VMware Communities : Thread List - VMware Infrastructure™

ESX server on VMWare Workstation

ContactDP — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:25:39 GMT

Hi all,

I am new to this community. I have a problem with my ESX server installation and need help.
I have installed ESX3 server on VMware Workstation. Also have 2003 server vm running in the same VMware Workstation. Installation was sucessful. Both 2003 server and ESX server are in same subnet. I am able to ping the ESX server from 2003 VM, but i am not able to manage the ESX server using the webbrower console nor through SSH connection using putty. Please someone help me in this regards.

Durga Prasad

ESX stopped respoding to management functions

clydef — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:55:22 GMT

All.

I have a ESX3.5 U2 that has stopped responding to management functions.

The VI client attached directly hangs trying to build the VM servers list in the left hand pane as does the web browser.
The VI client talking to the database cannot start a VM without timing out and shows 0% CPU and memory in the summary page.

I've stopped and started the management services without any luck. We migrated to V4 about two weeks ago without any issues and we have another server that runs the ESX3.5 U2 thats fine.

Any ideas.

Thanks

Support for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on ESX 3.5

dfehse — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:11:13 GMT

Hi,

maybe I'm just too stupid to find this information, but will there any official support for Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 on the ESX Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 Plattform?

Thx for any feedback

Daniel Fehse

Removing files associated with removed virtual machine

martinpg2001 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:13:31 GMT

Hi, I am running ESXi 3.5 and using VMware Infrastructure Client 2.5. Using VIC, I created a Virtual Machine called ChromeVirtual on a datastore called Disk 3 and allocated 20GB to it. Later, I decided I did not want this VM, and so using the VIC UI, I removed the virtual machine. However, I discovered that this did not release the 20GB of space on Disk 3, and I cannot work out how to safely reclaim this space.

From what I have read, it looks as though I should have selected Delete Virtual Machine, rather than just Remove. But now the VM is not displayed in the VIC UI, I do not have the option of deleting it!

I tried logging into the ESXi server, and at the command line, I can see that there is still a directory called ChromeVirtual in /vmfs/volumes/Disk 3.Is it OK to just manually delete this directory or is this likely to break something? Is there a right way to recover space in a datastore after removing a VM?

Thanks you for any help. Martin

Asus M4A78-E

MasterPT — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:29:16 GMT

Hello all,

I need to install a homelab, I have Asus M4A78-E motherboard with AMD 955 processor and 16gb memory.
All the esx 3.5 instalation and update 4 is donne, but............ when whe reboot i recieved the message "mounting root failed".
I need another raid card?
Any esx driver for SB700 Chipset 1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices 6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports Support RAID 0,1,10,JBOD ?

Thanks .

And best regards

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

EddieA — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:11:59 GMT

OK, I'm giving up on the idea of trying to make my 1.5TB RAID show up as either a passthru device, or an RDM, as nothing I've found/tried seems to work. So, I'm thinking of using the RAID as a DataStore and moving the current contents of my RAID to Virtual disks, stored in that DataStore. So, what's the consenus of the best way to set this up.

It's configured as a RAID 5, and currently, the whole 1.5TB is defined as a single Physical Volume, and I've carved out, so far, 6 Logical Volumes, with 1 or 2 more planned in the near future. So, do I either:

Define the complete RAID as a single disk, and contine to use LVM.

Define each Logical Volume as an individual Virtual disk. I know I can still "expand" these, if needed, using the supplied tools.

Or, yet again, do I go down the route of installing a NAS Appliance, in ESXi, and use that to control the data. If so, then the same 2 questions asked above are still relevent, but in a different context.

Any input and/or suggestions would be gratefully received.

Cheers,

Eddie

esxi 64 bit ram

lk5246 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:54:29 GMT

i have a ESXi installed on my server i've but 4GB ram in it and ESXi reports 3.36 on vi client.. i have a 32 bit Pentium 4 thats problem . but what if i upgrade my Pentium 4 cpu to 64 bit will ESXi detect the 4GB ram or is becuase ESXi 32 bit. the bios reports the full ram. i just some understanding. if i have to 64 bit cpu will esxi see the full ram.

Thanks

Lekshmen Kannan

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

Ubuntu111 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:28:17 GMT

Is anyone installing ESXi on a flash drive instead of local storage? If so what are the pros and cons? Would you use flash for all environments or only smaller ones? How reliable is flash compared to local storage (w// RAID)? Thanks for any feedback.

ESXi datastore also for regular files

ndhert — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:59:10 GMT

Is it true that under ESXi one can not make use of an external USB disk in a Virtual Machine ?

If so, what are the possibilities of the ESXi Datastore ?
One can put floppy images, CD/DVD .iso images and boot from it, but can it also be used for
regular files ?
If you have a unix/linux Virtual Machine, can you upload (via the VIclient) e.g. a unix tar file into the Datastore and then from your unix/linux Virtual Machine, copy it into your unix/linux file system, or even directly access it from unix/linux VM ?

ESXI Installed on USB Drive

lk5246 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:45:33 GMT

Hi i was wondering if installing esxi os on usb drive to boot is ok and not risk taking. i want to do this becuase i want the wrest of the hard drive for storage.

Thanks

Lekshmen Kannan

vmware esxi 3.5 supported

lk5246 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:44:12 GMT

how long is vmware esx 3.5 32 bit suppotted for before vmware stops supporting it.

Thanks

Lekshmen Kannan

vmware-umds export question

Kirizan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:55:39 GMT

Hey all, go another umds question.

I am trying to export the updates from the beginning of the year to current, so I'm using the following command

vmware-umds --export --dest "c:\exports" --start-time 2009-01-01T00:00:00 --end-time 2009-11-19T00:00:00

But it starts exporting updates from 2008. Is there an error somewhere in my command causing it, because I typed it exactly like it is listed in the admin guide here: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vum_10u2_admin_guide.pdf on page 25.

Anyone have any suggestions, as I would rather not have to ship 8.8 gbs of patches to our isolated sites so they can use about 800mbs of them to get update 4 installed.

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

ezimmerm — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:02:04 GMT

I've never had to worry too much about the time on our ESX box being exactly right since all the VM's are join to active directory and they get their time from the domain time server.

However we're putting a server in a DMZ and now I'd like to make sure the time on the ESX box is correct.

If I use the client, logon to the ESX server and change the time will it affect the availability of the VM's? We generally don't have any downtime so this is critical.

I see a lot of posts about time but couldn't find one specifically for what I was asking.

Thanks!

Rescanning HBA caused ESX to fail

Arkady — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:26:15 GMT

Hi,

I was rescanning HBAs on ESX host (version 3.5 Update 4) and host stopped responding in Virtual center.
I could not ping the host or connect via console, had to reboot.
I was scanning HBAs for more than a year without any issues.
Anybody experienced similar problems?

Thank you in advance!

I need a confirmation

Lotus91000 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:11 GMT

Hi there,
Please can you give me a confirmation about this command:

1-esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p Service Console -i 172.23.206.24 -n 255.255.254.0 -b 172.23.206.254 ?
2-esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p "Service Console" -i 172.23.206.24 -n 255.255.254.0 -b 172.23.206.254?
3-esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p ServiceConsole -i 172.23.206.24 -n 255.255.254.0 -b 172.23.206.254?
4-esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p "ServiceConsole" -i 172.23.206.24 -n 255.255.254.0 -b 172.23.206.254?

Thanks

SAN performance testing

chukarma — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:10:24 GMT

Hello,

I understand we can set up a vm running under an ESX host and use tools such as i/o meter to test san performances. To avoid any possible Windows OS factor, VMkernel layer....etc Is there any way to test the SAN performance directly from the ESX server?

Thanks,
Daniel

As the VMware ESX download doesn't work

VMvareUpgrade — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:57:32 GMT

Hi,
Does somebody here know where I can download the VMWare ESX version 3.5 and the Virtual Center Server as the download Center doesn't work?
http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/
Thanks

|The Best Guy
|MSc in IT, University of Evry
|MCSE(Microsoft), CCA(Citrix)
|Paris-France

Converting a 2-node physical SQL cluster to a single VM

Brian Laws — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:51:47 GMT

I've got several SQL 2000 and SQL 2005 database clusters that I want to virtualize. Although I don't want them to be clustered anymore. I understand that there's still reason to do clustering in VMs, but we don't need it. The high availability provided by HA is good enough for us.

I have two primary requirements: capture all the configurations and objects in the active node (NTFS permissions, shares, applications, etc) and eliminate the need for SQL Enterprise Edition. It's the first requirement which makes it look like I need to convert the active cluster node. I can't guarantee that I can re-install everything; the risk is high. If I can get the active node virtual, then I can uninstall SQL, re-install Standard Edition, and restore the databases.

The trick, though, is in getting the active node virtual. Do any of you know of a good way to do that? Is there any software that could help? I very much want to avoid a re-install if I can help it. Thanks!!

what is the command for services restart ?

HitechCityHyd — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:45:42 GMT

what is the best command for vmware management services restart ?

Bash: esxcfg: command not found

HitechCityHyd — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:17:37 GMT

Hiii Friends,

this is the problem i am seeing......when i logon through the root user......when i type any esxcfg -nics -l (command) it says .......bash: esxcfg: command not found

what is the problem ?

where do i need to go on wich directory to work all these commands ( / ) ?

on which directory do all the ESX server regular commnads works ?

i appreciate you

Best P2V software

arturka — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:21:54 GMT

Currently I'm looking around for P2V software with some special features:

has to support Win2k hot block based migration with synchronization after first main migration

This is what I've found:

vConverter4 - I'm going to check it
Platespin8.1.1 - is supporting Win2K but I had a lot of problems with this tool when i was trying to use on Win2K as source servers
Vmware converter - supporting live migration of Win2k but without synchronization

Double take Move - doesn't support Win2K

Does anyone know any other software ?

Best Regards

Artur

ResourcePool.updateConfig failure in /var/log/vmware/hostd.log

tascheHyaene — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:25:46 GMT

Good afteroon,

I'm running a two-node ESX 3.5 cluster with vCenter 2.5. The cluster is running fine, and I recently started scouring logs looking for anything peculiar, just in case.

On one of the nodes, about every 10 minutes or so, two processes start and end in quick secession:

From /var/log/vmware/hostd.log:

~~2009-11-20 12:56:31.962 'TaskManager' 23034800 info~~ Task Created : haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270185
~~2009-11-20 12:56:31.962 'TaskManager' 23034800 info~~ Task Completed : haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270185
~~2009-11-20 12:56:32.032 'TaskManager' 21621680 info~~ Task Created : haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270186
~~2009-11-20 12:56:32.032 'TaskManager' 21621680 info~~ Task Completed : haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270186

After doing a vmware-vim-cmd vimsvc/task list, the output informs me that the process isn't running or the process never existed.

But like clockwork, about 10 minutes after the two tasks complete, I receive the following, again from /var/log/vmware/hostd.log:

~~2009-11-20 13:06:32.128 'PropertyCollector' 21621680 warning~~ GetPropertyProvider failed for haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270185
~~2009-11-20 13:06:32.129 'PropertyCollector' 21621680 warning~~ GetPropertyProvider failed for haTask-ha-root-pool-vim.ResourcePool.updateConfig-270186

Am I correct in assuming that 270185 and 270186 are references to specific processes?

If so, then why is the process ending and then reporting 10 minutes later that GetPropertyProvider failed? I'm guessing that the ESX box is trying to update the config on one or more resource pools, but why is it failing and should I be concerned?

The Internets and the google did not provide many tasty conclusive morsels in regards to this warning/failure and everything on both ESX boxes is running ok. I just want to make sure that this isn't part of something larger or will become part of something larger later on down the line.

Any opinions/questions/insights would be heartily welcomed.

Mcafee 100% cpu

msaville — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:30:46 GMT

Once a day when mcafee 8.7i gets its new dat file the on access demand will peg the processor to 100%. I started to notice this after the 8.7 upgrade and is most common on my terminal servers.

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks

2008 R2 Slow

tkutil — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:18:54 GMT

I just installed 2008 R2 Server on my 3.5U4 and it took almost all morning to install and seems sluggish. Just wondering if this is supported on 3.5 and if anyone else experienced the same?

Script to find RDMs

hi1280 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:39:17 GMT

This is my 1st offical communities post. Hopefully I'm following all the rules. I've followed both community posts that copied below. The rdm.sh posted by lamw (also attached below) at http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/ is not producing accurate results for me. It does report back some of my RDM's, but not all. If it's something I'm doing wrong please don't fault lamw, it could just be my environment, please test his script as it did return some results for me. Has anyone (other then a 3rd party app) found a way to script an accurate report on all RDM's? Again below are the links that led me to the rdm.sh script. I'm running ESX 3.5 U4 on a 10 node ESX cluster over FC.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/131228

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10188

Shared SCSI Volume

Bjoern.Gies — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:57:15 GMT

Hello VMTN community,

I got two SuperMicro servers, each with an Adaptec 29320ALP-R[1] U320 parallel SCSI controller connected to the same external RAID system.
The RAID system is an EUROstor ES-6600[2] with two U320 channels.
I'm running ESXi 3.5 on both systems, seperated to each other.

The EUROstor RAID system offers the possibility to propagate a RAID volume to both channels - for clustering as they say.
I wonder if the ESXi can handle such a shared volume or if there will be problems when both are accessing the volume. I thought about having some virtual machines stored on that volume but only registered/mounted in one inventory of the two ESXi at a time to reduce possible conflicts. So that I can easily run the virtual machine on the other host, maybe when one physical server fails.

To illustrate it a bit:
RAID system
   System-Volume-1
      Host1 only (SCSI Channel 0; ID 0; LUN 0)
   System-Volume-2
      Host 2 only (SCSI Channel 1; ID 0; LUN 0)
   VM-Volume-1
      Host1 only (SCSI Channel 0; ID 1; LUN 0)
   VM-Volume-2
      Host2 only (SCSI Channel 1; ID 1; LUN 0)
   Shared-Volume
      Host1 & Host2 (SCSI Channel 1&2; ID 2; LUN 0)

I found alot about shared SCSI disks for virtual machines, but not for ESX(i) itself. Found something about "cluster aware" OS, but most of them talked about SAN.

Thanks for any help or tipps, links whatever that might help me on that topic in advance!

Greetings from Germany

Björn

[1] http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/scsi/entry/ASC-29320ALP-R/
[2] http://eurostor.de/german/ES6600U.D.php

Win Srv 2008 R2 support

DAbowitt — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:59:16 GMT

I setup a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM and had an issue with a couple of screens freezing such as the security configuration wizard.

Opened case with VMWARE and was told the Srv 2008 R2 is not officially supported yet and will be in a future patch fix to ESX 3.5.

Anyone can tell me when this will be supported as I want to roll out a migration from 2003 Domain Controller to Srv 2008 R2 DC's. Don't want to spend money on consultating to go to Srv 2008 SP2 and then have to spend again on R2 migration.

Also, anyone else try deployment of R2 and had success.

My config is 1VCPU, 4GB RAM, Enhanced VMXNET adaptor.

Thanks,

David Abowitt, VCP

OpenSSH GSSAPI allows elevated privileges

tupelo.operations — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:42:27 GMT

Would any of you guys know what patch addresses the {color:#000000}"OpenSSH GSSAPI allows elevated privileges" vulnerability? During a scan, 1 of our 11 ESX 3.5U4 hosts was dinged for this...no idea why the other 10 weren't. Any information would be appreciated.{color}

Message was edited by: Texiwill: Removed microsoft word foo

Clone Powered ON VM with RDM

Yamafrost — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:37:26 GMT

Hi all,

from your own experience, I would like to know if it's possible to clone a VM with a Virtual RDM disk without turning it off.

Thank You,
Alex

Snapshot issue in ESX 3.5

vpalan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:05:36 GMT

When i try to delete my snapshot one of my VM through VC, am getting "operation timed out" error.

Command to delete snapshot throught CLI is

vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/UUID/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmx hassnapshot --> command to check snapshot is present or not
vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/UUID/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmx removesnapshot --> to delete

the above command is one to delete the snapshot, am right????

may i know why am getting "operation timed out" error in VC.

thanks in advances

with Regards,
Vimal

irq 177, boot Linux virtual machine with irqpoll?

namilak — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:43:57 GMT

Hi,

We have a virtual machine running RHEL 5.1 (64-bit) that crashed this morning. The virtual machine serves as a MySQL server, it has 4vCPU and 4096MB assigned; host is ESX 3.5.0, 113339.

These are the messages in the log:

Jul 15 15:50:19 hobbes kernel: ip_conntrack version 2.4 (8192 buckets, 65536 max) - 304 bytes per conntrack
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: irq 177: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel:
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: Call Trace:
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <IRQ> <ffffffff800b5d77> __report_bad_irq+0x30/0x7d
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff800b5faa> note_interrupt+0x1e6/0x227
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff800b54bc> __do_IRQ+0xc7/0x105
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff8006a3bd> do_IRQ+0xe7/0xf5
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff8005b615> ret_from_intr+0x0/0xa
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff80011cba> __do_softirq+0x53/0xd5
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff8005c2fc> call_softirq+0x1c/0x28
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff8006a53a> do_softirq+0x2c/0x85
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff80068d0e> default_idle+0x0/0x50
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff8005bc8e> apic_timer_interrupt+0x66/0x6c
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <EOI> <ffffffff80068d37> default_idle+0x29/0x50
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff80046f86> cpu_idle+0x95/0xb8
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff803d1806> start_kernel+0x220/0x225
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff803d1237> _sinittext+0x237/0x23e
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel:
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: handlers:
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: <ffffffff881cb7fe> (e1000_intr+0x0/0x113 e1000)
Jul 16 01:37:55 hobbes kernel: Disabling IRQ #177
Jul 16 01:45:15 hobbes kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
Jul 16 03:41:58 hobbes kernel: klogd 1.4.1, log source = /proc/kmsg started.

Should I reboot the machine with irqpoll?. Interrupt 177 is eth0.
Has anyone seen those errors on a vm running Linux? Are there any recommendations for the configuration of my virtual machine?

I appreciate your comments.

Thank you!

ESXi 3.5 U3 and Qnap stability/performance?

danik11 — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:27:42 GMT

Hi everyone

Looking to buy QNAP 809 pro for our current ESXi 3.5 few servers to put all the VMs on QNAP. I had few questions;

1) Can you mount QNAP device to ESXi server as iSCSI datastore? and put VMS on it? or do i have to use NFS?

2) Should i consider other brands? if so which in same price ranges?

3) Just overall your experience with QNAP and ESX environement?

Thanks

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

ronaldpj — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:54:13 GMT

Hi all,

We are seeing some information in /var/log/vmkernel that worries us somewhat. We don't have any actual problems, but a lot of messages. The messages occur on 13 hosts in one site which are all connected to the same LUNs. The LUNs exist on iSCSI based storage devices from EMC (AX4 and CX4) and Equalogic. The messages relate to LUNs which exist on all three storage devices.

This is an example message:
Nov 19 10:31:56 lin-ict-esx22 vmkernel: 89:15:31:38.094 cpu0:1024)StorageMonitor: 196: vmhba32:16:2:0 status = 24/0 0x0 0x0 0x0

Every 5 minutes we get somewhere between 10 to 60 messages (depending on the host), targetting different paths. Sometimes one path gives multiple messages in a row (sometimes up to 20). Over all the hosts combined, all LUNs on all storage devices are mentioned, so it is not a specific LUN or storage device which gives this error.
The 13 hosts are all ESX3.5U3. In the same site and connected to the same storage, we also have 2 ESX4 hosts. They do not report anything related to this error.

On another site with roughly the same configuration (hosts are running ESX3.5U2 instead of U3), we don't have anything resembling these messages.

Reading through the forum and on different sites, we see this message being about a SCSI Reservation Conflict.

Can anyone give us some information about this?

ESX 3.5 Slow boot Loading VMkernel qla2300_707_vmw.o

techpaul — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:51:26 GMT

I installed update 4 for ESX 3.5 via Update manager. After installing all required updates the ESX host did the final reboot, but did not come back up. I checked the console and could see it was stuck at the line loading vmkernel qla2300_707_vmw.o. I restarted the offending ESX host a few times but it still would not get past the loading vmkernel message.

There were a couple of articles on the vmware community webpage suggesting that this can take up to 30 mins and just to sit tight and wait. I waited for 45 mins it still was stuck at the same screen.

It eventually boots up after around 1hr 30 mins!

I have installed all the latest firmware updates for the Hardware HP BL460c G1

I also ran the below command after reading an article with a fix. This did not do anything to speed up boot time, still around 1 hr 30 mins.
http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/do-you-suffer-slow-boot-up-with-your-esx-host/esxcfg-advcfg -s 10 /Scsi/ConflictRetries

Has anyone else experienced this problem before? I ran update 4 on all 5 of the DR esx hosts wih out any issues, this is the first ESX host in our prod environment that has update 4 installed.

Thanks

Linux firewall + VLANS

SilkBC69 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:13:56 GMT

Is there any issue with using VLAN interfaces on Linux firewalls in ESXi? The virtual swtich on the ESXi server has a VLAN ID of 21 for our ISP, which corresponds to the VLAN ID on the switch. I am building a Linux firewall to duplicate our current physical one (using a different IP) so I can do some testing without interrupting current connectivity.

Our current physcial firewall's WAN interface (the one with the external IP on it) is called "VLAN21".

On my (duplicate) virtual firewall, interface eth0 os connected to VLAN21 on the virtual switch and can access the Internet just fine. When I configure the "interfaces" file onthe virtual firewall exactly as it is on the current physical firewall (except for IP information), I cannot access the Internet at all, nor ping the ISP's gateway. I have the VLAN module loaded.

Before I dig much deeper, i just wanted to make sure there wasn;t something else I needed to do within VMware to make this work?

Thanks!

Changing subnet for VMkernel and Vmotion

Dave McD — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:47:51 GMT

Our current setup has Vmotion on the same subnet as our production machines, which I am not happy aboutand it is causing our 3com switched trouble when we vmotion a VM.

We have dedicated a subnet to vmotion and want to change the vmkernel port to the new subnet.

Our current vmkernel port has 2 physical nics, 1 in standby mode.

My plan is to create another vmkernel port on the same switch and the standby NIC. I would enable vmotion on that one, then disable vmotion on the original one.

I would then delete the original vmkernel port.

Will this plan work and if so, what sort of network out age will I be looking at.

Finally, is there a better way I can do it?

IP conflict

Rohail2004 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:01:42 GMT

Is there a way to check if the IP is somehow defined in the VM environment... I am using an old Ip address for my new VM but it is not taking it, I can't ping it outside the subnet, get ip conflict error, all other IP's are working fine, just the one, since it was used in the past so I am thinking it is defined somewhere in the VM, but we have over 200 VM's so I can't check one at a time.... is there a better way to check? thanks.

How many hosts can I have?

Plumcrazy2010 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:08:41 GMT

I am still quite new to Virtualization, but here's my question:

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with dual quad core processors, 8GB RAM, dual NIC's & 1TB HDD space.
I am running ESXi 3.5.
I have 1 Windows 2008 server installed and I selected 2 CPU's, 4GB RAM & my datastore has 500GB free.

How many more Windows 2008 servers can I run on this ESXi box? I have tried to find out how you determine what CPU's & RAM is still available and how I would know when the machine is overloaded but I cannot seem to figure this out.

Anyone able to help me out here?

Thanks,

Virtual Machine Swapfile, Windows Paging File and SAN Replication

ericsl — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:15:58 GMT

Hello All,

This thread is a discussion about the best location for Virtual Machine Swapfiles, Virtual Machine Windows Paging Files and SAN Replication.

Configuration Goal: Reduce the amount of block level changes on WAN replicated SAN volumes

Current Config:
Dell R710's running ESX 2.5 Update 4, Virtual Center
Dell Equallogic 5000, 5500 and 6500 iSCSI SAN's

-A separate volume for each Windows Virtual Machine is configured on the SAN. We do that so that we can easily clone or roll-back just that virtual machines volume.
-The volumes are replicated over a WAN link at the SAN level to a DR site.

I would like to move the Virtual Machine Swapfile to a SAN volume that is not replicated, thus reducing the amount of block changes that are currently replicated. We use vMotion. It says in the screen where you setup the host or Pool swapfile location that this setting can affect vMotion performance. How so?

I would also like to here some ideas on dealing with the Windows Swapfiles and configured RAM, such as;
Creating virtual disks on SAN volumes that are not replicated
Increasing RAM to reduce Swapfile use
Eliminating them, etc..

Plus, any other ideas for reducing block level changes in virtual machines...

TYIA,

Eric

Too Many Levels of Redo files

seanhsmith — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:58:05 GMT

The VM would not boot this morning and had the error cannot read vmdk.... "Too Many Levels of Redo files"

The following sysmtoms occurred to a VM on an ESX Host
• Last change was a commvault update on Tuesday.
• The file server required a reboot after the update.
• The reboot was o scheduled for 4 Am this morning (Friday)
• According to the performance dataThe server fell over at 904pm yesterday evening. (Thursday) so the scheduled reboot never occurred.?
• There are 3 redo files from the 17th
• And 100 redo files started to be created at 8pm yesterday According to the performance data the server fellover at 9 but the redo files continued to be created up until 7am this morning.

The server created 100 or so redo files. I am currently cloning the individual hard drives according to.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004545

I am hoping this will resolve the issue.

I would be interested in alternative resolutions and also information about the redo process. Specifically my questions are?
Could I have deleted the redo files?
Is there a command to commit the redo files without having to clone?
Is there a log that references all of the files.?

I have read a couple of articles pertaining to earlier versions of ESX but they no longer seem to be relevant. for examle the vmware-cmd -commit and vmkfstools did not seem to do anything or were no longer valid commands.

Is there a source of knowledge on the commands and the process that relates to ESX 3.5

Many thanks!!

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

six4rm — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:14:33 GMT

Hi,

Our environment consists of 12 ESX hosts with 200 Windows XP VM's running across the platform. Each VM has one vCPU and 768MB RAM with no reservations and no limits set.

Our users are reporting very slow performance when logging on in the mornings. It can take up to 45 minutes between entering their user credentials and their first porgram opening, usually IE or Outlook.

All the performance graphs show that our hosts are massively under-utilised when it comes to CPU & Memory. Looking at the throughput to the SAN their is very little data going across the link and the same with the network. It would appear that there is some kind of bottle-neck occuring somewhere within the infrastructure but we just can't figure it out.

We did realise last week that a large amount of our VM's had a 512MB limit on Memory although the VM was actually being granted 768MB. This was causing the VMKernal to limit memory at 512MB, which in turn was causing the VM to use it's VMSwap file. Obviously this wasn't a good situation to be in and we didn't actually realise that the limit was in place. This has since been removed for all affected VM's.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated as we have been scratching our heads over this for some time now.

Thanks in advance.

RAID array events

standus — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:11:34 GMT

Hi,

I have installed ESXi 3.5 at IBM 345. In management client I see ServeRaid and everything looks good. Problem is that I need to receive email when something will happen with disk array. How to do it please?

fiber switch

jspot — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:01:02 GMT

We currently have 2 esx hosts connected to an emc clarion san via fiber. In order to add an additional host we need to add 2 fiber switches. We went with the Brocade 300 series. Brocade has a management tool to help setup zoning etc.

Is there anything I need to configure through SAN or esx to make this happen?

I would think it would be as easy as
1) shutdown esx hosts
2) plug esx hosts into fiber switches
3) plug san into fiber switch
4) configure zones etc through management software
5) power on esx hosts

Am I missing anything?

License for ESXi?

sysjno — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:59:22 GMT

I have one ESXi server that's working fine. A second is complaining about an expired license. I've been looking all oveer the VMware site to try to find out how to get a license. Seems like they've changed everything and made their site 100X more difficult to navigate.

ESX 3.5 VM File Server and slow initial conneciton/timeout

kf4ape — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:14:31 GMT

All,
I have a file server VM (30gb total) and will occasionally have a slow inital connection via UNC however the ESX is on GigE. the server hosting it is a DL385g5p (dual quad cores) and the it sites on an MSA60 connected via a P800...it no slouch and there is one other VM on the box (the VC) which shows no activity...the VM was initiall created on an ESX3.0.2 box and coverted over to 3.5

so what is happening is that the network map to it looses connection and the delay kill the autoreconnect by the client...the end user connects to other shares without issue, just this one file server (which is VM)

thoughts?

ESXi vs Server 2.0 Performance

SlamDunc64 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:30:50 GMT

I am installing a new DELL T310 server for my business and plan on virtualizing. I am familiar with both products and have used them both. I am debating on which one to install, ESXi vs Server 2.0 on Ubuntu Server. I know the differences of the two, but cannot find any real performance comparisons of the two products. I know ESXi will be faster, but by how much? Are there guest limitations on Server 2.0 that are not stated?

I never see the need for more host machines. Also, is there a better OS than Ubuntu for Server 2.0?

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

Chris4Caribe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:05 GMT

I've downloaded ESXi for evaluation and am having problems with installation.
Trying to load it on a Red Hat Ent. Linux v5 server that has one 1TB logical drive.
During the first steps of install, it says that if I continue, data on this singular logical drive will be lost.
Does this mean I have to repartition my raid into 2 logical drives and reinstall Red Hat before proceding with the ESXi?

Please Help,
Chris

Rogue/Orphaned VMDK files

jongery — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:10:54 GMT

Here's the scoop, folks. I have MachineA, that has 4 virtual disks configured for it, up and running and not knowing anything is wrong with the world. I performed a storage migration on it from one storage device to another. In the middle of the migration, it failed due to locked up iSCSI initiator on the storage. I was unable to resume the storage migration, so copied the .vmdk files from the old server and created a temporary machine, MachineATemp. I was able to boot that successfully, so I powered it down and cloned it to the new server name, MachineA. Well, now I have 3 files, on the old storage device, named MachineA-0.vmdk, MachineA-1.vmdk, and MachineA-2.vmdk. They are located in /storagedevice/MachineA/MachineA/ folder. The modified date on these files changes every time the directory is refreshed to the current time. According to the Virtual Center Maps, these files are not associated with any virtual machines, as there are none stored on this storage. I am in the process of cleaning up files to decommission the storage.

My question is this: how do I find out what is updating the modified date on these VMDK files? Feel free to ask questions if anything I stated does not make sense or you need additional information for further clarification.

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

Felix001 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:38:44 GMT

I currently have a Vsphere vCenter Server which is managing one ESX 3.5 server.
The problem is when I try to open the console to one of the virtual machines I get the following error :

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

This seems to be due to my client trying to connect to the internal (actual) ip of the ESX 3.5 Server. Which does work as this address isnt NATT`d at the firewalls and set over the internet.

I have tried adding the vmauthd.server.alwaysProxy = "TRUE" setting but this hasnt worked...

Has anyone any ideas on how I can resolve this issue...???

Please note that I have no access to the firewalls or my local host file.

ESX 3.5 and Adaptec 2610SA SATA Raid for white box

Virtuali3ed — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:55:09 GMT

Hi forum, Just wanted your input about Asaptec 2610 SA SATA Raid with ESX 3.5. I read in other post that this controller works for 3.0.2 but does this work with 3.5.

Thanks in advance!

umds question

Kirizan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:53:42 GMT

Hi all, I have a quick questions all. When you download the patches with UMDS and then import them into the Update Manager server, where does it store the actual patches? I'm in an environment where the database is stored in a location, and the Update Manager install is in another location, and we have to track not only the current size of the datastores, but we also need to estimate growth of all datastores when we do patching. Does it store them in the same place it would if Update Manager was doing the downloads directly?

My other question is, when I import the patches into Update Manager, it only imports the patches it currently doesn't have correct?

Also, we are using vCenter 2.5 with ESX 3.5, in case that's important.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Nick

Message was edited by: Kirizan to include product version.

Trouble interpreting log error

n8er — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:48:18 GMT

I have done a snapshot of a CentOS 5.4 guest as I prepared to make some changes. Once the snapshot was done, the guest acted as if it no longer had a hard drive.

The host has the following pair of errors that shows up nearly one hundred times:

VSCSIFs: 441: fd 205520169: status Limit exceeded

Cow: 866: IO to deltadisk handle 478825 failed: Limit Exceeded

The statement is useless to me. I can't find anywhere that defines what "Limit" has been exceeded. I have gone as far as rebooting the host, but there was no change in the guest. Rolling back the snapshot also didn't help.

There are a dozen other guests on this host, and for now they are working. I'm slightly nervouse about doing further snapshots, however. Anybody have an idea as to what is going on?

Nate

Monitoring Drive Arrays

DanSpenge — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:08:31 GMT

Hello. We are an IT consulting firm and we have a little dilemma that I'd like to run by everyone.

We were on-site at a client's location and observed that one of the drives in the ESX server had a red light lit on it. We found that the drive was not actually failed but it had dropped out of the array. The problem is that we never got notification that the drive had dropped out.

I spoke to Dell's ESX support department about monitoring a drive via a DRAC but the tech indicated that it can't do any SNMP traps. We wanted to just install Dell OpenManage but the embeded version of ESX doesn't have the ability to get this installed.

I mentioned the setup (PowerEdge 2900 running VMWare ESX 3.5i and build 110268) and he said that we had to update to a newer build (this is apparently update 2 and we need to go to 4 or higher). From there, we should have no problem. He wasn't exactly sure on how to configure the SNMP traps from there but he assured me that once we updated, we should be able to install OpenManage and away we go.

We can do this but I was just curious if anyone had any methods for monitoring drive arrays in VMWare ESX 3.5i.

Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks!

VCB-HP Data Protector Problem

kamesh_a — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:18:30 GMT

Hi,

I have been struggling to integrate HP Data protector for my VI3.5 environment. Appreciate your suggestions and support. Exhausted and lost 3 business days, valuable time due to HP horrible support even after holding a Sev1 SR. No return expect my frustruation. I thought better to try with this community.

My Setup is as mentioned below:

1. Installed VCB and configured as per the VMware and HP document like

Installed & configured VCB, (config.js with required parameters)
Pushed DP agent from DP Cell manager to VCB server
Copied (vcbmount.js, vmwarepreexec.cmd & vmwarepostexec.cmd) to C:\Program Files\OmniBack\bin directory.
Created C:/mnt folder and a C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework\config\vmware_passwd file with required entries.

On Cell Manager:

Backupjob\options\Advanced\

Pre-exec: vmwarepreexec.cmd -a all -r c:\mnt -t file
On Client: VCB box name
Post-exec: vmwarepostexec.cmd
On Client: VCB box name
Object properties:
Client system: VCB box name
Object type: FilesystemWindows
Description:c:\mnt
Source: c:\mnt

It is well working with

vcbmounter -h VCBIP -u vcbadmin -p xxxx -a ipaddr:vmip -r c:\mnt\test01 -t file
vcbmounter -h "VCBIP" -u vcbadmin -p xxx -U c:\mnt\test01

When I ran it from cell manager, I am getting the below errors and exiting.

Major From: ~~VBDA@c-vcb01.c.nuk.local~~ "c:\mnt" Time: 30/05/2008 13:04:21 81:72 c:\mnt

Cannot verify filesystem mount point: (144 The directory is not a subdirectory of the root directory. ).

Critical From: VBDA@c-vcb01.c.abc.com "c:\mnt" Time: 30/05/2008 13:04:21

81:52 c:\mnt Not a valid mount point => aborting.

Hope this information is sufficient for a basic understanding.

Thanks,

Kameswar Akella

hostd keeps crashing

CB@EQUITY — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:54:51 GMT

I have a host that the hostd keeps crashing. I'm unable to join it to VC and unable to connect via vi client. When i run the service management command the server will start and stay running until I try to join to VC and apparently it stops. I see in the host.d log that its having issues finding certain files. Would this be causing the crash ? When I try to join it to VC is it searching for these folders and when they are not found the service crashes?

Any ideas how to fix this.. I really need to avoid rebooting the host because I have 10 production servers running on it. Or is there a way to move the VM's to another host without powering down. ( i don't think there is but I just want to verify)

~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.643 'Vmsvc' 3076440992 info~~ Failed to VixHost_OpenObject: Error: A file was not found
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.695 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-LINK : "/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.3/esxpress_3_3-2247.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.695 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-CHAIN : "/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.3/esxpress_3_3-2247.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.695 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open '/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.3/esxpress_3_3-2247.vmdk' with flags 0x17 (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.695 'Vmsvc' 3076440992 info~~ Failed to VixHost_OpenObject: Error: A file was not found
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.750 'Vmsvc' 3076440992 info~~ Loaded virtual machine: /vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.3/esXpress.vmx

~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.770 'BaseLibs' 106306480 info~~ Reloading config state: /vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.1/esXpress.vmx
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.839 'BaseLibs' 106306480 info~~ readlink /var/run/vmware/1a12cb5258d8dbc460cb3ef1bfd7edb2: No such file or directory
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.839 'BaseLibs' 106306480 info~~ readlink /var/run/vmware/%2fvmfs%2fvolumes%2f4aeb0fea%2d9a7bd6eb%2d9061%2d0019bb3c101a%2fesXpress%5fVBAs%2fesXpress%5fHelper%2ehpmvex66607%2egennxt%2etrce%2ehp%2ecom%2e1%2fesXpress%2evmx: No such file or directory
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.842 'BaseLibs' 89074608 info~~ readlink /var/run/vmware/1a12cb5258d8dbc460cb3ef1bfd7edb2: No such file or directory
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.842 'BaseLibs' 89074608 info~~ readlink /var/run/vmware/%2fvmfs%2fvolumes%2f4aeb0fea%2d9a7bd6eb%2d9061%2d0019bb3c101a%2fesXpress%5fVBAs%2fesXpress%5fHelper%2ehpmvex66607%2egennxt%2etrce%2ehp%2ecom%2e1%2fesXpress%2evmx: No such file or directory
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.868 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/STD06-XP-LUN026/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.0/esxpress-flat.vmdk" : open successful (23) size = 1073741824, hd = 0. Type 3
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.877 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/STD06-XP-LUN026/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.0/esxpress-flat.vmdk" : closed.
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.900 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.1/esxpress_1-flat.vmdk" : open successful (23) size = 10485760, hd = 0. Type 3
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.901 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.1/esxpress_1-flat.vmdk" : closed.
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.913 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-LINK : "/vmfs/volumes/4a4529f5-e48bd2c5-2ac1-001a4bffbb98/pepwwv11101/pepwwv11101_2.vmdk.phd" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.914 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-CHAIN : "/vmfs/volumes/4a4529f5-e48bd2c5-2ac1-001a4bffbb98/pepwwv11101/pepwwv11101_2.vmdk.phd" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.914 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open '/vmfs/volumes/4a4529f5-e48bd2c5-2ac1-001a4bffbb98/pepwwv11101/pepwwv11101_2.vmdk.phd' with flags 0x17 (The system cannot find the file specified).
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.914 'Vmsvc' 3076440992 info~~ Failed to VixHost_OpenObject: Error: A file was not found
~~2009-11-18 13:47:34.979 'BaseLibs' 3076440992 info~~ DISKLIB-VMFS : "/vmfs/volumes/4aeb0fea-9a7bd6eb-9061-0019bb3c101a/esXpress_VBAs/esXpress_Helper.hpmvex66607.gennxt.trce.hp.com.1/esxpress_3_1-30406-flat.vmdk" : open successful (23) size = 10485760, hd = 0. Type 3

Layer 2 errors on VMs

Dave365 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:16:59 GMT

Hello all,

I recently noticed a number of guest VM's in my ESX 3.5 cluster have trasmit and receive errors on the ethernet interface.

The VM's I've checked so far are all x86 CentOS 5. They are using a mix of pcnet32 and vmxnet ethernet modules.

The hosts use teamed pNICs in the prodction vSwtiches, and none of the hosts have any interface errors at all. I didn't think it was possible to get errors of this type on a virtual machine, expecially if the hosts are error free.

The errors are occuring in a low numbers and aren't really affecting performance but I'd love to find out what is causing them. So any ideas would be great.

Sample ifconfig from VM:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:4d:70:50:6e
inet addr:192.168.1.11 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:857783612 errors:1637 dropped:1818 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:876028660 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:742182802 (742.1 MB) TX bytes:130439686 (130.4 MB)
Interrupt:17

Thanks guys

HA and Vmotion a extreme status

miaohl — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:35:50 GMT

I've got a quesiton about the HA and Vmotion a extreme stauts in VI3.5.
Supposing I had two ESX Servers who enable HA and Vmotion. The source esx suddenly goes down when a vm is running Vmotion from source esx to destination esx. Will the Vmotion continue or cancel? Is there a conflict between Vmotion and HA?

VSS/VCB Issues

tkutil — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:55:02 GMT

I am having a problem on one server that whenever I run a VCB I get VSS errors. Anyone seen this before?

ESX3.5 Update 2

System Event Log

Source VolSnap

Event ID 8

The flush and hold writes operation on volume C: timed out while waiting for a release writes command.

Application Event Log

Source VSS

Event ID 12289

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error WaitForSingleObject(000002C4,40000) == 0x00000000. hr = 0x00000000.

Source VSS

Event ID 12293

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {564d7761-7265-2056-5353-2050726f7669}. Routine details CommitSnapshots({9c709153-c894-4f97-a5c3-adb0c5be11b2}) hr = 0x800705b4.

Source VSS

Event ID 12298

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: The I/O writes cannot be held during the shadow copy creation period on volume \\?\Volume{18f2a733-6fae-11dd-82f4-806e6f6e6963}\. The volume index in the shadow copy set is 0. Error details: Open0x00000000, Flush0x00000000, Release0x00000000, OnRun0x8000ffff.

High CPU in HA Cluster

Gooose — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:29:07 GMT

Good Morning all,

I'm running ESX3.5 Update 4 in an HA environment consisting of 4 ESX servers (IBM3850 - M2)

Each ESX server has 4 Quad Core CPU's. 16 CPU's

I notice yesterday on one of my ESX servers that 15 of the CPU's were working at around the 10>20% mark, however 1 of the CPU's was reporting 99%.

I'm obtaining this information using vFoglight.

Can anyone advise as to why just one of the 16 CPU's would be getting thrashed? Shouldn't the load be distributed evenly across the CPU's?

Any thoughts in respect to the above would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

Help getting started with pfSense firewall and ESXi

skygizmo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:05:46 GMT

Hello,

I have installed pfSense on a small Atom based server. It has two on board Realtek Nics and two Intel Pro 1000 nics. I have set up the WAN and LAN nics on the Intel. Assigned opt1 and opt2 to the Realteks.

I have a Dell 1950 server. I have vmWare ESXi on it. I assign 36.69.243.121 to vmWare GUI. I run 5 different vm's on it. Each with a static ip. Web servers, email, a couple of custom applications. I have a dozen or so static ips. I use 69.36.243.170 as the WAN. I use the default 192.168.1.1 on the LAN. I use 36.69.243.120 for Gateway. My subnet is 255.255.255.240 or /28. I can access the WebGUI ove the LAN.

Everything is located at a data center. I have physical access to my server.

When I hook every thing up, my servers are unreachable from the web. I have tried all kinds of port forwarding, firewall rules, static rout, and bridging combos. No matter what I try, I can't reach my servers from anywhere.

So, I ask, can anybody get me started? Should I give my vm servers local ip's and port forward? Should I be bridging or static routing? I have configured a few windows firewalls and understand the basics. Just barley it seems. I bought the book. Read the first half. Two weekends into this project and I am still stuck.

ESX 3.5 Update 4: unable to detect cd-rom

mbx369 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:48:47 GMT

Hi,

I have 2 ESX servers on HP ProLiant DL580 G5. Somehow, I am unable to detect the cd-rom.
But the drives are definitely ok, coz bootable from cd.
I also have 2 HP ProLiant DL380 G6. But these two are working fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I had posted in this thread http://communities.vmware.com/message/1290101 but i think that thread's been closed.

~~~~~ To Live Is To Die ~~~~~

Cant mount cdrom on HP Proliant ML350 server

fabio.damiani — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:55:52 GMT

I have a problem, When I try to mount the CD\DVD on VM ESX 3.5 Server host; I get this error :

~~root@cgsvm01 /~~# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

The physical harware is a HP Proliant ML 350 Server

I looked at the note but have not solved the problem

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/102401
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/72493

Here are more details on configuring my ESX server :
~~root@cgsvm01 var~~# ls -l /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jan 31 15:22 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/scd0
~~root@cgsvm01 etc~~# cat /etc/mtab
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 / ext3 rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 /boot ext3 rw 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 /var/log ext3 rw 0 0
~~root@cgsvm01 etc~~# cat /etc/modules.conf
alias eth0 bnx2
alias eth1 bnx2
alias scsi_hostadapter cciss
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
alias usb-controller1 ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
alias block-major-3 off
alias block-major-11 off
~~root@cgsvm01 etc~~# cat /etc/fstab
UUID=3a426241-6cc4-4ddf-9e8f-0fa939e7dd6e / ext3 defaults 1 1
UUID=14da41c2-3061-4995-9bf1-2aedc2f39d62 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
UUID=5cd89235-8c66-4e46-8711-573ac46f9a38 /var/log ext3 defaults 1 2
UUID=8fec316f-55b9-41ce-a540-6acbde5440f2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
~~root@cgsvm01 etc~~# cat /etc/grub.conf
#vmware:configversion 1
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/cciss/c0d0p2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/cciss/c0d0
timeout=10
default=0
title VMware ESX Server
+ #vmware:autogenerated esx+
+ root (hd0,0)+
+ uppermem 277504+
+ kernel --no-mem-option /vmlinuz-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix ro root=UUID=3a426241-6cc4-4ddf-9e8f-0fa939e7dd6e mem=272M+
+ initrd /initrd-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix.img+
title VMware ESX Server (debug mode)
+ #vmware:autogenerated esx+
+ root (hd0,0)+
+ uppermem 277504+
+ kernel --no-mem-option /vmlinuz-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix ro root=UUID=3a426241-6cc4-4ddf-9e8f-0fa939e7dd6e mem=272M console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 debug+
+ initrd /initrd-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix.img-dbg+
title Service Console only (troubleshooting mode)
+ #vmware:autogenerated esx+
+ root (hd0,0)+
+ uppermem 277504+
+ kernel --no-mem-option /vmlinuz-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix ro root=UUID=3a426241-6cc4-4ddf-9e8f-0fa939e7dd6e mem=272M tblsht+
+ initrd /initrd-2.4.21-57.ELvmnix.img-sc+

Where is the problem?

NTP not syncing time in ESXi 3.5 u4

jetb — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:21:08 GMT

I have an ESXi 3.5 U4 server and configured an ntp server using the vi client and made sure that the service is running. but it seems that the ntp server is not syncing the esxi's host time with the external ntp server. to check if ntp is syncing or not, i intentionally moved the time backwards for a couple of minutes using the vi client and with the ntp service running and observed that the time is not corrected w/c leads me to conclude that ntp is not working. can anyone point me to the right direction here.

Sun Blade 6000 Virtualized NEM (X4238) driver is MIA

csoto — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:14:59 GMT

Since 11/2, the I/O Compatibility Guide (http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/pdf/vi_io_guide.pdf) has shown the availability of the Sun hxge version 1.2.2.11 driver for ESX 3.5 Update 4. But I can't find it anywhere in the driver downloads. Has anyone been able to locate this driver? That would help us tremendously.

Charles

Resetting password for vpxuser account

Eire09 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:13:22 GMT

Hi,
I don't know the password for the vpxuser account and want to reset it. Is it possible to do this while logged onto the ESX Server with the Root account?

Thanks in adance...

Jumbo frame

Sivan09 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:38:47 GMT

Hi ,

I have a doubt about jumbo frame. My environment comprise of five ESX 3.5 server , with 77 guest operating system. In each server we have three physical nic connected to a gigaport of cisco 3750G switch. In ESX three physical nic are converted into one virtual switch. I would like to know whether we need to configure jumbo frame i.e by default each gigabit port support MTU of 1500 . But I feel it is a bottle neck , since 15 guest is community with 3 gig interface on each ESX.

What is your suggestion , ie. whether default MTU is enough at switch end or do we need to increase the MTU size for better performance at cisco switch level.

Expecting valuable recommendation.

Siva

Command for changing System Resource Allocation Settings - CPU shares, reservations

hodnov — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:15:46 GMT

Is there a command in the vimsh set or otherwise that will change the System Resource Allocation settings of an ESX host?

I need to change the Cpu shares to 4000 and the reservation to 1000 mhz.

I know these values get stored in etc/vmware/esx.conf, but the entries get populated only after you alter the defaults in VI Client.

I want to make the changes during a scripted esx install.

Thanks

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

Virtualize Unix server

manojpeter — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:33:25 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to virtualize unix machine using VM Converter software. Please advise the steps to achieve this?

Thanks in Advance.

Tool to Migrate Nic/Vswitch Config Between ESX Hosts

Damin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:11:31 GMT

Hello.. I am currently running an ESX 3.5 U4 environment, and I am looking for an easy to migrate the Vswitch, Interface and LAN configuration information from one host to the other. On Vsphere this is done using Host Profiles, but I'd like something for ESX 3.5 that will save me the 2-3 hours of manual labor required to create a Vswitch/Vmnic layout when I bring up a new box in our cluster..

Any ideas? Maybe something that can be scripted from the Console?

This is on ESX U4, not ESXi....

Can an ESXi VM directly access a physical NIC?

claystuckey — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:48:14 GMT

My ISP's cable modem will only communicate with the first MAC address that is sees. In my case, it is the MAC of the physical NIC. I need it to communicate with a VM which by default has a virtual NIC and thus a second (ignored) MAC address. I need the VM to use the physical NIC. This NIC will be dedicated to this VM. Does anyone know a way to do this?

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

pawaq — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:36:23 GMT

Hi!

I have an 3.5 esxi Server Build 153875 running.
One Server (Windows SBS2003) was virtualised. Ther Server has to Partitions. C/E C= 30 GB E=200 GB
Unfortunatly i did'nt had enough space left on the disk so, after I did one snapshot i forgot to delete this snapshot.
In the meanwhile the server is on hold and this Virtual Maschine message occures:

msg.hbacommon.outofspace: There is no mor space for the redo log of xxxx.vmdk

I have 2 options

1 retry , "you are able to continuethis session by freeing disk space on the relevant partition"

or

2 abort to terminate.

What will happen when i press terminate?

Removing the snapshot is not possibel because this option is#nt offered to me by the system.

How can i solve this problem? By attaching one more disk?

I have an raidsystem on a ml350 G4 HP with 5 disks.
the following files are in the datastore:

xxx.local_1.vdmk
xxx.local.vmdk
xxx.local.nvram
xxx.local_000002.vmdk
vmware.log
xxx.local_1-000002.vmdk
vmware5.log
xxx.local.vmx
xxx.local-Snapshot4.vmsn
xxx.local.vmxf
xxx.local.vmsd
xxx.local-218d9a0d.vswp

Is there a possibility to get out of this.........???

Please help

Unable to add host to vcenter across two sites

foxy1977 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:21:35 GMT

Hi there,

I am having a problem adding a 3.5 host to a vsphere vcenter server running over a VPN. I have a vcenter up and running with 3 hosts in a datacentre. I have a 3.5 host in our machine and I want vcenter to be able to manage it. I now have a VPN setup between the two sites and I can ping most local addresses from each sites.

The problem i am having is that i cannot ping the esx 3.5 host in our office from the datacentre. I can also not ping it from the office. From here I then tried to connect vshere client to the 3.5 host from both sites. I was able to connect within our office and manage the server. Unfortunately i cannot connect the client to the host from the datacentre. Is there a firewall setting only allow connections/pings from the same local network?

I tried to add the host to the vcenter server but i could not add it. I get an error saying 'cannot connect to the specified host (192.168.1.23) the host may not be available on the network'

All ports are open on the VPN connection between the sites.

Anyone any ideas or thoughts on what the issue may be?

thanks

System Requirements for VMWARE ESXi 3.5 client VMs

JerryJ26 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:43:13 GMT

We purchased a Dell PE 1950 G3 back in May, 2 Xeon E5410 processors. 8 GB RAM, 160 GB PERC6i SAS RAID.

Originally installed with windows 2008 Std server 32-bit. Focus of original project changed from Terminal services to Virtualization.

Now using Dell Customized VMWare ESXi 3.5 U4 (because it was free) and wanting to host 2 2008 Server R2 VMs (1DC and 1 Termserv) and migrate 3 XP Pro utility servers (20 GB each) to VMs.

Question is this. Do I have sufficient server resources to support the desired VMs???

I have read the Guest OS Guide and it seems to be OK. Just wanted another opinion since I'm a Noob to VMWARE.

TIA

How do I commit a redo log when VC doesn't show any snapshots are being used?

benny.hauk — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:52:06 GMT

So I have 2 production VMs that are actively utilizing redo logs (they are growing) and I need to commit the redo logs. However VC doesn't show their are any snapshots for either of those so I can't just go into "Manage Snapshots" and delete the snapshot.

I'm on regular ESX (not ESXi) so can someone tell me the command to run to commit these redo logs before my datastore fills up?

btw, that's how I got in this state in the first place (run away redo log filled up the datastore which crashed a VM host and when the host was power cycled, the 2 VMs who had an active redo log at the time still do, but VC isn't aware of it.

thanks!!

Benny Hauk, VCP4
Systems Admin
LifeWay Chrstian Resources

RAID solution for an old ML110

RadioMarky — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:49:49 GMT

Hi All,

I'm trying to build an ESX box and have an old HP ML110 (first gen). I was wondering if the following card (HP e200i Array Controller) would work in this box. I've done a lot of Google(ing) and my eyes are now square.

Can anyone please tell me if this card will work with my 4 SATA drives.

I'm trying to build this as cheap as possible, there be a recession here in the UK you know

Thanks in adance

Radiomarky

Networking issue

Rohail2004 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:13:00 GMT

ONe of my SQL VM is keep throwing the below error, and the SQL guy said it is a VM issue. Did anyone see this error before?

PowerCenter_Production_Integration_Service ERROR Tue Nov 17 07:00:00 2009 13884 REP_12400 Repository Error (Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server: DBNETLIB http://ConnectionWrite (send()).General network error. Check your network documentation.
SQL State: 08S01 Native Error: 11State: 1 Severity: 16
SQL Server Message: DBNETLIB http://ConnectionWrite (send()).General network error. Check your network documentation.

Thanks.

Incorrect NIC speed!

alize77 — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:02:51 GMT

On the VI Client, one of my nic is showing as 100mbps. However, on the Guest VM, it show as 1000mbps. I have check the speed using esxcfg nics -l and indeed, the speed is running at 100mbps. I'm totally clueless as I have check the switch port settings and it's set to auto and on the vmware, it is also running as auto. If I force the speed to be running at 1000mbps on the vmnic, the status will be shown as "Down".

I have change the network cable and switching to another port but still, the speed is running at 100mbps. Where else could go run??? Have anyone experience such issue before? Pls advise and thanks.

Storage VMotion over FCIP link

Bryan26 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:14:45 GMT

Hello all,

Bear with me as i am just a storage geek and vmware is not my speciality.

I am looking for validation in a data center move project. We will be moving Data Centers which are about 30 miles apart. We have a couple of hundred VM's what need to be migrated to the new Data Center. The team has proposed setting up new ESX servers in the new Data Center and migrating the VM's using Storage Vmotion across a 10gb FCIP link. The data resides on a Clariion and will be moving to a Clariion and the FCIP link is between Cisco MDS 9513 switches.

Now i was under the impression that this kind of remote migration was still a work in progress Cisco and Vmware and there are very strict limitations using Storage VMotion between Data Centers.

Does anyone have experience regarding this type of migration? Pitfalls? Problems anyone sees?

Thanks in advance

there are not enough licenses installed to perform the operation

Argenis Azuaje — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:30:50 GMT

I want to add host on my ESX 3.5 Infraestructure and I can not do, because VC shows me error there are not enough licenses installed to perform the operation

I have 6 Host on my ESX Infraestructure but I read on Internet that I add until 99 Host on my Infraestrcuture...........some help please

Below(Attach), picture with this error.......

Thank You

3.5 install not picking up local PERC raid controller

foxy1977 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:29:57 GMT

Hi there,

I tried to carry out an install of esx classic on a host machine that was running 3.5i with no problems. It is a dell 1950 series 3. I changed the raid setup so the local disks were running as raid 1 with a hot spare instead of 4 disks in a RAID 5 config. The server has a emulex figre card in and we are currently experiencing issues with a known memory leak that vmwareare working to address.

When i went through the installer and it picked up all of the disks on the SAN and i ignored these. When i tried to select the disk where to install esx classic the local disk on the PERC controller doesnt appear in the list! Anyone any ideas why i cannot select the local disk. All of the disks on the SAN are visible and these start with the letters sba, sbb, sbc etc. I also received a warning about invalid bios setting for the disk (or something similar!) and i clicked ignore hoping the disk would show up again.

The strange thing is that i ended up having to reinstall esxi on the box with no problems (without changing anything!).

Anyone any ideas? Does esx classic have a different HCL list?

Thanks in advance

Templates greyed out after upgrade to ESX 3.5 / VC 2.5

AndyShine — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:28:48 GMT

I have recently upgraded my environment from ESX 3.0.2 to 3.5 and VC 2.02 to V 2.5. My vm's are running fine in the new environment. Unfortunately when I went to clone a machine template I found, on right clicking the template, that all but the the "Add Permission" option where grey'ed out. Indeed the template names are displayed with a light grey, italacised font. I attach to the ESX server as root (via VC) so I don't think this is a permissions problem(?). Also my templates are stored on a local datastore rather than a shared one (though I doubt this matters)

I assume this has been caused by the upgrades: the templates were ok before I started.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Andrew

Unassigning datastore and reassigning it another esxserver.

hishivahere — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:57:56 GMT

Hi All,

I created a datastore in one esxserver say Esx1.

Unassigned the datastore means unassigned the lun from server and rescanned the esxserver datastore disappeared.

Now assigned the same lun to another esxserver say Esx2, will the vmfs volume in the lun exists or not?

Regards

Neela

Terminal Server Farm an Resource Pool

markvor — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:06:59 GMT

Hi,

start this discussion to get some practice Reports or experiences.

First of all the Situation.

I got an environment where 20 Windows Terminal Servers (Windows 2003 32-bit, 1CPU, 2048 MB Ram, VMWARE Tools installed without Memory Balloon Driver, fixed Page Files, Citrix) are Hosted over Cluster of 5 Hosts. I made a Resource-Pool with Standard settings.
On each Terminalserver the maximum Session Limit is set to 15.

Every day i run in performance issues where the some Applications like Adobe Acrobat Reader,Internet Explorer, Outlook start to take the complete CPU Resources with the result, that the other Sessions on that Terminalserver gonna hang until the Thread which causes the high CPU usage has finished its thread.

My question is now, can i use the Resource Pools to optimize Shares for the CPU and Memory Settings or is it better to leave the Terminal VM's without any Resource Pools in the Cluster.

Thanks for some thoughts.

Best Regards

Markus Vorderer

Moving from Local storage to iSCSI SAN

MTLevy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:24:43 GMT

Good morning, afternoon or evening

I'm in the rather unenviable position of having to migrate from our current local storage setup

to a brand new iSCSi SAN, and would like some help on the best way to achieve this.

The situation is as follows:

3 x ESX 3.5 hosts, with a total of around 40 VMs, all on local storage

1 x new ESX 3.5, still to be built

1 x iSCSI SAN, with lots and lots of lovely space

Now, my issue is not the configuration - I'm fairly sure I know what I'm doing on that side of things.

My issue is simply migrating everything to the SAN. I know I can use Storage vMotion to shift the data,

but its migrating the VM's themselves that concerns me.

As I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that VMotion itself works when servers are configured

as part of a resource pool. I was planning to create a new resource pool, add the new server to that and then

transfer all the VM's from one of the existing ESX hosts before adding that host to the resource pool and so on.

So am I totally barking up the wrong tree?

Thanks in advance

IPMI message handler: BMC returned incorrect response

pkk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:29:22 GMT

Hi,

I need help resolving this problem that occured on one of five hosts a couple of months ago:

At the Console, after pressing Alt-F1 for login, the following messages are displayed:

IPMI message handler: BMC returned incorrect response, expected netfn 5 cmd 25, got netfn 5 cmd 35

IPMI message handler: BMC returned incorrect response, expected netfn 5 cmd 27, got netfn 5 cmd 35

The first message can appear up to 7-10 times, the second only once. Hitting Enter gives me the login prompt.

After searching the web, answers pointing towards BMC firmware issues, I've updated the host from U2 to U4 with all the latest patches using VUM & updated the BIOS and Firmware with the newest versions from HP.

We have 5 host, 4 HP ProLiant DL580 G4 and one HP ProLiant DL580 G5. I only se this on the G5. All host connected to Clarion SAN.

System:

HP ProLiant DL580 G5, System ROM P61 09/23/2008, iLO 2 Firmware Version 1.77 04/23/2009, 4x Intel Xeon 7220 2,93Ghz, 64GB RAM, 2x LPe1150 4Gb FC, 1x HP Smart Array P400, 2xOnboard Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T, 1xQuad 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet controller

ESX 3.5.0 (U4) build-184236 (vCenter displays build 176894)

vCenter 2.5.0 (U3) build-119598

Thanks in advance!

Best regards, Per Kristian

Hungs on RedHat VMs

afrontera — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:06:03 GMT

i am experiencing some hungs on RedHat VMs. The VMs appears to be on, but the service it provides get down (web applications fail, web servers down, any service that is running on this VM fails). It responds to ping and console on vcenter responds, but when you try to login on it, only left you to type the username and dont get reponse beyond that (ssh fails too). No fails detected on sistem logs. Diferent versions of RedHat an kernel:

distro	kernel	tools version
RH3 U2	2.4.21.15.ELsmp	169697
RH3 U2	2.4.21.15.ELsmp	169697
RH3 U2	2.4.21.15.ELsmp	158874
RH3 U2	2.4.21.15.ELsmp	No instaladas
RH5	2.6.18-164.6.1.el5	158874
RH5	2.6.18-164.6.1.el5	158874

Looks like a vmware problem with this releases and kernels. Anyone has experienced some similar like this?

Infrastructure:

ESX 3.5 U4 176894 (20 hosts)

Vcenter 2.5 U4 (planned to upgrade to U5 this week for HA issues)

FC SAN Storage

Thanks in advance!

how to expand vmdk disk to larger size

vmwareluverz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:14:29 GMT

anyone know how to extend larger size for vmdk file in esx 3.5 thank you.

Increase disk size in ESX

EricSes — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:39:55 GMT

I am aware that this question has been asked a few times on this site before, but none of the others answered my question. I didn't feel like gravedigging by responding to one of the old ones, so here I am.

We just recently purchased ESX and have configured it in our environment. It is running on Dell Poweredge 2900 with two quad core processors and 28 GB of ram. After converting VMs from VMWare Server to ESX, I tried to increase the disk space on a Windows Server 2003 VM. The VM file is currently located on our SAN. The steps I took to increase the disk space were:

#1 - Use the VIClient to shutdown, edit the VM on ESX, and add additional storage space.

#2 - Boot the VM back up and do a diskpart to allocate the additional space to the partition.

In Windows Disk Management, I can see the unallocated space. However, whenever I did the diskpart command, it told me that the operation could not be performed on the specified volume. I only have one partition. I googled the problem and found that many people like to use gpart to boot the vm off and use that instead of diskpart. When I used gpart, I told it to extend the VM by the extra amount of space I gave the VM...it went and did it's thing but then told me it had a problem increasing the size. Now, when I boot the machine, Disk Management says I have 15 GB allocated, but My Computer says I only have a 13 GB drive. This is a test vm, so I don't care about GPart screwing it up, however, I do need to find a solution to this problem in the future as it is inevitable that some of our VM's will run out of diskspace. So my question to you guys is, what are your standard means of increasing the VM sizes? When we used VMWare Server, we had absolutely no problem using diskpart to increase the allocated space, so it's a bit strange to me as to why ESX is causing a problem.

Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Eric

High CPU usage after adding RDM

VirtuallyTaken — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:34:58 GMT

Hi,

We have added 2 RDMs from one VM (call this VM1) to an existing VM (call this VM2). Since then, we are experiencing high CPU usage for VM2. We are running Win2K for the guest OS. The CPU is running at 100 percent pretty much all the time.But when you check perfomance monitor or task manager from the guest OS, its quite normal. No high CPU. Has anyone experienced this before? If so, any resolution or why its doing this? Is this completely unrelated to RDMs?

Cheers

100 percent CPU usage on 1 CPU in ESX host

VirtuallyTaken — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:18:48 GMT

Hi all,

I have an ESX host in a cluster. I come in this morning and this host is showing 100 percent CPU for CPU 0. This is a SUN Fire X4600 M2 box with 8CPUs. There are no alarms being generated for this. This started happening from Sat moring at around 4am. There are no CPU affinity rules. The average CPU usage of this box ia around 30 to35percent. Has anyone experienced this? If so how did you resolve it? Howdo you check what processes are using CPU 0 in the service console or anywhere else?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

ESXi Backup Script on Linux

kpc — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:28:01 GMT

I've created my own remote esxi backup script that I run on a standard SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 as a VM with the Remote CLI installed written using bash and vmware-cmd. I wanted a script that would run on a linux server, that didn't use PERL or PHP and didn't require me to manually enter VM or datastore names everytime I added a new VM.

Description:
The script uses vmware-cmd to identify the VM's running on the ESXi server, snapshots the VM if running and doesn't already have a snapshot, then uses SCP to pull the files from the ESXi server to the backup location mounted on the Remote CLI server. It then compresses the files and sends an email with a report. The script will also create a weekly backup.

Restrictions:
The script will not work if the VM already has a snapshot, it will just ignore the VM and move onto the next. The only effective way I've found for backing up a VM with multiple snapshots is to either suspend or shutdown, copy, then restart or startup. Either way you have downtime. Personally I don't like to keep snapshots for any period of time, certainly not in a live environment.

I haven't tested it using VM's with spaces, (generally bad practice anyway).
The VMDK name must be the same as directory name (most are).
Make sure your backup directories exist

Requirements:
I was getting real slow transfer speeds with the vifs so I use SCP and have just setup keys so you don't have to login or enter your password when running any SSH or SCP command - it's very easy to setup and I've outlined the steps below and in the comments secton in the script

Run 'ssh-keygen -t rsa' on RemoteCLI server
Copy /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to /.ssh on ESXi server
Rename id_rsa.pub to authorized_keys
On the ESXi server copy /.ssh to datastore1
Add following line to /etc/rc.local: cp /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/.ssh/ /.ssh -R (This is needed for when you reboot the server, the .ssh directory gets deleted)

Restore:
To restore the VM, just gunzip the files, copy the directory to your ESXi server, browse the datastore using the VI client and Add the VMX file to the Inventory. Leave the VM name blank in the wizard.

The script takes a lot of ideas from other users on these forums (thanks to you all). I'm by no means great at scripting and no doubt there are things within the script that could be improved upon with the right amount of time. I've tested with a number of different VM's and everything seemed to work fine but I give no guarantee, try it out and see if it works for you.

Cheers

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

mlb7225 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:45:28 GMT

I am beginning the troubleshooting phase now of why my VM's are running very sluggish.

I am running ESXi 3.5 installed on a Dell T7400, dual quad-core CPU, 32gb ram. I have 2 arrays on the PERC6i controller, 2x 750gb RAID1 for my ISOs, and 3x 1TB RAID 5 for all my VM's. There are 2 physical NICs as well.

My VM's are eith XP or WIN2K. I have running at any given time about 5-7 VM's but there are a total of 19 VM's on this host. Each VM has about 2-3gb of RAM. The XP machines have 2 processors while the WIN2k have only 1 allocated.

The main problem I am having is with our Sieble compile of the .srf file. This process usually takes about 90 min, but now, it is taking well over 3 hours. I am not sure if there is an I/O issue with the RAID 5 on the PERC controller. The compile is doing a lot of writing on the drive. When I configured the PERC card, I kept the standard defaults, 64kb, No Read Ahead, and Force WB.

I was told before I installed ESXi 3.5 that it could handle about 12-16 VM's running on a single host. Is this true? If so, where did I go wrong?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

.VMDK file missing!!!!

crodierde — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:05:58 GMT

Good evening,

I went to clone our template for server 2003 and it says "A file was not found. xx VM LUN00 SRV2003Bare/SRV2003Bare.vmdk , Is there anyway to recover this file. I found out the hard way if I shut off a VM server that had that template it no longer boots. Is there a fix for this????? Please help.

ESX 3.5 cluster failure with SAN & Network connectivity loss, BMC error ?

George_B — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:10:18 GMT

Hi All,

I have just had a weird catastrophic failure of one of my hosts in my cluster and I have yet to be able to pinpoint what caused it and how to fix it. Any thoughts, comments or pointers appreciated.

In brief I have a two node ESX 3.5 U4 cluster with enterprise licensing (DRS, vMotion etc with vCentre) running on HP DL380 G5 servers. These are connected via QLogics PCIe iSCSI HBAs to a Nortel ERS 5500 switch and then an EqualLogic iSCSI cluster of a PS100E and a PS4000E with version 4.2.1 firmware.

This is used to provide numerous high value but low load development and demonstration virtual machines. As of about 5 this evening one of the nodes just disconnected from VC along with all the VMs running on it. Before this no changes to configurations of switches, ESX or servers had taken place. What seemed to trigger this was the changing of some VM's NIC vSwitch connections.

Looking at all VMs running on the one remaining host seem to be OK but on closer inspection if you attempt to do anything that writes to the disk it fails, in a similar way if the their is an iSCSI time out due to a network failure. VC which is in a VM allows logins and functions but you cant use RDP to get to it or communicate with the VM in any other way.

There are also a number of errors on the physical consoles of the servers which also indicate a network connectivity failure. See screen grab below:

However the SAN is up, the network is only one switch and it is up, the VCB physical server thats connected to the same independent iSCSI SAN network can mount LUNs and happily write and read to them. This then isolates the network and SAN as possible faults.

One server responds only to Ping and SSH the other responds to Ping, SSH, VI Client direct connection and VC. As they both still respond in some way to their original IPs then there can't have been a vswif mis-config.

Logging in physically to both servers brings up similar errors relating to BMC. With a quick search of Google and the forums this seems like it might be an issue but why has it just happened without a re-boot or upgrade happening etc ? The KB article that seems to relate to this does not work and keeps asking for authorization.

So any help much appreciated !

ESX 3.5 and Storage

NeelR — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:53:03 GMT

Hi All,

We are currently thinking of using vRanger 4.0 DPP for our new backup. Is anyone using this?

Below is a rough drawing on how we have our enviro setup.

MGT Server - Windows pServer where we do all our work from.

San 2/3 - ESX Storage

San1/4 - For Backups (Fibre attached to MGT Server)

Green is all Fibre

Blue is Ethernet

Red line on the FC Switch is zoning. So 2 zones seperating the Sans.

So we want to install vRanger on our MGT server and then store the backups on San1/4. Is this possible? Even though the switch is Zoned?

Also if the ESX Server see's San1/4 but doesnt use them is this an issue? I remember having an MSA1000 attached to our MGT Server a while back, it was being 'seen' from ESX Servers and they began to have issues in the logs, however I cannot remember if there was any performance problems. Also, should the be seen if it is zoned? Do I need another FC Card to see San2/3 on our MGT Server?

Any help would be great.

Cheers,
Neel

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

pinazinho — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:37:43 GMT

Hi all!

I'm trying to setup a new installation of ESXi 4.0 on a new HP Proliant D120 G5 with 2 Western Digital 250GB SATA HD and 8GB RAM.

HDDs are NOT set on a RAID Array, and are NOT on Native Mode Operation (as I could read on another posts).

I mean, my BIOS is like this:

Serial ATA - (enable)
Native Mode Operation (Serial ATA) - (Auto)
SATA RAID - (disable)

Installation is successfully. First loads CD and all the required files, I select one of the two HDD's (I select first HDD) and then is performed the installation.

When installation is completed, the setup program tells me that is going to restart the server. It restarts OK, and when it's time to load the First run of ESXi...

IT APPEARS: "Operating System not found"

I don't know what to do because the installation is performed successfully. Could someone help me???

THANKS A LOT!!!

VM naming question

Rohail2004 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:29:11 GMT

Suppose I created a new VM and name ABC while ago, but change the NT name to CDE, but then I created another VM and name ABC. Since the ABC name already exist, so why did it let me create the new VM with the same name? can someone shed some light on it? the reason I am asking becuase the NT name was changed, but the VM was created with a different name, and accidnetly the same name was used to create a new VM... Sinc all the VM's are on the SAN, so wont be any conflict?

thanks.

SVMotion with RDM's

sidanat — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:21:47 GMT

When using Svmotion what happens to the RDM lun that is attached to the Vmdk file. I understand that the RDM is mapped by a Lun mapping file but I used SVMotion to move a vmx file and selected all vmdk files to be re located. When this had finshed there was a 12gb RDM lun attached to the vmdk file and it used the total space out of that datastore for the vmdk file and RDM file of 42GB 30 for OS and 12 for RDM file?

I want to SV motion OS disks tomorrow with 500GB rdm luns attached what will happen??.

I have looked in the datastore before moving the said vmdk files and the rdm luns if highlighted show a size of 1,000 MB but the lun is only 250GB i am a little confused.

bascially what should i select just to relocate the OS vmdk file or all files?

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

Rossgk — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:16:41 GMT

Good afternoon everyone,

I have an HP server that is running ESXi 3.5 already. It is running the vanilla ESXi. As I need to monitor some stuff, I would like to use the version of ESXi that is bundled with the tools from HP.

Can I simply take that ISO, boot it, and hit repair ?

Do I actually need to reinstall and wipe the drive?

Thank you!