & please leave your feedbacks & other steps you needed to resolved the problem in the comments area.

Source: http://www.virtualizationteam.com/server-virtualization/configured-dsn-is-pointing-to-an-unsupported-odbc-driver-error-while-upgrading-to-vcenter-4-0.html

Installing Vcenter 5.1(Videos)

Part 1 install of Vcenter 5.1 SSO

Part 2 install of Vcenter 5.1 SSO

These are excellent videos...all credit goes to the guy on the vid. :)

What happened to my VM networks(VLans)?

Okay...so I'm building a mass amount of VMs using Vmware ESXi 5.1 to construct a Windows domain with rogue systems to practice my uber hacking skills:) and something goes terribly wrong. I can no longer add my VMs to the VM networks that I created that are linked to VLANs on my Cisco switch. I did some reading and there is a setting on the Vswitch properties that can increase/decrease the amount of virtual ports per virtual switch. I had it set to only 120 ports...I have 500+ VMs. Okay, so I set the threshold to the max of 4088 to both of my virtual switches. Voila! My virtual switches disappeared. My VM networks all gone.

Based on this article, the issue occurred when the total number of ports exceeds 4608. It doesn't matter if you have one or several virtual switches configured. The number of total virtual ports cannot exceen 4608. B-I-N-G-O-!

I made the changes for each virtual switch(2) that I am using to have 504 ports each and rebooted the ESXi server. 

All is well in virtualization land. :)