VMware Communities : Thread List - VMware ESXi™ 4

Convert an expandable drive to a fixed one on an ESXi server

lexlf — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:39 GMT

hi guys,

I have to convert three virtual drives on an ESXi (4.0) server from expandable to fixed. Can anyone tell me how to solve this problem? I've read about the vmware-vdiskmanager, but it looks like it can't access an ESXi server. Which way would be the best?

Thanks for your support!!

Disable USB Passthrough has no effect

HeSitates — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:52:39 GMT

Hi,

I've been playing with the USB passthrough setting, but now i've trouble resetting it. How often i unmark the checkboxes, doesn't matter, after the reboot they're back.

My configuration:

HP ML330 with 2 E5504 / 18GB memory booting from USB ....

While booting the messages "dvfilter loaded successfully" and "vmfs3 loaded successfully" stay on the screen for several minutes.

Can somebody give me a hint?

regards Henk

ESXi vs HyperVserver

solarice — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:43:42 GMT

Well first off I have been working with most versions of virtual host versions ie vmware and microsoft for several years and have entire companys setup as fully virtual. In the last year I have been working with Microsofts 2008 HyperV but am now focused on ESXi 4. After testing on both platforms here is what I have come up with so far.

HyperV and ESX seem to run vm's at a comparable performance rate. The main differences seem to be in install and management. On the MS side the install is 15 to 30 min and 1.5 gig install program but once up and running the management console is clean and very easy to use. On the VM side install is light and takes only a few moment to install - about 5 minutes on my system and it's up and running. the vSphere client is a bit clunky but once used to it it is OK.

On the real downside is the lack of support for Linux systems on the MS side. But on the ESX side is the total the absence of differencing disks, child machines and a decent file transfer utility like samba. This maks it a non choice for lab and test environments as new machine deployment on the MS side is a minute or two for 10 or 15 new machines and on ESX it's an hour plus huge disk space requirements.

I am currently working with a company to deploy a virtual solution and as is I am leaning towards HyperVserver as it is free and much more full featured than ESXi 4. To be truthfull I had high hopes for ESXi but came out of testing quite dissappointed. I was expecting a mature seasoned server system and what I found was something I would expect from a new company in it's infancy.

I am not trying to slam vmware but this is my honest discovery to date, I hope the upscale this product to at least match the MS free product as I for one would love to take advantage of the clean thin system install.

VMware converter standalone

Formatter — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:20:46 GMT

So is there a new converter coming out that will convert 2008 R2??? since the esxi 4 u1 is out now and supports 2008 R2. Stanalone that is.

ESXi 4 support for Dell T110

jknott67 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:15:38 GMT

Hello,

Any idea if / when the Dell T110 server will be tested & supported for ESXi4? It has the Intel 3420 chipset.

Thanks

ESXi is reporting that VM's are using excessive amounts of physical resources.

doepain — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:12:58 GMT

Our vSphere Client reports that VM's guests are utilizing more resources tha they actually when you go to the actual Guest and check its resources they are relatively idle.

When reboot the VM that was using almost 97% of its allocated memory its released the memory back into the the pool, but as soon as it came back online it immediately grabbed the full amount it was assigned ...eventually it leveled off back to 35%.

Then another system decided it wanted to consume nearly 90% of its resources.

The VM's them selve (through TaskManager) are barely doing anything.

Senior Hosting Engineer
ModusLink Open Channel Solutions, Inc.

Unable to view certain directories on console.

doepain — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:54:42 GMT

Logged into my ESXi 4 host with putty, and I find that I am unable to view the contents of "linked directories (short-cuts) such as "bootbank, altbootbank, locker, and scratch... etc.

I run ~# ls /bootbank

Any explanation?

Senior Hosting Engineer
ModusLink Open Channel Solutions, Inc.

vCenter reports no utilization on server, but VMs still run. Can't snapshot.

cajx — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:18:05 GMT

I have the distinct feeling rebooting the ESXi server will fix this, but right now we have seen/are seeing this:

1. vCenter reported it couldn't talk to blade 1 in our IBM blade center. But VMs never went down.

2.There are no active errors showing in vCenter for the blade.

3. Under the Virtual machines Tab, it shows Host CPU and Host mem and Guest Mem as zeros... it sees no activity.

4. Vmware snapshots (note, these are initiated by the n-series/netapp storage) fail with errors such as:

2009-11-20 00:15:25,830 WARN - VMware Task "CreateSnapshot_Task" for
entity "server1.domain.COM" failed with the following error: The
operation is not allowed in the current state.
2009-11-20 00:15:25,830
ERROR - VM "server1.domain.COM" will not be backed up since vmware snapshot create operation failed.

and

The operation is not allowed in the current state, under the Tasks and Events tab.

I'm just noting what we are seeing/doing. After we contact IBM support, we are just going to try to Vmotion the VMs off the weird blade and reboot it.

Our system is composed of IBM n-series storage (IBM branded NetApp), an IBM H chassis (BladeCenter-H), several blades HS22 (Type 7870), and Cisco ethernet switches.We use NFS for the storage. We still have a very very light load on this whole system because we keep seeing random bugs like this.

Are these just typical vCenter type bugs not to worry about? Reboot and you are fine type stuff, sort of like things you typically see in the windows world? Or something more sinister is lurking?

How to enable power management (PowerNow!) on Opteron server?

helloyello — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:17:41 GMT

It seems that I cannot get cpu power management to work.

I'm using ESXi 4.0 on an IBM x3455 Dual Opteron 2220 server. ESXi shows in the processor overview that Power management is NOT supported.
No matter, if I turn p-states on or off in the server bios (v1.42).

Did anyone manage to enable it?

Problems with UDP-Connections

Metrax — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:14:09 GMT

Hi,

i want to use some UDP protocols like TFTP or NFS on a virtual machine.
The problem is, that I'm only getting ~300kbit/s on transferring a 100MB file.

With TCP protocols like HTTP or FTP the files can be received with full 100Mbit/s (switch port limitation).

When I'm transferring the files to a physical machine, I don't experience a speed problem, so I think that this is not a problem of the source server.

I've attached an image to this post, where you can see both connections.
The first peak is the connection via HTTP, the second peak is the connection over TFTP. Both files are 100MB.

Is there a solution for this problem?

Thank you very much.

Robert

HELP - workaround to install ESXi 4 on DL320 G2

MLubbad — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:36:57 GMT

I've been trying hard to get ESXi installed & running on the HP Proliant DL320 G5 machine, eventhough its not on VMWare's HCG!

Has anyone managed to get it installed? any tips/tricks/wroarounds?

It gets to boot from the installation CD, install, but after reboot it doesn't find the bootable disks!

Tried many configd in the Embedded Controller, the MPS table, the Intel Virtualization....

Appreciate your throughts please

Regards

Mohamed Lubbad

Licensing Single ESXi 4 server, vSphere Client and VMware Go web interface

homerun — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:51:24 GMT

I have questions about free single server licensing of ESXi 4 if just using the vSphere Client (not vSphere Center) and using VMware Go. I will also write about my experience licensing ESXi to provide some contribution to those finding this post while searching about licensing.

My questions first.
(1) Can multiple installations of vSphere Client be used with a single ESXi 4 server without licensing issues. I just converted a single ESXi 4 out of evaluation mode by assigning a license key using the vSphere Client. Later I will be moving the server to the production environment. When I do so, the vSphere Client software will have to be installed on another Windows OS. Will the 2nd instance of vSphere Client connect to ESXi 4 without additional licensing requirements.

(2) I cannot figure out how to use VMware GO Beta to manage the ESXi server. Is it an additional download? Is it the http://server_ip_address link which I used, for instance, to download the vSphere Client?

Many of you reading this may be new to VMware, as I am, and testing ESXi 4 server and decide to use it permanently. After installing ESX and the vSphere Client, you will continue getting license expiration warnings when starting vSphere client. In order to license it free, click on the "Upgrade your ESX host license" link in that warning box. A browser will start and take you to the VMware Vsphere web page. Login using the account you previously created, probably when you first downloaded ESX. Hover your mouse over the "Products" tab and then select the "VMware ESXi" link. Then click the Download link. Then click the "Continue" button. At this point, I could see my license key. Copy your key your clipboard.

Then, finish starting the vSphere Client by closing the license warning box. Make sure the ESX Server is selected, not any of the vm's. Click the "Configuration" tab, then "Licensing Features", then "Edit", and then assign your license key. You can toggle back to evaluation mode. If I had know this 40 days ago, I would have licensed it then. However, then I was concerned I would permanently loose some features which, as it turned out, I didn't need with single ESX server management. Having come back to the issue 40 days later, I had forgotten much of what I had read in the installation manual.

I called VMware Sales several times and created a web form question. The sales people are mostly geared to Enterprise Sales, and some apparently are not aware of what I just explained. Also, they responded slowly in one case and not at all three times. At the time I contacted sales, I assumed I would be paying for a single server vSphere Client license, but apparently it is free to use with one ESX server, explaining sale's nonresponsiveness. For some reason, I had assumed it would cost about $250, which seems reasonable to me.

Having worked with Hyper-V and tried to work with Linux XEN, I am very impressed with ESX. ESX handles Linux distro clients much better than Hyper-V.

I hope I save others valuable time. Also please don't forget I have several questions.

Thanks,

RH

P.S. If you toggle back to Evaluation Mode, as I did to write this post, the license key information is lost, and you'll have to add it again. It appears it relicensed ok with the same license key, which would indicate that it may be ok to use more than one vSphere Client.

Cloning ESXi server

b1izzard — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:28:57 GMT

I have a single 60GB hard drive that I would like to replace with a 500GB. Has anyone been successful in cloning this? If so, what method did you use?

Installing ESXi 4 on Dell T310 with PERC S300

jvincentinfolink — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:49:17 GMT

Appears esx does not support/recognize the perc s300 SAS/SATA controller. Are there any workarounds at all for this? I am currently trying to install it on a USB device just to see if i can get it to boot up, but i presume i will have no place to store the vm's since it still won't see the S300.

vSphere 4 client for Windows 7?

olafz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:58:05 GMT

Hi all,

the vSphere 4 client does not work on Windows 7. Is an updated client for Windows 7 available?

Olaf

Best Practice for backing up entire VMs, off of ESXi server?

maxiscaleit — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:37:47 GMT

Can someone point me in the direction of a good tutorial for how to backup VMs in their entirety from an ESXi server, for archive/backup purposes?

VM's stop pinging - Win2K3 servers - ESXi 4.0

msteele999 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:51:34 GMT

Hello all,

I have been experiencing the following issue for about a week now:

I have a VM (windows server 2003 standard) running. It stops pinging from my workstation and from my network monitoring platform (which is on the VM Server). Once this happens, the VM cannot ping the default gateway. Eventually the alarm clears on my netmon, however I still cannot ping the server from my workstation AND I cannot ping the default gateway from the server - although the server can ping everything else on the network. The only way I have been able to fix the problem is to change the IP address of the server.

This has occured on two different VM's to date.

I am running ESXi 4.0 on two Dell R610 servers.

Any assistance will be gratefully received.

Mark

Error loading operating system

OlivierParis — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:03:54 GMT

Hello,

I'm new to VmWare and I've installed VmWare ESXi 4 on a physical server and connect a datastore on a Netapp appliance (FAS2050) via iSCSI.

All is working well.

Next step : Using VmWare vCenter Converter Standalone (4.0.1 build 161434), I've converted a Windows 2003 Server SP2 into a virtual machine on my ESXi server. The operation was successfull with no errors.

BUT : When I launch my virtual machine, it doesnt work and in the console, I have an error message : "Error loading operating system".

In attachment : a picture of the VM settings (automatically set byt the converter).

Any ideas ?

Thanks.

Olivier

Can not install ESXi 4 on IBM System x3550 M2

LEPA — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:12:30 GMT

I just got a new IBM System x3550 M2 server on which I want to install ESXi 4. But I always get the following error message right after I confirm the License Agreement:

"Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESXi 4.0.0 image to"

This server is listed on the compatibility list, as is the used RAID controller (IBM ServeRAID M5015).
I already updated the servers firmware. My guess is that the ESXi Installer doesn't properly load the needed drivers for the RAID controller, so it can not "see" the disks to install to.

Has anybody an idea how to solve this?

Help is very appreciated!

Cheers,

Snapshot very slow on power-on, Snapshot very fast on power-off. Why ?

luicst — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:31:04 GMT

I installed MS-Windows on vSphere VM.
If MS-Windows VM is running, Snapshot is very slow, it spend 7 minutes.
If MS-Windows VM is power-off, Snapshot is very fast, it spend <= 5 seconds.
Why ?
How to improve ?

Thank you very much.

ESXi 4 Update 1: Which Update to choose?

pinkerton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:54:37 GMT

Hi,

I'm just about to update two ESXi4 hosts to Update 1 using Update Manager. As this is the first time I'm performing such a major upgrade I'm a little uncertain about the differences of the upgrade. Update manager offers the following patches:

ESXi400-200911201-UG (Firmware)
ESXi400-200911202-UG (Tools)
ESXi400-200911203-UG (Client)

and

ESXi400-Update01

If I understand correctly, installing ESXi400-Update01 just installes all three other packages (Firmware, Tools, Client) and there is no need to install any of the other updates separately. I however have the chance to perform manual upgrades of each individual component by not selecting ESXi400-Update01 but the individual packages instead? Is my assumption correct?

When I choose to perform the upgrades individually - do I have to follow an order? I'd usually start with the firmware first but don't know if this is a requirement or not.

Thanks!

/edit: I have just tested this and can confirm that the above is true. Performing the upgrade using the ESXi400-Update01 updates all parts at once (Firmware, Tools and vSphere Client). After the update has been finished, the individual updates cannot be select for installation anymore. The same holds true when separately installing the updates - after all three updates have been installed, the ESXi400-Update01 cannot be selected anymore.

Message was edited by: pinkerton

ESXi Passthrough Trouble

donnie3iii — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:27:23 GMT

Hello,

So I tried to enable passthrough for an external USB device. Now I can not seem to un-configure the passthrough devices.

The steps I took were:

Enable the USB ports in the vSphere client under Configuration --> Advanced Settings then Checking each of the USB boxes
Connected the USB device
Open the VM and added a USB controller
Rebooted the ESXi Server

The rebot took 20-30 minutes and did the VM did not seem to see any USB device, so I decided to remove the configuration, the steps I took are:

Shutdown the VM I was trying to add the passthrough to
Edited the settings and removed the USB controller
Restarted the VM and checked the device manager
Shutdown the VM
disabled the USB ports in the vSphere client under Configuration --> Advanced Settings then unchecking each of the USB boxes
Rebooted the ESXi server

The passthrough devices are still checked each time I do this and the boot time is still very slow (20-30 minutes). Any advice on steps I can take to remove the configured passthrough would be greatly appreciated.

Hardware:

Dell PowerEdge R610
MD3000i

Software:

ESXi 4.0.0 Build 181792
vSphere 4.0.0 Build 162856

ESXi 4.0 vlan problem (!)

mrbankhead — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:42:59 GMT

If you're having wierd problems with vlans on esxi check your firewall settings carefully!

PS Where's the esxi 4.0 community?

Message was edited by: mrbankhead

poor disk perfomance on HP BL460c with ESXi 4

MindaugasVaiciulis — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:37:07 GMT

Hello,

I am trying to migrate from VMware Server 1.0.8 to ESXi 4.

Problem is with ESXi 4 on HP BL460c blade, disk perfomance is awful.

Using SAS 10 or 15K 146GB disks, RAID1 setup, RAID controller is supported on ESXi 4.

Other identical blade (only RAID0) with VMware Server 1.0.8 on CentOS 5.4 works fine.
here are some benchmarks:

Writing 200MB file

VMware Server:

time dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=204800 of=/home/200MB.file
209715200 bytes (210 MB) copied, 0.91525 seconds, 229 MB/s

ESXi 4:

time dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=204800 of=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/200MB.file 204800+0 records in
204800+0 records out
real 0m 23.33s ~8 MB/s

Localy copying file:

VMware Server:

time cp 200MB.file 200MB.copy

real 0m0.528s ~378 MB/s

ESXi 4:

time cp 200MB.file 200MB.copy
real 0m 25.94s ~8 MB/s

same goes with real, non dd generated files. What could be wrong, except bad disks? Thanks.

a general system error occurred the virtual machine could not start

b1izzard — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:49:40 GMT

I just tried firing up a Windows 2008 virtual machine and got the above message. I haven't changed anything, and it was working fine the last time I tried it. I did lose power and it did an improper shutdown, but hopefully these virtual machines aren't that sensitive. I can't find any information on this error. Anyone run into this or know of a workaround?

Connecting 2 different subnet on single ESXi with 2 Onboard NIC

AlbertWT — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:15:00 GMT

Hi All,

I've got two separate network one is our internal LAN and the other is our DMZ (external facing) and i want to connect to both network to publish a VM to the outside world.

Internal LAN:
NIC IP : 10.2.2.12
SN mask: 255.255.254.0
gateway: 10.2.2.1

DMZ IP as of previous configuration:
NIC IP : 10.2.1.130
SN mask: 255.255.255.128
gateway: 10.2.1.129

The Host server got 2 On board NIC and at the moment I've successsfully register the ESXi host on my vCenter and do everything else on my LAN network after disconnecting my other NIC connected to DMZ.

is this achievable in the real world ? considering both of the network got different IP address range and Subnet mask.

My understanding is that:

One vSwitch must have one IP address after that i can add one pNIC and then create VMNetwork and assign that VMNetwork into the VMs cmiiw

Kind Regards,
AWT

ESXi U1 install

Josh26 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:12:30 GMT

Hi,

I have attempted to install ESX 4i U1 to two existing servers, both build 175625.
One appeared to work and is now running build 208167.

The other however appears to have not changed its build number. The Host Update Utility scans it and decides it is "up to date".

Any advise appreciated.

vSphere 4 ESXi Installation issues what files do i need any other files beside VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd?

bndwork — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:54:47 GMT

I am installing the vSphere ESXi on Dell 2900 III Poweredge Server.

Per document I was ask to unzip the following two files

install.tgz
image.tgz

the abover two extraction gives you the following files.

~~root@kdatabase installer~~# ls -ltr
total 922540
drwxr-xr-x 2 201 201 4096 Jun 11 15:47 Core
-r--r--r-- 1 201 201 189 Jun 11 15:47 ThinESX.py
-r--r--r-- 1 201 201 3618 Jun 11 15:47 ThinESXInstall.py
drwxr-xr-x 3 201 201 4096 Jun 11 15:47 ThinESX
-rw-r--r-- 1 201 201 943718400 Jun 11 15:52 VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd
~~root@kdatabase installer~~#

I only copy the VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd.bz2_x86_64.dd to usb flash.

dd if=VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd of=/dev/sdc

DO I NEED ANY OTHER FILES?

Thank you for your help.

bndwork

vSpherre Client on Windows 7

scotty p — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:18:59 GMT

I just installed an ESXi4 server. I downloaded the vSphere client from it and installed it. When I tried to connect, it gave me the following errors:

"Error parsing the server "server" clients.xml file.Login will continue"
"The type initializer for Virtual.Infrastructure.Utils.Http.WebRequestProxy threw and exception"

Is this supported on 7 or is there a workaround?

Thanks,
Scott

Error Cloning/Templating Windows 2008

Mickoni — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:41:28 GMT

I am just setting up a new system and I installed Win 2008 R2 Datacenter on a ESXi 4.0 clustered host.

Before I installed VM Tools in the guest, I could clone to template (and normal clone). However, as soon as I install the VM Tools I get the error attached almost imediately after starting the process.

The other strange thing is that I can snapshot the VM (using Snapshot Manager) no problem.

I've noticed other people have had issues with this in win 2003 and I have played with the VSS options in the guest - as suggested. There doesn't appear to be any errors in the Event Viewer though.

Any ideas?!

Slow snapshots on DL380 G6

JohanF — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:16:31 GMT

Hi
I have a newly installed HP DL380 G6 where I think the snapshot creation takes for ages.
The server has an integrated Smart Array 410i controller with 512MB BBWC enabled.
On this controller there is 4 SAS-disks configured in a RAID 1+0 Logical drive
On the Logical drive I’ve installed HP ESXi 4.0
I’ve then created a couple of Windows 2003:s
For this test there is just one VM-running. It has 40GB thickdisk and 4GB of RAM
Taking a snapshot (including memory) of this VM takes almost 6 minutes!!
At another customer I have almost the same configuration but ESXi 3.5 on a DL380 G5. Snapshots here take about 25 seconds…

Below is a couple of things I’ve tested.
Smart Array Read/Write cache setting: 25%/75% and 50%/50%
Smart Array Controller FW: 1.66 and 2.5
SAS Backplane FW: 1.14 and 1.16B
System bios updated to the latest version
Anyone who have seen the same or have any ideas…
Regards
Johan

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error when trying to use a disk with vSphere Client

juanjoln — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:54:33 GMT

Hi all,

I have been searching the posts exhaustively but found no answear to this.

I am trying to access a virtual disk which is free (no machine uses it right now).

With that aim, I went to a VM, then clicked on Edit Settings --> Add hard disk --> use a disk

Then, when I am prompted for the disk, I select it and click ok.

When I click on "Next", the following message appears:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

(it really appears in Spanish: Referencia a objeto no establecida como instancia de un objeto)

And then Next button appears as not-clickable.

Any suggestions?

It could be related to the .NET Framework, so I write here the versions which I have currently installed:

.NET Framework 2.0 SP1 LanguagePack

.NET Framework 2.0 SP2

.NET Framework 3.0 SP1 Language Pack

.NET Framework 3.0 SP2

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1

All these with hotfixes.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Juan J.

PS: I found there was information about VSphere Client and drivers misplaced. I already changed those:

%ROOTDRIVE%\%PROGRAMFILES%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher

Where I copied libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll

Help resource pools disappearing

cookieme — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:01:58 GMT

I rebooted my ESXi host and when it came back up and I launched the vClient, I noticed that some of my resource pools had disappeared! I have three pools to help with organisation as I only have a single host and thus no vCenter. This has never happened before and I have had this host running for several months. When I looked at the Events tab I saw the following message:

"Configuration file for cannot be found"

It does not say "for" what!

Is something corrupt? How worried do I need to be?

Thanks

Bug Reports

DarthPaul — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:46:36 GMT

Submit any trouble that you've had with VMware Go.

ISCSI problem between ESXi 4.0 and QNAP 809u ISCSI NAS.

TraversiRoberto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:11:20 GMT

Hi all,

i'm experiencing a strange problem mapping different ISCSI targets from the same ESXi host.

I'm aware that QNAP ISCSI NAS is not officially supported but at the moment it is the cheapest around providing so much storage space (12TB in 2 rack unit).

I have two 809u ISCSI NAS, the first has ip 10.101.12.61, the second 10.101.12.62.
The ESXi server has IP 10.101.12.63.

When i connect via ISCSI only the 10.101.12.61 i can see correctly the 8 targets it shares, if i connect only th 10.101.12.62 i can see correclty the 8 targets it shares.

If i connect 10.101.12.61 first and after 10.101.12.62 the ESXi server sees only 8 targets (targets published by 10.101.12.61) and 16 paths (8 from 10.101.12.61 and 8 from 10.101.12.62).

I'm not able to understand if it could be a ESXi problem or a QNAP problem.

I've already contacted both vendors to ask for support but i wasn't able to find a solution for this problem.
Can anyone help? Tnx Roberto.

Host battery status alarm

SirOracle — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:29:32 GMT

Hi,
I have installed ESXi4 on some servers and they all come up with an alarm in vCenter:
Status: Warning
Name: Host battery status

These are all Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers. Does anyone know what this alarm means? Could this be a bug and should I disable this alarm?

XP Virtual Machine stops responding frequently on ESXi 4.0

appetite — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:08:34 GMT

We have two XP VMs both on different hosts. The xp virtual machines stops responding frequently. I will be able to ping but cannot connect remotely.
Using VI client if I try to connect to VM console it says "Error connecting to existing session for user (Id 0). A device attached to the system is not functioning". Also the below lines are seen on VM log file,

Nov 19 06:01:01.839: vmx| GuestRpcSendTimedOut: message to toolbox timed out.
Nov 19 06:01:01.839: vmx| GuestRpc: app toolbox's second ping timeout; assuming app is down.

If restarted it starts working normally but it will end up with the same issues after few days.

Removing a VM did not reclaim the disk space

griff6 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:05:11 GMT

Hi,

I'm running ESXi 4 on a single server and I'd recently set up a small 4GB VM for testing.

I've now finished with it and in the VSphere client, chose the 'delete from disk' option. The VM disappeared from the VSphere client as expected, but the disk space was not recovered (there's about 4GB missing - the same size as the VM I removed).

I have one 'live' VM and could do with the space back, so I shut down the 'live' VM, and restarted the VM host too, but the space has not been recovered. Space usage is gradually creeping up (logs I suppose), so this will become more pressing...at some point.

I have SSH access to the host and I can see that the directory which previously contained the VM has gone.

How can I identify the files which the old VM was using?

Regards,

Griff

Shown 2 seprate disk even RAID1 configured on ESX4i

viveks — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:48:51 GMT

I've strange issue while installing ESX4i on S5000VSA board. It shows 2 different disk while installing ESX even if RAID1 is configured. Following is config of server.

Processor: 2xQC 2Ghz
RAM: 4x 2 GB
DISK: 2x250GB SATA
RAID: RAID1
Controller: Intel Embedded Server RAID Technology II.

ESXi free DL380 G6 just spontaneously reboot.

palm101 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:04:15 GMT

Where can I look for to investigate? I am thinking it could be due to multiple adding and deleting NFS shares.

Picking SCSI virtual device node for tape drive

cookieme — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:47:01 GMT

When adding a SCSI device such as an internal SCSI tape drive to a particular Windows VM, does it matter what virtual device node I choose?

This Windows VM has two SCSI disks:

SCSI (0:0) Hard disk 1
SCSI (0:1) Hard disk 2

Do I put the tape drive on SCSI (0:2)?

Thanks

ESXi 4 - NTP not working + No Ping through Gateway

chosmer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:57:17 GMT

Simple install of ESXi 4. One IP of VMKernel : 10.0.0.10. Gateway has been configured correctly as well as DNS. One VSwitch Setup. Guest Box boots OK and can get to things. VSphere works for administration...great.

Only...

NTP doesnt get updates.
ICMP - I can ping hosts adjacent to me but not out my gateway (everyone else can on my network because i enabled ICMP through my firewall)

So...

I examined the VMKernel port called "management network"...it has the right ip and gateway
I ssh in "unsupported" and can ping 10.0.0.20, but I cant ping yahoo or anyone else beyond my local gateway...its almost as if it doesnt have the correct default route configured.

Any ideas?

Poor man's VMware View

cookieme — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:33:25 GMT

I've been looking at VMware View because I'm interested in learning more about desktop virtualisation. It seems that the ideal setup is to use View to create non-persistent desktops and use Thinapp to stream the necessary apps on a per user basis. If I understand the virtual desktop creation process, you start with a base image with a snapshot and then when a user logs in to View, a linked VM is created from the base snapshot. So, basically you only have one VM (the base image) to maintain with regards to Microsoft updates etc.

Now my question and why I've posted in here rather than over in the View community.

I searched here and in the classic ESX 4 communities, but I only found a handful of posts related to linked clones. I also found a ghetto script for linked clones but it only refers to ESXi 3.5+ (http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9202) and I found a newer version (http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/vGhettoLinkedClone.html). The latter script seems to require vCenter which I don't have, so I guess I can't use either script.

What I'm asking is whether it is possible to create a Windows XP Pro base image and create two non-persistent VMs that are linked to this base, so that I only need to maintain and update the base image. A ghetto VMware View for a small production environment.

Thanks

ESXi 4 install can't find Hard Drive

tahfo001 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:50:24 GMT

This is my first post. I am trying to install ESXi 4.0 on a desk top (Gateway LX6810-1 with Intel Q8200 at 2.33 GHz, 8G memory and 640G HD). It is not listed in HCL but after verification, it said that the machine meets the minimum requirements. While installing ESXi, it lists all the USB drives but no HD. The machine came with Vista on it and the HD is a SATA and not partitioned. I checked the BIOS but there was nothing I could change other than abled/disabled and boot priority. I don't want to install ESXi on a thumb drive. Any ideas why ESXi is not finding the HD? Is it because of VISTA? I appreciate any info on this and many thanks

Unable to Install VMware Tools

doepain — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:19:08 GMT

When I attempt to install VMware Tools on a guest I am stopped by the following message:

Other guests on this ESXi (vSphere 4) are running VMware tools and when I go to upgrade/install I am not presented with this dialogue.

Senior Hosting Engineer
ModusLink Open Channel Solutions, Inc.

What happens when VMkernel go down

SebItr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:27:58 GMT

Hi,

I have a HA architecture and i would like to know what happens if the physical interfaces assigned to vmkernel go down ? Cause i defined two physical interfaces for vmkernel and to phisical interfaces for serviceConsole and vmotion. Imagine that two vswitch are separate on two physical switch, what happens if the vmkernel switch go down ?

Thanks ?

Can not install Win 2K8 R2 On esxi 4

ITSlavedriver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:27:23 GMT

Esxi 4 has installed correctly. However when I run the Win2K8 R2 disk (under win2k8 (64)) or experimental
I get

File \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe

Status: 0xc000035a

Info: Attempting to load a 64-Bit Application, However this CPU is not compatable with 64-Bit mode.

I have tried VT and non VT mode.

ESXi 4.0.0, 193498 does not see all the installed memory

fe3pluz — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:12:49 GMT

Recently we purchased the new Dell R210 (http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/poweredge-r210/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-r210&cs=555&s=biz) with 4 GB of memory. On this box ESXi 4.0 was installed succesfully. Now from the vSphere client only approx 2300 MB is available for virtual machines (also visible in attachment). Does anyone have a clue what could be the issue here?

Failed to log into nfc server

nOon29 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:16:55 GMT

I think all in on the title.

When i to put a file on the datastore (by the browsing datastore) i have this error.

I have the same error when i try to update this esxi.

For information i have no firewall between my host and the esxi.

Using vMA 4.0 to backup ESXi 4.0 host setting ?

AlbertWT — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:22:15 GMT

Hi All,

I've installed vMA 4.0 and able to ping the ESXi01 hostname from the root console,

but when I try to execute the following command: ~~root@vMA ~~~# vicfg-cfgbackup --server ESXi01 -s BackupESXi01

where can i get that backup file from ?

Kind Regards,
AWT

ESXi on an old IBM Pentium III ?

gispro — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:48:11 GMT

Hi,

Has anyone tried to install ESXi on an IBM server with Pentium III cpu's ?

We have an old Xseries 232 that I would like to spin up as a test platform with ESXi, but I'm unsure whether it'll work.

I have looked in the (somewhat confusing) hardware compatability guide, and found nothing, so I thought I'd post here as a last resort.

Thanks in advance.

Lars I. Nielsen, GisPro

ESXi 4.0 Storage Question

chontay — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:17:45 GMT

Hi All

New to ESXi and still testing.

I have a machine I want to use as the host. It has a 1.8TB SATA hardware RAID in it. If I build this machine as the host, can I attach the container as storage but retain the data on it to attach to a guest as a physical disk? When I've added storage on other test machines it always formats it and I don't want to do that if I can help it.

I can do this with Hyper-V simply by taking the disk offline in Windows and then it is presented as an available device to any guest I wish to attach it to. But I can't see this in ESXi.

I also have several other disks Mirrored etc which I would use to install ESX to so this wouldn't be the only storage available to the Host/Guests.

Thanks in advance.

Rob

esxi 4 not find LUN of Solaris ZFS iSCSI

ccub — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:56:26 GMT

Hi,

I try to use a Sun X4500 as a iSCSI SAN with my vSphere ESXi 4 host. I folow this thread : http://communities.vmware.com/thread/188781 and this blog : http://blog.laspina.ca/blog/
It works on a Debian, I show the disk in /proc/partition . But ESXi doesn't find any LUN ! Why ???
I use backingstore method (zfs shareiscsi=off), and ACL in the Solaris : SunOS 5.10 Generic_137138-09 i86pc i386 i86pc

Target: vmdatastores
iSCSI Name: iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:bda7a190-ab67-c51f-f7d7-87eece50e221.vmdatastores
Connections: 1
Initiator:
iSCSI Name: iqn.1993-08.org.debian:01:587df3c28d97
Alias: debian
ACL list:
Initiator: esxi
Initiator: debian
TPGT list:
LUN information:
LUN: 0
GUID: 010000144ff2cee400002a004aeebeb3
VID: SUN
PID: SOLARIS
Type: disk
Size: 300G
Backing store: /dev/zvol/rdsk/zpool/vmccub
Status: online

you can see a part of /var/log/messages on attachment

Thanks...

Migration from ESXi 3.5 to ESXi 4 (ISCSI Storage)

Kay81 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:30:50 GMT

Hey everyone !

I want to migrate from ESXi 3.5 to ESXi 4. But there is one question I can't answer by myself.

I use an ISCSI Storage, which is formatted with "VMFS 3.31".
Is it Possible to use this ISCSI Storage simultaneous from both systems, also a ESXI 3.5 and a ESXI 4 Hostsystem ?

Has someone experience in this context ?

Greeting from Germany and many thanks,

Kay

Changing out to a VT CPU

b1izzard — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:55:16 GMT

I have an Intel E2200 cpu and wanted to change out to an Intel E6300 that is VT capable so I can install 64 bit OS's. Is ESXi likely to be forgiving and accept the new cpu into it's life, or will I crash and burn?!?

ESXi 4 Windows 2003/2008 Guests Random Freeze on DL360 G5

pixelblender — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:22:23 GMT

Hi,

We have strange issue regarding some guests OS on our ESXi 4. For no reason some guests randomly locked up/freeze for every 5 to 10 min. During freeze it's totally stops. Console view from vSphere is freezing, the machine is not reachable by ping, Remote Desktop dropped, etc. As if it stops processing everything temporary. What's really strange that it only happens on Windows (we tried 2003 32bit and 2008 64bit) and Fedora 10 64bit. Ubuntu 9.10 Server 64bit runs just fine.

Here's what we have:

VMWare ESXi 4.0 patched to latest update running on HP ProLiant DL360 G5 with Dual Quadcore (8 cores) Intel Xeon L5420 @ 2.5 GHz and 16GB of RAM (2GB taken for 10GbE HBA so 14GB available to ESXi). In this Machine we have 1GbE (HP NC373i), 10GbE HBA (HP NC522SFP+) and FC HBA (HP FC2242SR) connected to EV440.

Here are some guest OS that we have:

Windows 2003 32bit and Windows 2008 64bit. Randomly hang for every 5 to
10 minutes. Log from MMC says nothing at all. During freeze it
basically stops processing. Console view just hang, remote desktop got
disconnected, machine cannot be pinged.

Ubuntu 9.10 Server. Act as internet router/gateway, OpenLDAP server, Samba & NFS server. No X installed. everything works just fine. But as soon as i try to install basic x server with fluxbox on it, that random hang happens again. same symptoms.

CentOS 5.4 with x server installed and it works just fine.

Fedora 10 64bit with x server installed. Randomly hang and same symptoms, but this time it throws error saying: "clocksource tsc unstable". browsing around reveals issue with acpi that how linux kernel trying to clockdown the machine whenever it's not in heavy usage (i guess kinda like speedstep?). tried so many different method (changing clocksource, passing noacpi or acpi=no to kernel) and still having the same issue. In the end i just got rid of it and replace it with CentOS 5.4

I'm not really sure what's happening here. From what happened with Fedora i can tell maybe acpi causes issue here? i tried to disable acpi from the BIOS but it causes issue with ESXi (not having detected proper number of CPU cores, etc).

Please help,

best regards,

Pietra

Multiple NICs

b1izzard — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:39:03 GMT

I just added a second NIC to my ESXi server. The first one I configured during installation of ESXi with the management IP of 192.168.1.111. It appears that the 1st NIC automatically configures itself for whatever subnet the IP address falls in. So when I added a second NIC (the network cable happens to be attached to the same switch as the first NIC), I didn't find anywhere to configure the IP. I thought that logging in directly to the ESXi console would give me an option to set this. So where do you configure a second NIC? What command can you use from the ESXi console to find out the ip address configurations? IFCONFIG wasn't recognized, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Lose network connectivity after changing NIC speed from 100 to 1000

b1izzard — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:29:43 GMT

I changed my vmnic0 speed from 100 to 1000, then I lost all connectivity to the server. I had to go into unsupported mode and change it back to 100. Then I thought maybe it's a requirement that it's plugged into a gigabit switch, so I plugged it into one and I can't connect to it even though the link light shows on both the vSphere client and the server. Since I have an Intel Pro 1000 card, shouldn't the system automatically see it as such, and not a 100 card? Or does it not auto-sense the connection speed and change it accordingly?

Possible to update ESXi via updates retrieved from a local server not via the Internet?

adminatater — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:08:08 GMT

Does anyone know if there is a way to get updates installed on a ESXi hypervisor via vSphere host update utility, when you have a network that can't access the Internet? The 'vSphere host update utilit' always checks the Internet first for the updates, is there anyway to have it always check a local directory? Oh yes, I'm using the latest version of the 'vSphere host update utility' that shipped with ESXi 4.0.

Esxi 4.0 Free Edition Max 744GB Datastore???

engtech09 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:20:06 GMT

I cant for the life of me figure out why the max data store size I can have is 744GB when I have a 2.73TB RAID 5 array available to me? I blew away reinstalled and still same thing?? I cant seem to find if their is a limitation is the "Free Edition" or not but why cant I use more than 744GB???

PLEASE HELP It's driving me nuts

Thanks people.

JR

Device 'USB' is not supported after conversion

CleanDen — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:08:15 GMT

*Running vSphere + ESXi4 (Paid-for and Free) *

I have an XP system that has been running on VMWare Server for some time, with 2 USB Dongles for authentication of installed software.

Recently I found IOGear's USB Net ShareStation solution for sharing USB devices over a LAN so I tried, and succeeded, in converting the VM to ESXi free and successfully used the USB devices. Perfect!

However, as I want to back up this VM using Veeam Backup, I need it in my ESXi Paid-For farm so I again converted it using the stand-alone converter, but I get the following message every time I try to boot it:

Failed Power ons

vCenter was unable to find a suitable host to power on the virtual machine for the reasons listed below

<VM NAME> <HOST NAME> Device 'USB' is not supported. This is a general limitation of the virtual machine's virtual hardware version on the selected host.

If I edit settings and remove either of the USBs listed as Unsupported, I again get theerror:

Device 'USB' is not supported

and it does not remove.

I am not familiar with editing ini files so would appreciate any pointers that would allow me to remove the USB devices manually if thats what it takes so it wil boot.

Thanks.

How to install ESXi via serial port (no video card)

mslass — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:05:18 GMT

Is it possible to install ESXi 4.0 on a machine with no video card, by redirecting the setup dialogs to the serial port? I'm able to see the first choice (install/boot from local) on my serial port, and then some of the kernel load messages, but I never get to the dialogs for root password, network config, etc.

Do I need to add kernel options to the syslinux.cfg file? What would they be? If it's already putting output to the serial port, does it change baud/parity/stop between bootloader and kernel? If so, what does it change them to?

Thanks.

Does VSphere client's performance tab work with ESXi 4??

stevemebius — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:56:47 GMT

All,

Does VSphere client's performance tab work with ESXi 4?

Mine is always showing the period 6:45AM - 7:40AM. The time is not progressing at all.

Is this a restricted feature/demo?

Should it work?

Am I missing some setup?

Many thanks.

Steve

Optimal Network Configuration with Slow Physical NIC

plaskey — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:25:30 GMT

Hello,

I have searched the forums and haven't been able to determine the exact answer to this question. How do I create a second virtual network inside my ESXi host so that my VMs can share data at full speed (1000Mb) while still maintaining full connectivity with the internet and my physical LAN? In other words, I want a virtual network running at 1000Mb for all VMs
inside my ESXi host, connected to my slow 100Mb network via a virtual
router.

Here is my current network configuration:

ISP <=> DSL Modem/Router/Switch @ 100Mb <+> ESXi host with 100Mb NIC <=> virtual switch <=> multiple VMs

|_ Physical Laptop

Since the virtual switch is connected to the physical NIC, the network runs at the 100Mb speed.

I have created a new virtual switch in the ESXi host. I have set up Freesco in an ESXi VM as my router with 2 virtual NICs - one on each virtual switch. Here is the Freesco NIC configuration:

100Mb 1000Mb

eth0 eth1

192.168.1.249 192.168.2.254

192.168.1.0/24 192.168.2.0/24

Gateway = 192.168.1.254 (ISP)

With this configuration, I am able to access the web from an ESXi VM located on the 192.168.2.0 subnet but I cannot ping 192.168.2.254 from a machine on 192.168.1.0. I assume that this means there is either a firewall in Freesco blocking traffic or a route needs to be created.

Am I going about this in the right way?

Am I missing something?

How do I troubleshoot the connectivity between subnets?

Thank you,

Peter

ESXi local storage recommendation

shebang — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:08:43 GMT

If using local storage for ESXi, should this be raid storage or is a simple harddisk sufficient. What is recommended? P.S. The VM's are on the SAN.

ESXi 3.5 to 4.X using Vsphere Host Update Utility

Chicagojsh001 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:16:47 GMT

Hello World!
So I decided today that I would attempt to do an upgrade from 3.5 to 4.0 on my test server. I downloaded the upgrade ZIP file from the 4.0 downloads area.

I found these instructions: http://vm-help.com/esx40i/ESXi40_upgrade_without_virtualcenter.php on how to upgrade without Virutal Center. Everywhere says the same thing....extract the 4.0 client from the zip file, install it with the option for Vsphere host update utility(done and done).
Launch the ulility, select your host, select upgrade(done done done), in the host window select the zip file as the source package...DOAH!!

The utility only gives me the option for ISO not .ZIP.....sooo....I"m stuck..I must be doing something wrong I guess....or something has changed. it's kind of annoying though to download an almost 300 meg zip file, then find out I have no way to use it?...

I can only assume I'm missing a step..is there another VMWare Vsphere Host Update Utility that will let me use the .zip file for the upgrade? Am I supposed to be launching it with a switch of some sort?

I"m running the utility on a windows XP machine if that makes any difference.

Thanks
Josh

Not getting IP Adress on 2nd virtal macine

malarie — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:22:39 GMT

Good day,

I have Esxi 4.0 running and vshpere client. 2 vms installed on the ESXi. They both work except I have networking problems on 1 vm. Since I am new to virtualization, i am not sure where to look... It looks to be DHCP elated since 1 vm is only getting the 169.254.xxx.xxx address..

Both vms are Windows 2003 STD SP2. They are coming from MSDN, 1 is accessible to clients over the network, the other cant ping anything outside the ESXi. Both VMS can ping each other. But only one can ping outside the host machine (clients on my network and Internet)

Please help.

inetd.conf

nOon29 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:15:39 GMT

Hi all,

I have a problem, i use a modified oem for the areca driver and my inetd.conf have this caractere ^M at the end of the line so it doesn't work.

I try to modify them and it works but after a reboot the inetd.conf loose my configuration and the ^M appear again.

ESXi running out of disk space

griff6 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:02:48 GMT

Hello again,

In brief, I don't have a way to delete the snapshots I'd previously made using VCenter.

When my system was first set up, I was using a trial version of Vcenter to manage my one ESXi host. I did some testing with snapshots, but didn't pursue Vcenter, so I eventually let the Vcenter trial expire and instead manage the system via the Vsphere client.

I now have a single VM (ignoring the 'deleted' one mentioned in my other thread) running on a single ESXi v4 host, with SSH access to it.

Diskspace usage has crept up significantly recently, and although I've brought forward plans to buy a new storage device (any day now!), it seems everything I do to clear out space on the datastore (including rebooting, using vsphere CLI) ends up using a little more diskspace on my datastore...and I'm running out of space.

I don't need the snapshots, but I've seen posts saying that I shouldn't delete them outside of the GUI...which I don't have.

Can I safely delete the batches of old snapshot files to give my system breathing space, or should I do this another way (such as downloading and installing vcenter again)?

I have another thread relating to the removal of files relating to a VM which no longer exists.

Hopefully someone will have some ideas!

Griff

Managing storage blades

jr26 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:06:26 GMT

Hi.

I have a blade enclosure with 3 blades and one storage blade. I have installed VM ESXi 4 on two of the blades. And would like to use my storage blade to serve the VMs on both blades. Hp tech support states that you can only add a single storage blade to one blade server. This does not sound efficent.

Does anyone have any suggestion on how I could use my storage blade as centeralized stoarge point for all blades.

Cheers

Tape Library and ESXi4

vash2009 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:31:04 GMT

Hello,

We have a Dell TL4000 (Tape Library – 2 Drives) connected directly with a ESXi4, in the Configuration Tab->Storage Adapters, the vmhba3 show the LUN`s 0 and 1 but one of them is “Dead” (see the .jpg)

LUN 0 -> IBM Fibre Channel Tape (Dead)
LUN 1 -> IBM Fibre Channel Medium Changer (Active)

Actually using drivers, “lin_taped-1.27.0-1” and “lin_tape-1.27.0-1”.

Somebody can tell me if it is because of the ESXi 4, drivers or something else?

Thanks!

intel 82576

nOon29 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:01:01 GMT

Hi all,

I try to install esx on a server but i have problem with my nic. I see they have an iso with the driver for intel 82576 but i don't know how to install this driver on esxi (we have noconsole ...). So if anyone have an how to for me it would be great. I also see an oem to make a custom iso but i use a specific oem for the areca driver xD.

Thanks

NIC functions of Neterion x3100 does not appear in BIOS boot list of ESXi 4.0

oneconv — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:37:20 GMT

Hi,

I have a neterion x3100 10Gb ethernet server adapter configured in multi function mode (8 functions) and PXE boot is enabled on the card. I have assigned a NIC

function of Neterion to the VM in pass-through mode. But I am not finding this assigned function on the BIOS boot order list of VM. Can anyone suggest me if I am missing something here.

Note: NIC functions of Neterion are shown in the BIOS boot order list if I keep same card on the standard PC.

Thanks & Regards,

Ramu

windows 2003 "stalls" in ESXi4.0 from hp

AlbertM — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:22:19 GMT

Good afternoon, everyone.
Can anybody help me with such problem?

I've installed ESXi 4.0 from HP on DL360 G5 box, and Windows 2003 standard with SP2. Everything worked fine for some days, but later next things began to occure:
1. System (I'm talking about windows) freezes for a minute or two occasionally, nor workload or user actions do not affect on this.
All network connections to this host drop because of timeout. Image in "Virtual machine display" (i.e. "Console" tab) freezes for the same period too. All other tabs of ESXi, including performance tabs work as followed.
2. Pinging this computer shows the following:

...
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=55 ttl=128 time=0.316 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=56 ttl=128 time=0.223 ms
system have stalled at this moment
From 192.168.99.2 icmp_seq=91 Destination Host Unreachable
...
From 192.168.99.2 icmp_seq=113 Destination Host Unreachable
system have come back
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=57 ttl=128 time=59450 ms <-something strange
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=58 ttl=128 time=58450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=59 ttl=128 time=57450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=60 ttl=128 time=56451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=61 ttl=128 time=55451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=62 ttl=128 time=54450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=63 ttl=128 time=53449 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=64 ttl=128 time=52449 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=65 ttl=128 time=51450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=66 ttl=128 time=50450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=67 ttl=128 time=49450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=68 ttl=128 time=48449 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=69 ttl=128 time=47450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=70 ttl=128 time=46450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=71 ttl=128 time=45450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=72 ttl=128 time=44450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=73 ttl=128 time=43451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=74 ttl=128 time=42451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=75 ttl=128 time=41451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=76 ttl=128 time=40451 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=77 ttl=128 time=39452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=78 ttl=128 time=38452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=79 ttl=128 time=37452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=80 ttl=128 time=36452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=81 ttl=128 time=35453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=82 ttl=128 time=34453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=83 ttl=128 time=33453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=84 ttl=128 time=32453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=85 ttl=128 time=31454 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=86 ttl=128 time=30454 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=87 ttl=128 time=29454 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=88 ttl=128 time=28453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=89 ttl=128 time=27452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=90 ttl=128 time=26453 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=114 ttl=128 time=2450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=115 ttl=128 time=1450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=116 ttl=128 time=450 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.99.13: icmp_seq=117 ttl=128 time=0.373 ms

It seems that almost all pings reached this windows host and it worked all this time. But all network

3. Besides of all above, I've found that all windows applications in this host "continue" to work during this stalls. For example, Windows Performance Monitor draws its diagrams as usual.

Any idea?

Cant connect to esxi 4 box using vsphere client

trinimoses — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:07:58 GMT

hi all,

I have a freshly installed esxi on a whitebox.. its up and running.

i can ping the box and it can ping all my workstations.. but i have a problem.

For the love of god vsphere client wouldnt connect i keep getting this error : vsphere client could not connect to vcenter server ....... Details : The server took too long to respond (The operation has timed out).

I have tried from my desktop, another desktop with the firewall disabled and even a freshly installed machine with no firewall and they all give the same error.

And as i stated i can ping the box and it can ping all my workstations..

What is wrong ?

esxi shutdown script for ups monitoring

helux — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:32:54 GMT

hello,

i just installed a new vmware esxi 4 server with the free standalone server license.
i have an apc ups and i need to buy a smart slot ethernet card to be able to monitor ups status in an vm.
after searching around i found out that the ghettoShutDown.pl script does not work because of the restrictions of perl in the free licensed version.

but we are able to enable ssh. it is unsupported but not illegal. i rather have a legal esxi version with no support on it than a supported illegal version.
after looking around in the forums i found out that the available scripts were not that good.

so i made my own....

save it on a vmfs volume. create ssh password less login and let apc daemon on a linux virtual machine fire up this script.

what is basically does: get list of all vm's on machine.
loop through that list to shutdown all vm's. loop will be run at least 1 time. it waits a specified interval to check if all machines are down. of not... power it down the hard way....

have fun using it.....

Not able to login with the local user in both ESXi/ESX 4.1

ESX41 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:40:12 GMT

hi all,

I had downloaded ESXi 4.1 and installed properly.

I am able to join and leave the domain using vSphere client also.

Iam able to create the local users and set password also ,but not able to login with the same local user credentials.

the commands which iam using to create local users are

useradd test1

passwd test1

passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.(after setting password)

iam trying to login using the command

ssh test1@localhost

the error message which iam getting is

Permission denied, please try again.

please suggest .

thanks,

srinivas.

DL360 G3 and Dl360 G4

TechKev — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:43:26 GMT

HI everyone,

I recently downloaded ESXi 3.5 and 4.0. Here is my questions;

3.5 installs nicely on the DL360 G3 - No CDrom support, so I can't install anything after that. I have tried both USB drives, USB, harddrives everything, nothing seems to show up at all.

4.0 insatlls nicely on the DL360 G4 will not install on the DL360 G3 (Understandable) and provides everything. USB support, CDrom etc.

I did read some post regarding that the ESXi doesn't support the CDroms and having to add new SCSI hardware for it to work. Well that didn't work for the DL360 G3, still have nothing, can't access the Datastore either to even load some of the ISO. I know option of using client CDrom to install software, which I guess is fine, but I was hoping to find a soluation to the issue, if there is one out there. I am also assuming it might have something to do with the BIOS needing updates, but not sure.

Does anyone run the ESXi on these servers that I could chitchat with?

Kevin

Copying VM guests between ESXi hosts

vegemite — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:27:25 GMT

Hi,

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I can't find the answer I am looking for.

I transferred a VM guest's files using the datastore's upload/download function from one ESXi host to another. Is it possible to open this guest on the destination ESXi host?

If this isn't the right way, what way is?

Thanks

Generate Virtual Machine Desktop Shortcut for ESXi 4

darrenj78 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:02:55 GMT

Is there a way to do this?

It was easy to do with Vmware Server....not seeing how to do it with Esxi 4.

Thanks

ESXI 4.0 installation problems?

jason0923 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:26:51 GMT

http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=15548

I
tried installing A Windows operating system to a few different VM ware
sessions and each time. it would stall. I am considering that there
could be a problem with the USB drive so I started over with a
different USB drive and am installing the first session now. My
question is, is there any way of recovering the previously used space.
I stated out with 810G and tried a few combinations of 30 -40G
installs. Now on my new install to the new USB drive it only shows 600G
or so available space. Is there some way of deleting those previous
attempts and freeing up that space?

Thank You

[Newbie] How do I get a remote CLI with ESXi4 ?

atakacs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:16:38 GMT

Folks

Probably an easy one but I can't figure out how to remotely access a CLI on a newly installed ESXi4 server.

I have installed the server and it works well as far as I can tell. I can access the local console fine. However I am looking into a way to get a remote CLI and I muss confess that I am a little lost...

I guess that I should use the vSphere Command-Line Interface but I don't seem to be able to download it ("wrong download group" error). Is it something I should purchase ? And what about plain old SSH ?

Again sorry for what might seem a basic question but any help / pointer would be most appreciated

alex

Utilizing free disk space in ESXi 4 USB install ?

AlbertWT — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:17:56 GMT

Hi All,

I've got 16 GB USB 2 Stick that I installed it with VMWare ESXi 4.0 and patch it to the latest, Has anyone ever try to use the remaining free disk space or it cannot be used at all ?

I'm just curious and wondering if we can maximize the usage.

Thanks.

Kind Regards,
AWT

Hardware Information

harmony — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:38:42 GMT

hi,

Could you please tell me an Intel core 2 duo processor and compatible motherboard for installing ESXi 4.0 and 64bit guest OS through VSphere.

I am cheated by a supplier by purchasing one dell poweredge sc1425 .I am not able to install any 64 bit os as VM.

Sorry to disturb you as this is just for my studies and personal use.

Thanking you in advance

ESXi 4 does it have a firewall preventing me from seeing iscsi?

vite@1 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:42:21 GMT

I was able to see my iscsi NAS on the storage Adapters and the was able to format the drive in storage while I was adding the Disk/Lun however when I finish I don't see it showing up in my list of Datastores. I have 3 host in my vsphere4/vcenter; 2 of them are ESXi 4 and one is ESXi 3.5. On the ESXi 3.5 I can see the iSCSi NAS HD listed in the datastore I just can't see it on the ESXi4 hosts.

Applying service to ESXi 4

bishopit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:11:42 GMT

I have installed ESXi 4 on a server (very simple). To apply the maintenance it appears you have to use the remote CLI
I have installed the appliance and brought up the virtual machine.
What I can't seem to do is find a way to get access to the patch files. I have tried a CD and an ISO image in the datastore.
The virtual machine will not mount the ISO image or the real CDROM. Gives a message that it is not a valid block device.

Can you apply the patches to ESXi 4 or am I just wasting my time. If so is there a document that details applying patches
in this environment?

I am trying to evaluate the usefullness of ESX in our environment but am nervous about putting a machine in production that
I can't apply updates to.

Logical Drive not Showing in Infrastructure client

bcibek — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:08:44 GMT

We have an HP DL 180 G5 which has (8) hard drives. (2) of the hard drives are configured as a Raid 1+0, and the other 6 are configured as a Raid 5. ESX installed successfully on the Raid 1+0 disks. We would like to add a new datastore consisting of all of the drives on the Raid 5. The problem we are having is that when we go to configuration->storage, the disks that are configured as Raid 5 never show up. When the system boots up, it clearly shows that there are two logical drives, but the second logical drive never appears in the Infrastructure client. What needs to be done to the system to see the Raid 5 disk in the infrastructure client.

Thanks

Testing Vsphere FT features with 3 NICS?

ping82 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:52:02 GMT

Hi,

I would like to know if it is possible at all to run VSphere FT features in ESXi4 with 3 NICS(Including software iSCSI)?

This is only for lab testing and not for production purposes.

Thanks!

Scratch Partition gets not created during ESXi 4 installation

pinkerton — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:08:10 GMT

Hi,

just installed ESXi 4 installable on two HP DL380 G6 and wondering that there was no Scratch Partition created during the installation process. If I understand the "ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide" correctly, it however should be created:

ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide

On the hard drive or USB device from which the ESXi 4.0 host is booting, the disk-formatting software retains
existing diagnostic partitions that are created by the hardware vendor. In the remaining space, the software
creates these partitions:

One 4GB VFAT scratch partition for system swap, if this partition is not present on another disk. See

About the Scratch Partition on page 34.

One VMFS3 partition on the remaining free space.

There were no partitions existing on the server's disk. The installation proccess neither created the 4GB VFAT partition nor the VMFS3 partition. The VMFS3 partition was first created after I created a datastore.

Any suggestions why the installation didn't create the partition? As a workaround I've now created a directory called "Scratch" on the datastore and configured the Scratch Location as described in KB Article: 1012640.

Thanks
Michael

EULA restrictions for free ESXi 4

mackop — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:56:02 GMT

What software can I use with free version of ESXi 4 without violating EULA?

I am asking because I have read "The free ESXi problem" part of http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10780

Is not it against the EULA to use UNSUPPORTED CONSOLE and make SSH connections to ESXi host?
What about using scripts like ghettoVCB.sh http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760 ?
Command vmkfstools?
Or programs like fastscp or winscp?

Thank you

Intermittent network connectivity to host & guests

gogram — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:04:36 GMT

Hello,
I have 2 ESXi4 servers running on IBM HS22 Blades.
They are currently connected to the networking backplane of the Blade chassis via a single NIC. (was 2 but testing the issue below)
When using the vSphere Client on both hosts, I get the following message appear when trying to look/modify/delete anything within the client:
"The request failed because the server "host1" closed the connection"

Also, when connecting to the guests (windows 2003) via RDP, I get connection resets every 15secs.

I am connecting to these hosts/guest through a firewall and have got logging enabled. The firewall logs are showing TCP resets while RDping to guests and using the vSphere client to perform tasks.

Version is ESXi4 171294. I have tried to perform patching of these servers but that's another issue!

Any suggestions please?

CD drive doesn't work on HS20 Blade

fajarpri — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:24:10 GMT

Hi all,

Using ESXi 4.0 on IBM Blade HS20.

When creating new Windows 2003 VM, putting the CD in the drive, and set it connected. But, when the VM is power on, it doesn't see the CD, so it's booting to the PXE instead.

Has anyone experience this too?

Thank you

Can I use one drive for both Windows and Datastore?

ADBryant1024 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:08:27 GMT

My hardware is as follows:

HP Pavilion NY464AAR-ABA p6130y

AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-core

8GB RAM

750GB SATA HD

I have ESXi4 installed on a bootable USB drive. I have resized the Windows partition to 500GB using a linux live CD and GParted. What I would like to do is use the remaining 200+GB for the datastore to install VMs to, but can't find any instructions on how to do so or even an indication that this is possible. Surely, I am not the first to want to do this. Could someone point me to instructions?

Thanks

How to create and use SSH keys with ESXi 4

cookieme — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:42:13 GMT

I've search and found information on enabling SSH on ESXi 4, but I can't find how to create and use SSH keys with this version.

Can someone explain how to do it?

Thanks

License in assigned state but no host attached to it in vCenter after ESXi 4 host rebuild

VirtualWill — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:25:26 GMT

Hi,

I had to rebuild one of my hosts and now that I'm ready to add it back in to our vCenter datacenter I'm unable to assign the old license key to it. I removed the old host but it didn't free up the license it had. The funny thing is that license manager is showing that the license is assigned but still there is no host attached to it? I'm sure you've got no clue as to what I'm blabbering about so please take a look at the pic I've attached to this post.

From that picture you can clearly see that the host marked with blue is in eval mode. I need to assign the license (marked with red) to it. You can also see that there is no host attached to that license even though it is assigned because I'm unable to expand that row (marked with green).

I can right-click it and choose 'remove license'. The license key disappears but comes back when I click the refresh button.

So the question is, how do I unassign that license so it comes back available?

-Will

HP ROK Windows Server 2008 TS-CAL

mjocham — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:18:24 GMT

Hi there,

we have a DL 380 G6 as the VMWare ESX4i Host and we installed a Windows Server 2008 R1 in Terminalserver-Mode. Can I use HP ROK TS-Cals for my users?

Thanks in advance

64 Bit on 32 Bit

harmony — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:25:39 GMT

hi,

I installed VMware ESXi 4.0 on Dell poweredge server.I downloaded Vsphere client on a 32 bit cpu Dell
laptop.It working smoothly.The problem is that when I try to install
windows 2008 server through the vsphere client machine getting an error
Attempting to load a 64-bit application, however this cpu is not
compatible with 64-bit mode.

ESXI server running on Dell poweredge server 64 bit and vsphere client running on a 32bit laptop.

Please help me

Thanks in advance

System Down- Panics After ESXi Hypervisor to pink screen

EvvRay — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:22:13 GMT

Hi All,

I am in a bad spot! I have a DL385 G1 with 4 GB ram and a raid 5 array running ESXi 4. I am running a production SBS 2008 server on it. I have been using it for about a month and the backup drive has not arrived yet so I have no backup. That is problem 1.

Here is what I wanted to accomplish, change the management network from 192.168.0.xx to 172.12.21.xx (I changed the rest of the network weeks ago) and replace the existing 4 GB of ram with 16GB of used ram.

Heres what led up to the problem:

1. Shutdown Guest VM's
2. Logged in with Vsphere client and changed the management network to the new ip. Immediately lost connection, connected on new IP and all is well.
3. The system has two integrated nics. One was running the VM network as well as the management network. The other was idle. They both connect to a simple switch. I believe I set them to bridge/failover, at which point they both showed as online. (This might be the issue)
4. Shutdown the system and let it self power off.
5. Removed the 4 sticks, and installed 8 sticks of the correct ecc ram.
6. Booted up and the system detects all 16 GB correctly in the bios.
7. Booted ultimate boot cd and ran memtest for 3 hours. It showed no errors yet and since I need the system, I told it to exit. The screen went black and the system wouldn’t respond to any keys. Forced power off wait 10 secs, turn back on.
8. System shows the loading esxi hypervisor screen then the screen goes pink and says there has been a panic. I don’t have the exact error but it mentioned connecting over serial, then a message, then connect over serial again, then some more text.
9. I unplugged both ethernet cords from the nics and tried to boot same error.
10. I removed all of the ram and went back to the original sticks, same error.
11. I booted from an Acronis trueimage disc and started a backup to an external USB drive of everything. It’s about a 568GB datastore, last I checked it said 13 days, and then awhile later, 7 days, so hopefully it will be done soon, but I don’t want to cancel it until I have those datastores backed up. That is why I can’t write the exact error down.

I am hoping it’s the network settings I changed making it panic, and not a same time hardware failure. What do you think?

Does esxi have a non destructive repair or setup?

If I get to the normal console screen, I know I could re-setup the management network or turn off the other card, but since it immediately panics that part doesn’t load yet. I do not have a serial cable, but if I must I might be able to get one from a friend. Please advise me what I might be able to do.

I am halfway temped to just re-load esxi after the backup completes, but I don’t know how I would get the vmdk files / vm files from that acronis file to the new system. I have done single file restores with acronis, on ntfs volumes, but I doubt it can look inside a vmware datastore.

Thanks in advance!

adaptec 5405 monitoring support

gustavoy — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:59:53 GMT

Hi, is anyone using the adaptec 5405 raid card winth vmware ESXI v4.0, i'd like to know if it supports raid monitoring from the vsphere client with the CIM insterface.
If not how do you monitor it?

Thanks

controlling fans, Dell sc1425

zmbiehntr — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:25:28 GMT

ESXi4 shows my fan speeds/temp, but I am unable to control the speed of the fans if I wanted to. I've tried programs to do this in the guest OS's but they do not recognise things properly. In both Linux and Windows VM's.

I was trying to do it by telneting into the BMC and using ipmitools, but have been unsucessfull so far.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to control fan speeds from ESXi or vSphere?