Determine the current time on a remote system

At times you may have to determine the time on a remote system to be able to schedule some job on that system automatically. I will talk about how to schedule a job on a remote system in a seperate post. We could use the help of WMI protocol in determining the target system time.
Here’s the function. Have fun !

ESX Server 3.0.x hosts in a VirtualCenter 2.5 environment enter a not responding state after applying certain ESX Server patches

Recently I saw my ESX hosts registered in Virtual Center 2.5 show up as not responding. But I was able to login to the ESX host directly without any problem. Later I found that it has something to do with the ESX patches. I’m qouting an article in vmware website that explains this issue and the patches that you might want to install. Unfortunately this did not solve my problem.. So I’ll keep looking…

Overview

ESX Server 3.0.x hosts managed by VirtualCenter 2.5 must have their Host Agent (hostd) specially configured to work with VirtualCenter 2.5. This configuration is done automatically during the initial installation of the VirtualCenter Agent (vpxa). If an ESX Server patch is subsequently applied that includes the esx-hostd RPM package, like ESX Server patch 1002435, the patch replaces the existing Host Agent (hostd) configuration file (/etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml) and undoes vpxa’s changes. This reverting of the Host Agent configuration file breaks connectivity with VirtualCenter 2.5.