Need to get a list of DC’s, but i’m not a domain admin

So other than good old ADUC, lets assume you just have DNS (nslookup) access

nslookup

> set type=SRV

> _ldap._tcp.domainname.local

Install ESX 4 host certificate from windows CA

I used this article and was able to get the certificate generated and installed
http://vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/change_name_and_cert.php

But after reboot I can SSH to my ESX host, but the certificate is not working the webpage is dead and I can’t add the ESX host back to vCenter

I found the problem, at the end of the article it has you put the key and cert in the wrong place

cp rui.key /host/ssl_key
cp esx.cer /host/ssl_cert

but that doesn't work. 

you need to do this instead:
cp rui.key /etc/vmware/ssl/
cp esx.cer /etc/vmware/ssl/

then

mv esx.cer rui.crt (must be renamed)

How to add Media Store to Lab Manager Organization

Often the media store is not available and it appears you can’t add a media store to an organizaiton.  To fix this make sure you go into Organizations/OrgName Properties.  Unless you add the Media Datastore to the “Datastores” it won’t let you add the Media Store to the “Media Stores” section.

Rename a Lab Manager 4 server

1) Disable Deployments to that server by going to Resources/Hosts click disable.

2) Migrate live VM’s to other blades with access to same datastores by going to vCenter, choose the server, Virtual Machines tab.  Select everything but the VMwareLM-ServiceVM and migrate to another host.  Wait for this step to complete.

3) Unprepare the host in LabManager, wait for complete

4) In vC Put the host in Maintenance Mode, wait for complete, then Disconnect, then Remove from the cluster.

5) SSH or local access to ESX host. 

Modify

/etc/hosts

/etc/sysconfig/network

Then run esxcfg-advcfg –s <HostName> /Misc/Hostname

Reboot

Wait for host to come back online

6) Add host back to vC cluster

7) Apply Host Profiles if applicable (you’ll need this for vDistributed Switches) Steps Below:

a) attach profile to host

b) check compliance

c) apply profile

d) Exit server from Maintenance Mode

8) Prepare host inside of LBM

Your done, but just to make sure everything worked as planned, migrate a VM from another host to this host, if that works, test some LBM Deployments and see if any deploy to this host.

Difficulty putting Lab Manager ESX host into maintenance mode.

The job gets to 2% and hangs, you have a VM on that blade called 000000-VMwareLM-ServiceVM-x00-x00 without VMware tools installed. 

The simple version is that this VM is there to help with “host spanning networks”.  So inside the Lab Manager UI Resources/Hosts, you must go into properties of the host and disabled the checkbox for “Host Spanning Enabled”, then the VM will power down and you will be able to enter maintenance mode gracefully.