VMware Communities : All Content - VI: VMware ESXi™ 3.5

ESX server on VMWare Workstation

AndreTheGiant — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:50:02 GMT

What's the error on /var... ?
Use ESXi that has a memory footprint a little smaller.

Andre

VShere CLient 4 can't connect to ESXi 3.5 host

Crowdedisland — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:14:54 GMT

I had used the ip address previously but I restarted the managemnt agent and it still tells me that it cannot conenct to the remote host.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving for those of you that celebrate it.

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:03:49 GMT

For those that don't have a great day anyway.

VMWare Server 2.0 to ESXi 4.0 Upgrade?

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:22:57 GMT

Magic is always good.

Error restoring VM

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:21:50 GMT

Find yourself a small NFS storage device. Add it as a datastore to your current ESXi host. Go to the unsupported console or enable SSH and log in. Clone the disks with the vmkfstools clone function to the NFS datastore. You can create a new VM on the NFS datastore and add your cloned disk. You then have the opportunity to test that your cloned disk functions. If it starts and runs, pack up the NFS device and drive like the wind. At the remote location add the NFS device as a datastore to the ESXi host. Use vmkfstools to clone the disk back to the localstore on the ESXi host. Create a new VM on localstore with NO disk. move the cloned disk to the new VM directory. Edit the settings on your new VM and add an existing disk. Browse and add your cloned disk. You now have a backup device at the remote location. Use ghettoVCB to set up a scheduled clone to the NFS datastore.

esxcfg-firewall disabled ports that have been opened previously by another user on the same ESX host.

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:10:16 GMT

This should be moved to the 3.5 or 4 ESX forums.

ESXi 3.5.0, Adding storage only available 368GB from total capacity 6,36TB

mcowger — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:52:57 GMT

No. The entire LUN needs to be less than 2TB, not just a partition.

--Matt
VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek

[ESX 3.5] Regarding Snapshots...

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:07:43 GMT

The more snapshots you have, and the larger the snapshots, the chances of problems increase. As Troy said performance is a problem and for very large snapshots the amount of time it takes to commit them can be many many hours. Failed hard drives in the middle of a commit, system crashes, not enough datastore space, corruption of one of the snapshot files. . .

"Insufficient disk space on datastore" after windows update

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:59:42 GMT

How much space do you have on the datastore. Make sure you refresh the datastore view. Right Click and Refresh. Old snapshots, templates etc can consume lots of space.

setting up a clone

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:56:40 GMT

The ghettoVCB script is an excellent suggestion. If you don't have a foundation or better license for ESXi you can try the first version of the script as well. ghettoVCB. I use this version and it works incredibly well. Recovery from a disaster is a few minutes if you have some form of shared storage.

Have a look at Trilead Explorer as well http://trilead.com. You can't schedule the free version but the Pro version isn't very expensive.

RAM cache to local HD not to NAS?

mike.laspina — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:48:58 GMT

weinstein5 wrote: - if you do store the per VM swap file on local drive of the server remeber that will prevent you from using vmotion, drs or ha because the swap file location will not be accessable by the other esx server

Using a locally stored swp file will not disable Vmotion, DRS or HA in a vSphere environment. It can however degrade the VMotion performance.

http://blog.laspina.ca/
vExpert 2009

How do I isolate VM machine from network but not gateway ESXi 4.0

AndreTheGiant — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT

I suggest to create another portgroup with an applicance that do firewall between networks.

Andre

Booting from CD at boot - existing machine

AndreTheGiant — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:03:05 GMT

there is no option for client mode, and it does state under the button that using client CD will not allow connection untill device is powered on.

True...
You can put a BIOS delay, enter ESC, connect the CD and then boot from CD.

Andre

Esxi 3.5 to Vsphere 4 essentials?

xbs — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:59:30 GMT

Thanks for your help and have a nice day

Is there any way to network install ESXi 3.5 installable?

sreekanth_reddy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:11:27 GMT

Hi,
I have done the SETUP using http://vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_PXE_install.html
But when the server is booting to ESXi installable, it throws an error "/bin/ash: Can't open /sbin/install"
I am using ESXi 3.5 Update 4 Installable edition.

Please help me

Thanks
Sree

Upgrade path ESXi 3.5 build 110271 to ESXi 4.0 U1 - B208167

DSTAVERT — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:21:24 GMT

The VMs run from local storage rather than from the SAN?
the upgrades should only take a few minutes. I don't remember that Upgrading to 4 required that you have 3.5 U4 but it won't take long. Use the update tool to patch your 3.5 host.

Once you have updated to U4 download the Host Update utility from the ESXi 4 download page. Add your ESXi host to the Update utility and select update. It will take care of downloading and installing the upgrade.

If this is installed on USB you may have issues with the upgrade. The partitions may not all exist.

Check the HCL carefully to make sure your hardware matches.

Cold migration from ESX to ESXi fails with "Operation timed out"

Buechen — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:11:21 GMT

Yes, of course the Converter is a further option that works, but it doesn't solve the basic problem. Is there a difference between cold migration and cold converting at the bottom line, esoecially due to performance.

Panic: Error Reading File: -3, install.tgz

DSTAVERT — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:36:04 GMT

Quite welcome. Let us know how it goes.

Adaptec SATA II RAID 1220SA support ESX 3.5 Update 4

DSTAVERT — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:05:00 GMT

That is a software RAID card which ESXi does not support.

Hardware Compatibility List

creating a vswitch in vmware infrastructure client

Dave.Mishchenko — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:57:55 GMT

Your post has been moved to the ESXi 3.5 forum. The default configuration will create one vSwitch and that will be sufficient for what you're looking to do. You'll just have to assign the IP addresses to VMs and you should be good to go. If you have VLANs in place then you would need to create additional virtual machine port group within the vSwitch and ensure that the physical switch port that ESXi is connected to is configured as a trunk port. For the most part you can treat a virtual switch the same as you would a physical switch (i.e. the switches themselves don't control which IP addresses you use on your servers).

Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator

Now available - vSphere Quick Start Guide
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ESXi 4 hanging at :Loading module tpm_tis

dcunitedTIN — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:40:59 GMT

I verified with the vendor and this machine does not support TPM. I am going to attempt do download the prior version and see if that will help me because it seems they worked on it in the current release.

UPDATE: I am having problems with the original 4.0 release as well.

ESXi 4.0 on a HP Proliant DL120 G5 - Operating System Not Found

pinazinho — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:21:09 GMT

That's solved!

ESXi confuses HDD0 and HDD1.

I was installing ESXi on HDD0 but for some reason it was installed on HDD1.

I think the confusion it's caused because the 2 HDD's are the same model, and ESXi shows them at inverse order.

Intermittent HA Errors on Both Hosts

fhrivers — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:20:47 GMT

Updating Virtual Center 2.5 per VMWare tech support solved the problem.

ESXi 3.5 on a HP ProLiant ML110 G3

DSTAVERT — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:32:37 GMT

It is very difficult installing anything on unsupported hardware. It is also an older platform so you have many things against you. Manufacturers stop maintaining software or drivers at some point. Problems with firmware don't get resolved. Even if you do get it installed and working I wouldn't want to put it into production.

Try disabling APIC in the BIOS if that is possible. Visit http://vm-help.com to see if there are any possible work arounds.

Is There A Free Partitioning Software that Works with VMWare?

Troy Clavell — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:56:14 GMT

glad to see you got it resolved.

please mark the thread as answered.

Support for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on ESX 3.5

RedLimey — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:53:10 GMT

We get out tech support through HP. They pointed me to VMWare's Compatibility Guide search tool. If you look at the search results (below the search criteria fields), you'll see no reference to v3.5, only vSphere (v4).

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?action=search&deviceCategory=software&advancedORbasic=advanced&maxDisplayRows=50&key=2008&productId=-1&datePosted=-1&partnerId ]=-1&os_bits=-1&os_use[=16&os_name[]=Windows+Server+2008&rorre=0

This is as official a word from VMWare as I've seen.

(Bah - the link has content that is interpreted at html code (?), so you'll have to specify the OS info)

-Red

RCLI Command required to shutdown ESXi Host

HenrikElm — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:15:08 GMT

Ah! Yes! It works very well. I also tweaked the .pl script to only do a shutdown of the host with no suspend done. This way it behaves exactly like you have set it up with autostart/shutdown.

Nice!

/Henrik

RedHat cluster support from VMware

kjb007 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:01:47 GMT

Agreed. There is no official statement from VMware about RedHat clustering, as far as I know. Only a general clustering support statement, for MSCS. Other than fencing, and making sure you have static ARP entries for the multicast, everything else was pretty smooth.

-KjB
VMware vExpert

ESXi 4 reports 8 GB of RAM in Summary, but only 6 GB in Resource Allocation

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:19:58 GMT

You can try the same trick for running ESXi in a VM under Workstation.
See: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/05/08/running-vsphere-within-workstation-will-take-up-a-lot-of-memory/

Andre

ESXI 4.0 loss of network connectivity to VM's.

fusioncom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:53:36 GMT

Its Windows 2003 Standard.

Restart the Management agents doesnt do anything for me. When I attempt to view the console from VSphere client its just hung. I can reboot the entire ESXi box which will return the server for about 5 minutes MAX before it locks up again.

Backing up cluster config

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:31:43 GMT

I do not know if there are similar tools. Maybe with scripting...

Or you can make a backup of your vCenter Server or run in a VM.

Or use a HA solution for vCenter:
Increase the availability of vCenter Server

Andre

Does ESXi4.0 supports SSH option??

ESX41 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:56:33 GMT

hi,

i have a question like can i login domain users using SSH in ESXi4.0. if iam not able to login, can i know y??

thanks,

shanmuga

VC shows Nics are down but can't be?

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:07:54 GMT

I think IBM HS22 Blade should be in HCL, isn't it? Because I got the ESXi3 3.5 already installed on a usbdisk inside the blade from IBM.

HCL change from 3.x to 4.0... so check it again.

You output its' ok... all vmnics are up in full mode 1Gb.
I do not know what's is this card:

cdceth0 00:00.00 CDCEther Up 0Mbps Half 1500 Intel Corporation Unknown

... but it isn't a vmnic...

Andre

ESX3i - Create Resource Pool on other server?

hstern03 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:19:26 GMT

oh ok. thank you so much for your time. i'm sorry it came to an uneventful ending. I ordered another 4 gigs. I'll be sure to let you know what happens.

Can I run LSi MegaRAID under ESXi? (re: e-mail RAID notifications)

DSTAVERT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:54:10 GMT

You can use OpenManage with the Perc controller in a Dell Server. I can't remember if the latest 3.5 Dell specific ESXi ISO contain OpenManage or whether it is installed after. Several references in the forums on procedures.

ESXi 3.5 and Windows 2008 Server

DSTAVERT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:42:45 GMT

Google turns up pages of reference to the error number related to updates.

Windows Update service in the services mmc is set to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" by default.

Disable the service and then apply - enable the service to Automatic without the Dealyed Start and apply again.

esxi 3.5 u4 installed on usb

DSTAVERT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:18:07 GMT

ESXi was designed to be installed to flash. Most of the major server manufacturers have had that as an order item for several years. ESXi runs from RAM. There are very few writes to disk (a configuration backup once per hour . . ) . The only way to go in my opinion.

What are your thoughts on installing ESXi on flash versus local storage

AndreTheGiant — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:53:07 GMT

You're welcome.

See also:
ESXi local storage recommendation

Andre

ESX 3i Installable vs Embedded

DSTAVERT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:52:48 GMT

The update tool will apply any patches properly regardless of how it is installed.

Windows 2003 Server Guest Hangs on Shutdown

DSTAVERT — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:29:50 GMT

With Sharepoint there could be all sorts of background processes that are waiting for some completeion before shutting down.

Is OS X Server under ESXi running on a Mac supported?

dirkce — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:32:03 GMT

Thank you. I see that it is not in the HCL. This answers my question.

I will go with VMWare Fusion as I need a supported configuration.

there are not enough licenses installed to perform the operation

Argenis Azuaje — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:42:08 GMT

Hi, thank you for you reply, this help me to know how my License is set,

I consulted the License support of Vmware and them explain me that I can have the two products and use on Virtual Center to manager all the ESX hosts, and them verified my .lic I can add until 10 CPU Sockets on my Infraestructure, I conted my numbers of ESX to CPU´s and I have 10 Socket added.

Thanks
Regards

Shared SCSI Volume

Bjoern.Gies — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:03:10 GMT

Hi again,

I just tried what's happening when i suddenly turn off Host#1 where the VM on the shared volume is running. To my surprise I was able to start the VM on Host#2 without any problem - except the msg.uuid.moved message. Didn't expect the whole "thing" to be that robust.
Of course there was/is luck the filesystem inside the VM isn't wasted.

Greetings

Björn

Mount external storage in ESXi 3.5 ?

ScottHolman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:59:51 GMT

Hi mrc1c3,

does you synology support sharing iscsi target luns? I've looking to get DS409+, but have read a few posts saying the that the synology only support single initiators per lun. Is that true on you box?

Cheers,
Scott

how to install Windows 7 on ESX3.5 infrastructure?

EranL — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:23:14 GMT

Hi all,

Currently we have a 3.5 infrastructure (some ESX3.5 and Virtual Center 2.5), is there any way to install Windows 7 VM on that?

( i know that on our 4.0 test environment its working).

Thanks.

Eran Levi

VI client loses connection to ESXi (3.5 update 4).

roity57 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:18:39 GMT

Yary did you find a resolve to this issue? I'm having a very similar problem with the remote site ESXi host dropping into disconnected state and when trying to work with VMs on that machine it's VERY VERY SLOW. We have a 4Mbit link to a remote office with a site to site VPN with a ping response of about 15ms (Inter capital).

The VI Client itself also drops out.

VI Client 2.5.0 Build 147633 with same VirtualCenter build.
ESXi host build 153875

If I RDP to the remote VM directly it seems to operate fine but VMWare connectivity is a major problem.

We've seen some far more minor issues with remote hosts connected via a 4Mbit link as well but it's a remote site less than 10km away. Sometimes we get timeout responses when editing machine configurations etc. Anyhow please let me know.

Cheers,
Dave

Known good USB over IP Modem

Novensiles — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:28:42 GMT

We have a usb over ip device which is working properly for all devices except the dial-up fax modem. Apparently this is due to the modem being a winmodem requiring software processing. Can someone please post the exact model of a USB external modem known to work in ESXi using USB over IP?

Will ESXi 3.5 run on Dell SC440 with Intel E2180

DSTAVERT — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:28:54 GMT

If you want to have the Virtual Machine sit on a raid volume you do need to install it first. You must make absolutely sure it is a hardware RAID card. Also make sure it is on the Hardware Compatibility List They are not inexpensive. ESXi does not support software RAID devices (normally very inexpensive devices).

It is possible to install ESXi to a USB flash stick 1GB or larger. There are directions elsewhere in the forums.

You might want to go through the following webcasts.

Quick Start

WebCast.

Phenom 9500 - No supported microcode levels for this stepping of AMD Family 10h B2 processor.

eku1 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:47:22 GMT

A year later, I have finally been able to get the same hardware working. Thank you very much to: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/236107?tstart=150

I used a Promise PCI card and Intel NIC instead of the onboard controllers which didn't work. In the end I learned a lesson - a $50 more expensive motherboard would have saved me about $150 in add on cards. On beginning of the year I was also using the same hardware, but the key was the skipMicrocodeCompatCheck argument.

Add 1 to confirmed work in ESXi 4.0. I'll try to post updates on stability - for now I left the TLB fix enabled.

download --> boot CD?

weinstein5 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:25:17 GMT

If you burn a boot cd from the ISO image of the ESX3i it will be bootable - but I would recommend downloading the new version of ESXi for vSphere - it is the latest release of the software -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

Suggestions/Best Practises for Moving a 1.5TB RAID to Virtual Disk

DSTAVERT — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:07:14 GMT

If it is on the HCL as a hardware raid controller you should be fine. Check the subtext entries if there are any to make sure there aren't any caveats, special drivers, procedures or firmware levels.

Question on powering down my ESXi Environment

Troy Clavell — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:20:45 GMT

I would suggest not only putting your hosts into maintenance mode, but also disabling HA. This will help eleviate any false positives. When power is restored, power on one host at a time, take it out of maintenance mode and then power on the guests.

I think it will be fine to keep DRS enabled, which will help in balancing the load as each host comes out of maintenance mode.

RAID array events

DSTAVERT — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:31:57 GMT

Beyond drive failures, interaction with the array will be directly with ESXi. You can set up an external syslog server to monitor for errors etc. You can point the ESXi logs to a syslog server through the VI client configuration tab.

Removing files associated with removed virtual machine

martinpg2001 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:03:18 GMT

Hi - in the fine tradition of answering one's own questions... just recording an answer if anyone has the same problem.

It turns out that in the VIC UI, the Configuration tab of the host UI, will let you browse to the datastore, and in the Datastore Browse window, you can delete files.

That seems to have solved my problem. Thanks, Martin

ESXi datastore also for regular files

AndreTheGiant — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:24:12 GMT

what are the possibilities of the ESXi Datastore ?

Local SAS/SCSI/SATA disks on a supported controller.
SAN FC
SAN iSCSI

Also you can use a NFS share (NFSv3 over TCP) for store VMs.

Andre

Will changing time on ESX 3.5 Server disrupt VM's?

DSTAVERT — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:15:12 GMT

If you set the VM's in the DMZ to sync with the same NTP server pool as your Domain controllers you should be OK.

ESXi 3.5 U3 and Qnap stability/performance?

erwinrivera — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:28:47 GMT

Hi AxonICT

Did you manage to get the Qnap TS-439 running with vmware in the end? I am also looking at getting this or the Iomega ix4-200d for my home lab consisting of x2 ML115G5 currently with DAS. I have also tried to get Stormagic SVSAN running but require the correct Raid card?

Thanks
Erwin

StorageMonitor: 196: vmhba32:16:2:0 status = 24/0 0x0 0x0 0x0

ronaldpj — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:56:47 GMT

Hi, Thanks for the reply.

Yes we do use some sort of replication, however this is a scheduled event that occurs out of office hours, so no continuous process. I don't think this is related to the events we are seeing.

regards,
Ronald

ESX 3.5 Slow boot Loading VMkernel qla2300_707_vmw.o

davismisbehavis — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:56:06 GMT

I'm currently working with HP on that one, still awaiting an answer.

The MSA 1000 is showing up on the HCL as being supported with V7.x of the firmware, this is the latest revision of the active / active firmware so my thoughts are that this would resolve the supportability issue.

Whether it would solve the problem with the slow booting is another question, as I mentioned one of the hosts boots without issue and it's seeing the MSA as a compaq one within the /proc/scsi/scsi file same as the 2 slow hosts. Need to get it supported first and then revisit with VMware

Linux firewall + VLANS

Texiwill — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:44:57 GMT

Hello,

If VLAN21 is the only 'external' VLAN and you wish to firewall it with a virtual appliance then what you did is correct. There is nothing further to do within ESX.

VLAN21 <-> vSwitch <-> vFW <-> vSwitch <-> VLANxx (Your DMZ VLAN)

If VLAN21 is just one of many 'external' VLANs then you have to use VGT (Virtual Guest Tagging). I.e.

VLAN* <-> vSwitch <-> VGT Portgroup <-> vFW <-> vSwitch <-> VLANxx (Your DMZ VLAN)
VLAN21 <-> vSwitch <-> Portgroup <-> vFW <-> vGT Portgroup <-> vSwitch <-> VLAN* (Your Internals VLANS)

Most likely it is just one VLAN as the OP stated, so the first conection works. I would double check your firewall rules and dig deeper. If access works without the rules the virtual network is setup properly. Sounds very much like the firewall rules are an issue.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
Virtualization Practice Analyst
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Also available 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise'
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Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

How many hosts can I have?

clindloff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:56:36 GMT

You should try to stay in the limits of the physical hardware. Wiht 8 CPU's and 8gigs or RAM, I would say give each 2 CPU's and 2gigs of RAM. That should run fine. ESXi is going to use about 800meg, and a little bit of one of the CPU's.

There is nothing stopping you from giving one VM 8 CPU's and 8gigs of RAM. Just relize if it takes all of that, nothing will be left over.

It these were test machines, I would say over commit, unless they are going to heavily used. In that setup I could see giving them all 4 CPU's and 4gigs of RAM if they were test servers and provided they had a mixed load on them...as in some might be idle at times because they are test boxes.

Virtual Machine slow performance (12 x ESX 3.5 hosts running 200 Win XP VM's)

six4rm — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:35:48 GMT

Apologies...

We are running an IBM BladeCenter, each host has dual quad-core Intel Xeon E5450's @ 3GHz, 8 x 32GB RAM & 4 x 16GB RAM. Each host is connected to our SAN via Fibre Channel. I believe the SAN is IBM, but I'm not 100% sure. It sits in a Data Center which I haven't actually visited yet.

The vCenter Server is a physical hanging off the same Gigabit Switch as the BladeCenter Chassis.

Due to differing versions of ESX running on some of the hosts and not being able to vMotion between some of them we've actually split them into two Clusters.

Cluster 1 - 2 x 64606 & 6 x 82663.

Cluster 2 - 4 x 110268.

Could the varying versions of ESX running within Cluster 1 potentially cause performance issues?

If any further information is required then please feel free to ask.

EDIT: Just to add that we are seeing performance issues on BOTH clusters.

License for ESXi?

DSTAVERT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:15:45 GMT

If this is ESXi free, log in to download ESXi again. Towards the top of the page will be your license number. If you only selected 1 install instance when you downloaded the first time you can change that number towards the bottom of the page.

ESXi vs Server 2.0 Performance

DSTAVERT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:00:12 GMT

Quite welcome.

Does ESXi need it's own hard drive for installation?

hstagner — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:56:24 GMT

As others have stated, ESX is a bare-metal installation. Think of ESX as an operating system that is purpose-built to run virtual machines. It is not just an application or service that you install in an existing Operating System.

Don't forget to mark this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

Rogue/Orphaned VMDK files

Levi Spears — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:55:30 GMT

Quick test shows that when viewing files through the GUI (VI client), every refresh updates the Modified time stamp. Doing an ls or other directory command in a shell session does not.

Would be interested to understand why this happens.

Unable to connect to MKS:Failed to connect to server x.x.x.x:902

Felix001 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:15 GMT

yes, the problem is that my client is trying to connect to the internal ip address of the ESX server on 902. Since I am on another network the internal address can no transverse the internet hence the issue.

There are a bunch of work arounds, but it just seems bizarre that I cannot access my machine through Vcentre from another network.

Trouble interpreting log error

DSTAVERT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:34:09 GMT

I would keep a very close eye. Good luck.

Monitoring Drive Arrays

DSTAVERT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:14:56 GMT

Have a look at http://www.veeam.com/esxi-monitoring-free.html. You still need to have the Dell version of ESXi installed but it can send emails. It also depends on what the IPMI baseboard feeds to ESXi. If you can't see the failed disk in the VI client then Veeam Monitor won't see it either.

Help getting started with pfSense firewall and ESXi

bwaterhouse — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:16:44 GMT

Oh I forgot to mention you probably want to use a CARP type virtual IP address for your additional public IP's

NTP not syncing time in ESXi 3.5 u4

DSTAVERT — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:43:25 GMT

Great. Sometimes it's the little things.

I Would Like a Sample .VMDK for RDM Disks

EddieA — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:38:03 GMT

Firstly, I know what I am attemting to do is totally unsupported.

I have some instructions for manually adding an RDM disk to a 3.5 version of ESXi, but I would like to see if there are any differences in the 4.0 implementation.

So, can anyone post the contents of a .vmdk file, for an RDM disk. If possible, one created with the -r option, and one with -z for comparrison.

Also, the relevent lines from the .vmx file would berequired.

Cheers,

Eddie

Tool to Migrate Nic/Vswitch Config Between ESX Hosts

DSTAVERT — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:30:35 GMT

You could perhaps use the vicfg-cfgbackup as a starting point. It will copy and restore the configuration from a file. It is part of the VMA appliance or RCLI tools

Can an ESXi VM directly access a physical NIC?

claystuckey — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:23:48 GMT

Sounds like esxi 3.5 doesnt support this. I hear the next version might. So using an external firewall is my only option.

Big Problem - need Help - no more space for redo log

pawaq — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:55:31 GMT

thanks for the fast answer.
as i read in the first kb it is essential that there is no snapshot existing.
in my case unfortunatly there is one and i couldn't chooose the option "delete all" because no option was offered.

jörg

PS: the message you got was the one of my spamfilter. feel free to klick on the link. nothing bad will happen. only your email adress will be added to my whitelist and , as a result, the email will be delivered.

System Requirements for VMWARE ESXi 3.5 client VMs

DSTAVERT — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:23:34 GMT

Take swap and possible snapshot space into account when you are allocating disk space. You don't have a whole lot available. A forgotten snapshot can easily fill up the datastore.

RAID solution for an old ML110

DSTAVERT — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:18:48 GMT

Hardware Compatibility List is a good place to start. If the e200 was an option on the 110 then there is every chance it will operate just fine. That doesn't mean that the whole install will be painless. The server itself isn't on the list. It can mean that the onboard NIC doesn't work without a workaround. The best you can do is try the install and work through each thing as it comes up.

Storage VMotion over FCIP link

Bryan26 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:24:59 GMT

Thanks for the reply

I figured it was something that wasn't supported but would work.

Thanks again

Unassigning datastore and reassigning it another esxserver.

timparkinsonSheffield — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:21:15 GMT

Should do, if all you do is unhook the LUN from the esx server at the storage side and then rescan from the ESX side the VMFS should stay intact.

ESXi Backup Script on Linux

BobTempleton — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:32:16 GMT

First, a big thanks to KPC for the script! Well done!

With ESXi 4.0, you no longer have write access to vms with the RCLI, therefore you cannot use the RCLI to create and remove snapshots (which is crucial to the original script). I have attached my latest edit of my version of the script. I have changed it to use remote ssh commands for everything instead of RCLI. The andvantages to using ssh remote commands over the RCLI are: No username/password is needed in the script and there is no need to install the RCLI on the linux system doing the backups.

Hope this helps,
Bob Templeton

ESXi 3.5 VM's have sluggish performance on Dell T7400 setup.

mlb7225 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:30:56 GMT

You are referring to the cache settings on the PERC controller right? If I remember correctly, I have the default settings which are:

Stripe Element Size – Default value is 64KB
Read Policy – Default value is No Read Ahead
Write Policy – Default Value is “Write Back”

I also have checked the box saying, Force WB with no battery

I am going to looking into iometer, i'll post my results.

Thank you for the help on this, really do appreciate it.

Installing ESXi 3.5 with HP management on top of vanilla ESXi?

DSTAVERT — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:28:53 GMT

You have downloaded the wrong product for ESXi. If you have ESXi installed on USB then you can download the CIM update ISO file for ESXi and boot with that. It will update the CIM providers. If not you will need to find the link on the HP site for the offline bundle for ESXi.

ESXi crash - cannot start VM's nor delete files from disk

DSTAVERT — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:08:09 GMT

the -flat file should NOT display. It should be hidden.

Perfomance chart probleme

Drygery — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:41:45 GMT

It fixed now,

the problem was the SANsurfer_Performance_Viewer started on DNS server.

I monitored our SAN and at this moment tes ESX and Virtual Center has a problem.

thanks for your answer any way.

Can't access server from Console Tab

jpalm3 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:01:54 GMT

I restarted but still have no access to the console via the VMIC. It is interesting because it doesn't give any errors. It just shows the screen saver or at the moment the Welcome Screen. But it will not respond to the Ctrl+Alt+Delete even if I send it from drop down menu. Any other thoughts would be great. I may be wrong but it seems to be related to the fact that I am running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition on the 2 servers that don't want to communicate.

I think I will open a new question regarding how to install a program on a virtual server if it cannot be installed from a remote console.

Thanks,
J

Jackie Palm
Information Services
Bay & Bay
Tel: 651-480-4961
Fax: 651-480-7996

jpalm@bayandbay.com
http://www.bayandbay.com

Health Status Critical

chuels — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:59:37 GMT

Hi together,

I know it's an old post - but I just wanted to post the root cause of that.

The problem is the IBM BMC log - if you leave the server unplugged for a minute the BMC resets and he error is gone in the VIC, seems like it does not update within the VIC even after a refresh.

Cheers Carsten

New to ESXi 3.5 - need instructions on proper shutdown and then restart of entire system

mplsstar — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:33:38 GMT

Thanks for the info. It was very helpfull.

Enable IPv6 on ESXi 3.5?

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:51:40 GMT

You must use ESX/ESXi 4.0 to have IPv6 support.

Andre

Documentation in Italian

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:46:07 GMT

Have a look at http://www.vmware.com/it/

Andre

ESXi 3.5 and HP MSA2012i : iSCSI implementation

AndreTheGiant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:41:13 GMT

On the same network.
But you can use different networks (if your storage require works in this way).

Andre

How do you get a vCPU count?

lamw — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:02:07 GMT

Here is a script that'll extract the # of vCPU's per vCenter cluster: getNumofvCPUInCluster.pl, might be more useful to look at it at a cluster level versus per individual ESX(i) host.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
Twitter: @lamw
vGhetto Script Repository
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Intel VGT vlan tagging

bwaterhouse — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:32:53 GMT

Happy to help. I have got caught by the same thing on a physical server before.

ESXi 3.5 management network very slow

congocongo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:40:49 GMT

Hello,

I find your results of great interest. I also have a DL360 G5 with the same very low performance as you had, actually i have two with the very same configuration.

Anyways; can you instruct me how to find out if i have the cache at 256 or 512, and if i have this magical battery added? -i cant seem to find these details in the ProLiant BIOS.

Please help

BR. Congo, denmark

Service Console Command Line changes do not reflect in Gui.

uttam_choudhary — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:14:53 GMT

In your situation I feel this might not help though you can try this. Otherwise try the things mentioned above by me.

Java lockup/performance issues with ESXi 3.5, Ubuntu 8.04, Multi-CPU, and VMI Paravirtualization

mantico — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:00:38 GMT

We have discovered an interesting issue with a new production system we are setting up, whereby java processes on the VM guest are looping, consuming all available CPU. They are effectively locked up, and need to be killed (with -KILL).

Experimentation has demonstrated to us that this only occurs when the sites are running with VMI Paravirtualization turned ON, with multiple Virtual CPUs assigned to the guest - with paravirt on and 1 CPU, there is no problem. Turning paravirt off, and keeping 4 CPUs also corrects the problem.

We are running Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) - 32-bit - with kernel 2.6.24-24-server. Tested JDK is jdk1.6.0_06, though we are about to check against the latest.

Has anyone else seen major problems with Paravirtualisation like this?

Host Update fails to patch server

Anton V Zhbankov — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:08:24 GMT

ESXi logs and Host Update Utility logs.

You can download ESXi logs with vSphere Client - File / Export Diagnostic Data.

Not sure about Host Update Utility, try to find logs somewhere like c:\document and settings\all users\vmware\

---
MCSA, MCTS, VCP, VMware vExpert '2009
http://blog.vadmin.ru

What is the recover procedure for Uknown (Invalid) VM's?

uttam_choudhary — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:55:14 GMT

Could you try below things:

1. restart ESX host

2. Restart VC service on the virtual center server.

3. Then connect to VI client and try to register, as I belive VC is not refreshing correctly.

Please let me know if this helps.

How to move from VmWare Server to ESXi and from ESXi to VmWare Server

abradshaw — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:59:35 GMT

The VMware converter is available as a Windows program OR a Linux program

Either program can move Linux guests or Windows guests from Windows or Linux based VMware Server 2

Hope that helps

AB

Yet another ESXi whitebox system $850 (new) - 1TB Hardware RAID

astronix — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:45:56 GMT

i have same configuration

cpu 7300

mb asus pql pro

4 gig ram

windows 7

i can't run esxi on vmware workstation 7

plz help

thank

Virtualizing an NLB MOSS cluster - P2V

AndreTheGiant — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:38:22 GMT

Remember that NLB clusters usually does not require a shared disk. At least they work work with a shared folder or a shared DBMS.
You can create a NLB multicast without problem in VMware, see: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/implmenting_ms_network_load_balancing.pdf

The MSCS require a shared storage, and it can be a RDM, and also you can have a MSCS with a physical node and a virtual node.

Andre