A lesson in not trying to do several things at once.
I had just deployed a VM from a template and waited for it to be customized. All was well until Windows tried, and failed, to activate giving the error code 80072f8f. This was in a new environment in a remote datacenter. Once I started paying attention though I noticed that the VM was set to synchronize time with the host and the host’s NTP configuration had not been made correctly. The VM was running 6 months or so behind the current date.
The two takeaways from this are:
- Check your host configuration and don’t assume that it’s correct if you’re provided with a pre-built host from a 3rd party
- Don’t do too many things at once and forget about the above!
Michael Poore is a Senior Consultant for Virtual Clarity, a small virtualisation / cloud consultancy based in London and San Francisco. Michael works on all aspects of datacenter virtualisation, automation, orchestration and management for various global companies. He started the vSpecialist blog in 2008 and convinced co-author Jeremy Bowman to join in over a beer a while later.
