VMware Communities : Unanswered Threads - General

Knowing ESX Details from Guest OS

KarthikeyanSundaram — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:52:31 GMT

Guys,

Is there any way to view the ESX Server/VC details from Guest operating system..

Major Virtualiztion Events August 2007 - Present

K-MaC — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:06:10 GMT

Hello all. My boss has asked me to put together a spreadsheet of the Major Virtualization events by Citrix, Microsoft and VMware from the August 2007 to present, and plot these events against the stock prices of the companies. I've obtained the stock data already. If possible it would contain things like Citrix Synergy, VMworld, Microsofts release of Hyper-V R1/R2 and major virtualization product releases from each vendor. I figured someone may have something similar. If not I'll create a list myself. If anyone else is interested in the spreadsheet let me know and I'll attach it here after I finish.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Kevin

Server 2008 with Fax Modem

Compex2 — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:04:29 GMT

I need to setup a fax modem with Microsoft Server 2008 r2 64 bit running on ESX, Currently we have not been able to find a solution. We have tried a Startech USB server, however it did not support the modem, We have also tried a Startech Serial to IP ethernet which was working in XP but will not work with Server 2008, Has anyone been able to get this working, and if so how? Thanks!

Multiple IP's in Debian Linux

VMSystems — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:21:25 GMT

We're having some problem adding virtual IP's to a Linux Guest.

I was told that I need to change the guest settings for the network from NAT to bridge.

I think I found this in under the Host in Configuration - Networking by looking at the info (little balloon) to the right of "vmnic0". Near the bottom under "CDP Device Capability" Router is True and bridge is False.

I realize this is not in the guest settings, but I can't find anything that comes close to NAT or bridge in the guest settings.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Linux VM fails to start or slow start when I add more than one CPU

CMCC — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:38:21 GMT

Heeelp!

I have a Linux VM, created with one CPU, and when I add another, it fails to start or starts slow, like hours!

I tried to install another linux VM with more CPU, but it takes so long to install...

I'm using ESX 4.

Thanks in advance

Latest Google Chrome OS VMware VMDK Image File Available for Download and Testing

enmingteo — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:34:11 GMT

Filename: Google-Chrome-OS-build-enming.teo-24Nov2009-0528.vmdk.bz2

Filesize: 280 MB

Type: VMware VMDK image file bzipped

MD5 Checksum: 23371970c3b1c5dee287b9bb97901b7d

Download Link #1: http://www.zshare.net/download/689075349802a081/

Download Link #2: http://www.filefactory.com/file/a1d69he/n/Google-Chrome-OS-build-enming.teo-24Nov2009-0528.vmdk.bz2

How to Use:

1. Decompress with bzip2 on Linux.

$ bzip2 -d Google-Chrome-OS-build-enming.teo-24Nov2009-0528.vmdk.bz2

2. Use as virtual harddisk with the open source Xen hypervisor, Sun VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, or VMware Player

3. To convert the VMDK image file to Xen HVM domU image file for use with Xen, follow the instructions at the following link.

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/VMDKImage

Please help to download and test on your virtualization environment and report test results.

Thank you.

operating system not found - centos

mhaziem — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:48:59 GMT

Section for VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, pid=556, version=4.0.1, build=build-161434, option=Release
(converter.task.TaskInfo) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
key = "task-17",
task = 'converter.task.Task:task-17',
name = "Convert",
descriptionId = "Convert.P2V",
userName = "Administrator",
source = "202.190.32.12",
target = "202.190.32.35/lansium.mardi.my",
state = "running",
cancelled = false,
cancelable = true,
data = <unset>,
error = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
result = <unset>,
progress = 63,
estimatedTimeRemaining = 555,
transferRate = 16591,
queueTime = "2009-11-23T13:02:56.421875Z",
startTime = "2009-11-23T13:02:56.59375Z",
completeTime = <unset>,
eventChainId = 324,
vcTask = <unset>,
logBundleInfo = (converter.DiagnosticManager.TaskLogBundleInfo) null,
}
~~2009-11-23 21:19:07.031 01176 verbose 'ConverterImpl'~~ PropertyCollector::WaitForUpdates801
(vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.UpdateSet) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
version = "801",
filterSet = (vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.FilterUpdate) [
(vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.FilterUpdate) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
filter = 'vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.Filter:session7DEC0A2C-7BEC-478F-A8AB-E1E0B682C423DCF1C7DD-F238-40BA-90B7-BDC2E7A23FA6',
objectSet = (vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.ObjectUpdate) [
(vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.ObjectUpdate) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
kind = "modify",
obj = 'converter.task.Task:task-17',
changeSet = (vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.Change) [
(vmodl.query.PropertyCollector.Change) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
name = "info",
op = "assign",
val = (converter.task.TaskInfo) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
key = "task-17",
task = 'converter.task.Task:task-17',
name = "Convert",
descriptionId = "Convert.P2V",
userName = "Administrator",
source = "202.190.32.12",
target = "202.190.32.35/lansium.mardi.my",
state = "running",
cancelled = false,
cancelable = true,
data = <unset>,
error = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
result = <unset>,
progress = 63,
estimatedTimeRemaining = 555,
transferRate = 24010,
queueTime = "2009-11-23T13:02:56.421875Z",
startTime = "2009-11-23T13:02:56.59375Z",
completeTime = <unset>,
eventChainId = 324,
vcTask = <unset>,
logBundleInfo = (converter.DiagnosticManager.TaskLogBundleInfo) null,

above are the error that i got.100% p2v done.not able to reconfigure centos on virtual machine

SQL server 2005 performance issues

gerasimatos — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:06:52 GMT

We recently imported a physical machines that was running our production databases. The physical machine had dual 4 core Xenon processors, our VMware license only alows us to use a max of 4 Vcpu's and thus I configured it in such a manner. However, the performance is TERRIBLE. I know it has nothing to do with disk I/O as the VM is running on a SAN with a R10 configuration and 10 heads.

I did some research and read that we should look at the CPU ready time, which was VERY high. I lowered the number of Vcpu's to 2 and performance has gotten much better. I dont understand why performance is so bad with 4 Vcpu's and was wondering if there is some setting I am overlooking or that needs to be set.

I am not a DBA, so I have no idea when it comes to configuring SQL and any specific SQL settings. Any ideas what I should look into? Where should I start. HELP!??

Shared writable mmap detection

devzero — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:26:30 GMT

Please consider adding detection for special filesystem capabilities and avoid crashing of vmware, especially when support for shared writeable mmap is missing.

i have seen TONS of reports for this on the web (blogs etc) and quite some fuse filesystem mention the needed workaround "usenamedfile=false".

this could be handled automatically and vmware wouldn`t need to crash and the user wouldn`t need to pull his hair out to find the reason for that.

also have a look at:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/61875
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/243672

Website unavailabe???

DSTAVERT — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:02:47 GMT

Is it just me or have others experienced the communities timeout quite regularly?

Enable trusted execution

aRandomPerson — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:09:43 GMT

I have a Dell Optiplex 755, I updated my BIOS settings to Enabled Trusted Execution, VT enabled and virtualization enabled. Now my machine will boot to a blinking cursor. I am unable to get back to the BIOS? Is there a way to resolve this?

error durring javaserver workload result collection

simonpha — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:16:28 GMT

Hi I've run into this problem with the javaserver workload when completing the workload run. I receive the following error in STAX. It seems to me that the workload completes correctly but when trying to do the result collection it errors out.

20091119-18:55:02 Start JobID: 2, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local, Function: Main, Args: { 'CONFIGFILE' : r'C:\vmmark\VMMARK.CONFIG' }, JobName: smalltest1
20091119-18:55:02 Info Holding block: main
20091119-18:55:02 Info Received RELEASE BLOCK main request
20091119-18:55:02 Info Releasing block: main
20091119-18:55:13 Start Testcase: VMmark Setup
20091119-18:55:36 Stop Testcase: VMmark Setup, ElapsedTime: 00:00:23
20091119-18:55:36 Start Testcase: VMmark Wkld Setup
20091119-18:57:54 Stop Testcase: VMmark Wkld Setup, ElapsedTime: 00:02:18
20091119-18:57:54 Start Testcase: VMmark Run Tiles
20091119-19:53:24 Stop Testcase: VMmark Run Tiles, ElapsedTime: 00:55:30
20091119-19:53:24 Start Testcase: VMmark Results Collection
20091119-19:53:25 Error STAXPythonEvaluationError signal raised. Terminating job.

===== XML Information =====

File: c:\vmmark\xml\javaserver_functions.xml, Machine: local
Line 322: Error in element type "call".

===== Python Error Information =====

com.ibm.staf.service.stax.STAXPythonEvaluationException:

Python object evaluation failed for:
'Info: COPY FILE C:\javaserver_%u.stdout TOFILE %s%sjavaserver_%u.stdout' % (tileserver, gResultsDir[0], gFsep, tileserver)

Traceback (innermost last):
File "<pyEval string>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: invalid literal for __int__: javaserver0
===== Call Stack for STAX Thread 1 =====

[
function: Main (Line: 106, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
sequence: 16/22 (Line: 128, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
testcase: VMmark Results Collection (Line: 507, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
sequence: 1/2 (Line: 508, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
iterate: 1/5 0 tilelist (Line: 510, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
sequence: 1/1 (Line: 511, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
iterate: 2/6 JavaServer gWORKLOADLIST (Line: 513, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
sequence: 2/2 (Line: 514, File: C:\vmmark\xml\vmmark_main.xml, Machine: local://local)
function: GetResultsJavaServer (Line: 227, File: c:\vmmark\xml\javaserver_functions.xml, Machine: local)
sequence: 8/12 (Line: 234, File: c:\vmmark\xml\javaserver_functions.xml, Machine: local)
]
20091119-19:53:25 Info Terminating block: main
20091119-19:53:25 Stop Testcase: VMmark Results Collection, ElapsedTime: 00:00:01
20091119-19:53:25 Status Testcase: VMmark Run Tiles, Pass: 1, Fail: 0, ElapsedTime: 00:55:30, NumStarts: 1
20091119-19:53:25 Status Testcase: VMmark Setup, Pass: 1, Fail: 0, ElapsedTime: 00:00:23, NumStarts: 1
20091119-19:53:25 Status Testcase: VMmark Wkld Setup, Pass: 1, Fail: 0, ElapsedTime: 00:02:18, NumStarts: 1
20091119-19:53:25 Status Testcase Totals: Tests: 3, Pass: 3, Fail: 0
20091119-19:53:25 Status Job Result: None
20091119-19:53:26 Stop JobID: 2

Anyone have any idea what this may be?

Thanks in advance

View 4 downloads are now available

cburry — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:36:27 GMT

View 4 downloads are now available.

Allocate 4 vCPU to Windows 7????

shalpern — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:30:35 GMT

We are getting a stats program that can run on Xp/Win7 x64. It really needs a Quad core CPU to run efectively, but the OS only allows for 2 physcal processors. Is there a way to make it look like the virtual machine has 4 vCPU?

TIA

Install issue - XP Pro on ESXi 3.5

mtooze — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:29:14 GMT

Hello everyone. I've been pouring over the forums and can't quite find the answer I'm looking for. I'm trying to install XP Pro on ESXi 3.5.

Here's where I'm at.

Placed XP ISO on the datastore
Placed the Buslogic and LSI .flp on the datastore
Created a VM selecting LSO as the controller
Atatched the .flp to the floppy drive
Mounted XP iso and booted to CD
Hit F6 and select the LSI driver it presented
Format disc, then says it making a list of files to copy and an error pops up saying it can't find the .sys files that are on the floppy. I didn't disconnect it. I hot ESC to continue and it lists all the files on the floppy, but it can't copy them.

Any idea what the problem is? Thanks.

vShield - No cluster option

Mickoni — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:13:08 GMT

Hopefully this is a simple one......

I have 3xESXi 4.0 hosts in a DRS cluster. I have followed the VMware instructions as much as possible but im obvisouly doing something wrong.

I have installed vShield manually (on a distributed switch) and vShield manager (is currently located on a vSwitch) and am getting connectivity ok. However, when doing a manual install through vShield Manager. I ONLY have the option "Standalone" in the Clustering Settings. In the guide it says I should have a "Add to Cluster" option - which just isnt visible. This obviously just leaves me with 1 host being protected.

Any ideas?!

Inability to extend boot partition of win2003 on GSX 3.0.1 client server

mattabah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:08:11 GMT

Hello great pals,
I have a problem on how to increase the boot/system partition of all my win2003 vm Clients, all seating on a win2000 VMWARE GSX 3.0.1 Host Server.
I have Eight (8) Guest servers: 4 running Win2000 and the other 4 on Win2003. I used Vmware-Vdiskmanager.exe to entend both Boot/System and Data partions of all the win2000 client boxes, as well as all the data(E:\) partitions on all the win2003 client boxes. My Challenge/difficulty is on the Boot/Windows system partition of all the win2003 client servers. After growinging their respective sizes, I used diskpart.exe to extend but.....to my surprise, Disk Mangement able to recognise the newly increased size but Windows could not see the newly increased sizes. It shows/sees it as they were.
From online support and researches, I have used gparted-livecd-0.3.4-10 and KNOPPIX_V5.0.1CD-2006-06-01-EN, while booting with them from cd-rom. When booted and executed, they see these extended sizes. Yet nothing is really effected. See attached images. Could someone kindly help out on how to makje windows see the new increment?

Regards.
Matt Abah.

Windows 7 not Booting after installing vmware tools

Ace007 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:31:13 GMT

Hello,,

i have vSphere 4.0.0 version, i am using vcenter server to manage. recently i created new virtual machine for windows 7 the configuration is as follows :

1 CPU,
2 GB of Ram,
35 GB of HDD, (Thin provisining)
1 Network Card

i was running fine untill i install vmware tools, after installing succesfully it asked for restart that it, after restarting i never boots, just it shows me a black screen in the console and wont respont.
it show on the virtual machine as the attached image.

looking for help..

Thanks in Advance.

My Communities link

dprabhakaran — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:59:58 GMT

Hello,
In the old web site there use to be link called "My Communities", which lists the communities I am interested in/subscribed for. But I did not see that link with the new web site. Can any one please let me know where the link is?

Thanks & Regards
Diwakar

iSCSI Connectivity

dwisby — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:49:18 GMT

I have a host configured with a vSwitch for iSCSI traffic. A VM guest is set up with RDM access to a volume on an iSCSI SAN. The connectiviy to the iSCSI SAN is available and functioning. However, connectivity from our Enterprise storage solution fails. From the VM we can ping all iSCSI devices except for the iSCSI ip on the host VM and no iSCSI device can ping the iSCSI ip on the host VM . This doesn't make sense, as I can access the iSCSI SAN via these iSCSI settings on the host. One night we were able to back up all the data on the SAN connected to the VM guest. The next night the backup servers could not connect to the VM hosts iSCSI IP.
Any ideas on what could be causing this anomaly?
Thanks for any assistance.
David

Mouse pointer is missing after VMware tools installed

Bones3876 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:30:43 GMT

Might be a bit late but just for info:

If you have issues with the Mouse pointer being missing after VMware tools installed

http://communities.vmware.com/message/419558

Then try installing the vmware tools then using the keyboard navigate to device manager and select:
Mice & Other pointing devices, right click VMware Pointing Device & select properties,
Selected Advanced Settings tab, change Wheel Detaction to disabled.
Click OK and reboot.

This worked for me fine.

Cannot setup NMI watchdog; calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer may be wrong; sda: assuming drive cache: write through

mackop — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:46:00 GMT

I am using ESXi 4 and as a guest CentOS 5.4 x86_64. I have captured screen while guest OS was booting (the screen is attached).
Are the messages caused by running CentOS as virtual machine? Can I fix them or should I worry?
1) Cannot setup NMI watchdog
2) WARNING calibrate_APIC_clock: the APIC timer may be wrong.
3) sda: assuming drive cache: write through
....

Advanced Search function now has What, Where, When but is missing Who!

WoodyZ — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:19:37 GMT

Before the web site was upgraded, when using Advanced Search function, one could also search by Who or Author (I can't remember now how it was labeled) and this was very handy. What are the chances of getting that feature back?

Cloning issue a Windows 2008 VM ID.

digitaex — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:10:53 GMT

We successfully cloned a Windows 2008 VM but we cannot clear the Computer ID. WSUS keeps seeing the server as the previous machine. It has a new SID from adding it to the domain but the computer ID is the same. We tried the vm configuration wizard but that didnt work. We tried using sysprep but it gets a fatal error attempting to prep the OS. Is there another way or a tool that will help us reset the computer ID on this Windows 2008 VM?

Hosting Licensing

michael.custance — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:49:01 GMT

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, couldn't find a licensing section for vSphere

As a company we have recently deployed some very expensive hardware to provide our customers with a hosted environment for their virtual machines.

We have signed up to the VSPP program to allow us to license per VM. This works well at the enterprise level, where customers require all the advanced features. We have sold solutions to a number of customers and everything is good in this market place.

Here is the problem

To allow us to get the best return on our expensive hardware we would like to market a lower end solution to customers who don’t require all of the advanced features. Our plan was to use some of our perpetual licenses we own and have paid for, but I have recently been told we are not allowed to use these. Even though we own them! - Not best pleased. This is part of the EULA, can someone confirm this is correct or have I miss understood the EULA?

I thought this only applied to free versions of ESX not the paid for versions.

We have to license each VM through the VSPP. Even the cheapest option means that we will be losing money when competing in this market place. Competitors using other hypervisors can provide VM's much cheaper by licensing the host.

On top of this, some accredited VMware hosting partners seem to be offering Resource with an unlimited amount of virtual machines. I can only assume they are using perpetual licenses, or keeping their fingers grossed customers only ask for one VM. Offering an unlimited amount of VM’s simply doesn’t fit the VSPP pricing model.

I really want to be able to standardise with VMware across our hosted solutions, and fly the VMware flag. Problem is I can’t produce a business case when we would be losing money. Especially when all our hosts are already licensed to use Hyper V through the SPLA.

VMware please let us use our software we have paid for! don’t force us to use competitors hypervisors. We want to give you money! But we can’t afford to give you money while going bankrupt providing a service

HELP PLEASE 

Keyboard not getting released from guest.

wdamon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:47:33 GMT

Recently installed an ESX system and also vSphere server. When I start a virtual machine (OS does not seem matter) and click in the console of the vm, I am then unable to get the keyboard released back to the host. Pressing any key on the keyboard pops the cursor back to the last guest console I was in. The mouse works with no problem both in host and guest. Closing the console gives the host back it's control. This seems to be specific to my workstation becuase I have two other people run the same vm from the ESX and vSphere and they work okay.

I also have VMware Workstation and any vm's running there acts normal.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

please display the full post while typing an answer

continuum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:05:53 GMT

please display the full post while typing an answer - it is a pain to always be forced to open the original post in a second browser tab just to see the full context.
This is the only forum that only displays one post while answering

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

please provide vmware-tools iso-files as direct downloads

continuum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:23:46 GMT

please provide vmware-tools iso-files as direct public downloads

This has always been a problem in the past - users had to download other products where the iso-files were included or used obscure torrent-files ....
Now with the new Workstation it is even worse - the automatical download of the tools isos simply does not work as promised.
The buildin feature to detect updated isos does not even detect when the last download failed and so they often state that everything is uptodate even when some of the isos are missing.
To test this - delete one of the iso-files and then click update.

So why is it a problem to make the iso-files available as public downloads - hopefully unobscured - meaning not wrapped in msi-files or tarballs

Nobody can want that the users again start to download this iso-files from the torrent-network ...

Ulli

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

RE: I Need an Expert Opinion

shara555 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:57:37 GMT

Hi There,

Could someone "please advise" as to an expert opinion as to what might be happening as well as a possible solution to the following issue. Each time that I reinstall my os or purchase a new computer with Windows (xp, live 7, vista), I notice the following and at random:

1. Under admin tools, computer management, disk management, the service that connects initially is the logical disk service. However, once I run updates for either Norton or Windows Updates, the service converts to "virtual disk services". I am concerned because I am constantly crashing due to inadequate drivers.

2. I also notice that each time this happens that the software distribution folder under windows has a new update service WSUS, which is a totally separate application that you can install on Windows Server 2008 that automates the updates process for windows update for server 2008. Correct? Please note that I am running workstations without virtualization as they are new or repurposed and not servers.

3. Also, I find a unique key in the registry under Windows CE Services and Windows CE RNDIS whereby a smart phone and a pocket pc is enabled with a value of "2". Additionally, there is a URL listed under source 1386 for x:Ms-Windows-source1386/asms/. If I go to the system root, I am able to find 1386 in Windows with about a trillion files in it.

4. Although, I am very familiar with virtual hosting and troubleshooting guest os's from a pure administration standpoint, as well as the development of virtual appliances, I would like a 2nd opinion as to "what to do" and "how to handle" this situation as it continues to crash my workstations.

5. All things aside, could someone please tell me "how" to avoid this "virtual" hell as I am tired of installing and reinstalling after updates run? All responses and opinions are greatly appreciated.

Shara

VM Appliance creation

Xternal — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:10:31 GMT

Good day to you folks.

I neeed to create a vmware appliance thing, which would be a demo with some preinstalled software and settings. Btw, i don't need networking support.
Just boot, click the button on the desktop and open the browser.

This is working from a bootable usb flash (with ubuntu 9.10 onboard) with persistent storage. Filesystems stores in loopback file 'casper-rw' with aufs.
It contains python, postgres, avahi, git and some bundled system.

Thing is to create the copy of this stuff ASAP.

So here we have a couple of questions:
1) What is the simplest way to do it? -- common question.

And no in more detail:

2) Can I just create an ISO from the needed files (usb flash content), make it bootable -> create virtual machine (with ISO in cdrom) --> boot it --> make a snapshot? Can I load this snapshot anywhere in vmware without other stuff? And how can I load my loopback file (storage) like a hard drive?

3) Can I create VM Appliance with VMStudio using ubuntu 8.04 template but with ISO with my flash drive contents? My distr is based on ubuntu 9.10 for a moment And again -- how can I use my loopback file in VM like a persistent storage?

4) Can I somehow copy loaded system in VM Appliance? Does anyone have success stories with VMWare Converter?

5) Or these options will fail because of loopback-file storage practise, and i have to install ubuntu 8.04 from a template and configure it again?

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Pavel.

WinXP - host memory usage

roc.ker — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:57:29 GMT

Hello,

I am testing VDI and I have noticed that memory sharing/release doesn’t work on
my WinXPs. I have 15 WinXP running on the box and all of them use all memory
which I assign them. Every VM has 1GB RAM assigned. I see 1GB in “Consument
Host Memory”. When I start W2k3 server on this box I see memory release after
few minutes.

I have installed latest Vmtools and this issue is on ESX 3.5 and ESX 4.

Could you help me with this issue? Does anybody have the same experiences?

Thanks Roman

No CTRL+ALT Delete Logon screen after P2V

DannyGerman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:43:37 GMT

Hi - I have a customer with some really old physical NT 4 Terminal Servers (running Citrix Metaframe 1.8), I'm trying to virtualize them. After running a successful P2V the new VM appears to starts up successfully, go through the normal NT 4 boot process, but it never display's the logon box. Has anyone ever come across this before after P2Ving a NT4 server?

I'm using vSphere 4.0. I've tried the VMware Converter which is built into vCenter and the standalone version. Both converters report a successful conversion. I've also noticed that the VM runs at 100% CPU once it's been converted and is sitting on the blank Windows NT 4 screen waiting for the logon box to appear. I've also noticed that because it’s NT4 Terminal Server, it's using a slightly different GINA than the normal NT4 Server, maybe this has something to do with it. - Any help is appreciated. Thanks Danny

Backups VMs while they are running?

mpg187 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:21:51 GMT

Is it safe to backup VMs while they are running? Or do I have to shut them down before backing them up?

Shortened logins on forum

Anton V Zhbankov — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:19:38 GMT

Robert, when logins are shortened in threads at least it can be understood, although it looks reallly bad - after all we have not really long logins.

But what the hell is THIS? I see 600 pixels to right after last letter.

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

vShield agent scan interface

mike lim — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:01:49 GMT

Hi,

Am testing out the vShield addon in our local environment and have hit a snag I hope someone knows the answer to. My vShield agent has a management IP address outside of the subnet of VMs that I wish to scan for services. According to the documentation I should enable the scan interface from the CLI and give it an ip address in the range of my VMs which makes sense......but life is never simple. Within the configuration option of the CLI I can only see 3 interfaces which are: mgmt, u0 and p0 so the command to enable the scan interface is clearly missing a step. I am assuming that adding another vNic is the way to go but am wondering what I will need to do after this.

Any help much appreciated.

Mike

VMotion on Essentials +

dennes — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:19:59 GMT

I still cannot fathom why the Essentials Plus SMB bundle has HA, but not VMotion? IMHO this is a bad marketing decision that will cost VMware dearly in the near future, now Hyper-V's Live Migration (free) is slowly but deliberately elbowing it's way to the virtualization spotlights.
VMware is already beginning to lose ground in the SMB market because of this (SMB clients migrating to Hyper-V) which you could put to a stop by having a low cost SMB (2/3 host) license that includes VMotion (and HA).
Maybe we can make a trade.. You can keep DataProtector which i'll happily give back and Essentials+ gets VMotion instead? Deal??

Please consider this!

Thanks,
Dennes

How do I get the latest VMWare Tools?!?

ts9999 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:19:41 GMT

Hi,

I'm having a problem finding a definitive answer for the bext place to get the latest VMWare Tools download.

Is there a specific URL that anyone can point me at?

I'm using VMWare ESXi 3.5 with update 4

Regards,

Tony.

WindowsXP: restarts hang at "Windows is Shutting Down" on VMs

toc — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:21:04 GMT

HI there!

We are running an ESX 4.0.0, 164409 and have problems with our virtual Windows XP SP3 (with latest Updates).

After installing automatic Updates from our internal Wsus Server the guests try to make the automatic restart (not all at the same time)

but they hang at "Windows is Shutting Down"...

If this problem occurs i had to log into our vSphere client - open the console and klick one time into it... after that the vm restarts!!!

The Problem is ... we're using these vm's for a few mobile users... and there aren't allways admins in our office so we had to find a solution...

any ideas?

cpu usage spike on VM workstation 6.5 and Server 2

yruheresteve — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:58:40 GMT

Hi,

We've recently upgraded some of the VMs from Workstation 6 to 6.5, as well as trying out the VMware Server 2, and we encountered a strange issue, not sure if anyone have seen anything similar and have worked out a solution for it. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and advices!

Environment:
Host OS: 32 bit Windows XP Professional w/ SP3
Memory: 3GB

Guest OS: 32 bit Windows XP Professional w/ SP3
Office 2003 Professional w/ SP3
Memory: 768MB
Virtual Disk: 60GB, not split into 2GB, not pre-allocated

Scenario:
We use an order management system that sends out order status emails via user's Outlook account. In order to not trip Outlook's security warning every time, we also use a plug-in called Advanced Security for Outlook by MAPILab (http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/security/) to allow access. So the operation goes as follows: User verify that the order has reached a certain stage, such as received tracking number, so he/she clicks on send tracking email to customer from the order management system. Email would end up in user's Outlook outbox, which user might add additional notes to it if necessary, and at the next send/receive cycle, email would be sent out to the customer.

Issue occurs AFTER user clicks on send email on the order management system, and BEFORE the email ends up in user's outbox. In task manager, CPU would spike to 100% (or 50% if use 2 virtual CPU) for outlook.exe and effectively freeze the virtual machine for few seconds, until the email ends up in user's outbox, cpu usage for outlook.exe will then ramp down to normal.

After some test, this behavior does not occur in physical machine or VMs in Workstation 6. It only shows up in Workstation 6.5 and Server 2.0 for us. We've tested with following step:

Creating a clean Guest OS in Workstation 6
Install Office
Perform all necessary Microsoft updates
Install our order management system
Install Outlook plug-in
Send email from order management system (tested okay)
Copy VM to Workstation 6.5
Send email from order management system (with CPU usage spike)
Copy VM to Server 2
Send email from order management system (with CPU usage spike)

We've also try to create a clean Guest OS from Workstation 6.5 and Server 2.0, instead of copied over from Workstation 6, but same behavior still occurs. Not sure if anyone seem similar behavior while performing other actions?

Convert OVM image to VMWare Image

cunyzng — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:54:01 GMT

Hi, I wonder if there is any easy way to convert an Oracle VM image to a VMWare server image? Any help is greatly appreciated!

how shall a new user find the Converter-forum ???

continuum — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:30:14 GMT

how shall a new user find the Converter-forum ???

I usually had this in "my communities" - and today I only found it again because it was listed in my recent posts.

Why should a new user search for this under the vCenter section ?

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

Creating a Windows 2008 VM image to us in Riverbed RSP

GarverLLC — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:25:52 GMT

I want to know how to create a valid VM with out remote storage devices that can be used to create a package in RSP? Or, how can i obtain a pre-package VM image of Windows 2008 for use in Riverbed RSP package creator.

Larry Taylor, NLR, Ar.

Connecting to x64 target

kernelgrunt — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:41:52 GMT

I am trying to hook up to a Win7 x64 boot in VMWare WS 6.5 using host platform XP x64. GNU gdb 6.3 from MinGW. Settings in vmx file:

bios.bootDelay = "3000"
debugStub.hideBreakpoints = "TRUE"
#debugStub.listen.guest32 = "TRUE"
#debugStub.listen.guest32.remote = "TRUE"
#monitor.debugOnStartGuest32 = "TRUE"
debugStub.listen.guest64 = "TRUE"
debugStub.listen.guest64.remote = "TRUE"

From gdb command-line:

(gdb) set architecture i386:x86-64
The target architecture is assumed to be i386:x86-64
(gdb) target remote localhost:8864
Remote debugging using localhost:8864
Ignoring packet error, continuing...
Ignoring packet error, continuing...
Ignoring packet error, continuing...
Couldn't establish connection to remote target
Malformed response to offset query, timeout

If I use the 32-bit settings I can connect just fine at boot and step all the way until long mode is enabled.

Using the 64-bit settings I have tried connecting at boot, and I have tried connecting after I know 64-bit instructions are executing. Same behavior...no luck. Am I doing something obviously wrong?

Virtualizing Desktops

jeremywatco — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:34:04 GMT

Hi All,

We currently have 90% of our server infrastructure virtualized via vSphere (ESX4). Now we are looking to start virtualizing some of our desktop environments with Thin Clients. Server virtualization I understand, however Thin Client's and desktop VM's I know nothing about. Can someone point me in the right direction on where to start? I know HP & Sun both have Thin Clients for cheap, however I don't quite understand how they would interface with vSphere.

Basically I am just wanting a little guidence on where to begin. I know VMWare makes a product called View, but I don't quite understand what it does.

In the end what I am wanting is to have "dumb" terminals that will boot directly into guest OS's and have a majority of all the processing done at the server level.

Any help would be excellent.

Message was edited by: Texiwill: Removed Microsoft Word foo.

Tool to build custom alers and reports

VJourney — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:41:42 GMT

If anyone has gone into the VC database you have seen the wealth of information stored there. It would be great if we could build reports/alerts with a tool instead of writting a cutom SQL job.

Why store so much data if we cant use it?

Is it possible to enable jumbo frames on vmxnet3 under Solaris 10?

rhodesj — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:27:22 GMT

Solaris 10 10/09 running on ESX4. VMware tools are installed. ifconfig vmxnet3s0 mtu <value> only works for mtu values of 1500 or less. /kernel/drv/vmxnet3s.conf gives no hints related to jumbo frames.

I've come up empty searching the net. Ideas?

Host could not participate in VCE after failed CPU replaced

Jawdat — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:48:47 GMT

This is an odd situation that we encounter which I would like to share in order to 1-shed some more light over, hopefully and 2- so it may be of help to someone in the same situation.

Couple of weeks ago we had a HW failure on one of the HP BL680c G5 blades where it just died, lights are on but no one home kind a thing. HP came in and with a new mobo, as they always do, replaced but still no joy, the savvey engineer then discovered that it is not one but two out of the four cpus are faulty. Ordered and replaced them and the host came back to life. Fine but for the life of me I could not get the 6 hosts cluster to recognise it as a VT enabled host although made sure the VT and the 'No-Execute Memory Protection' both are enabled in the BIOS. As a result this lone host would not vmotion to or from without the warning message about the CPU bit.

The only way to get the cluster EVC enabled again and be able to vmotion normally was to create a new cluster with EVC enabled and migrate all the hosts and VMs to it. When I did that the host that had a problem joined ok and was vmotioning as normal. I had manually recreate all the rules I had on the old cluster which was deleted and the new one renamed.

Now had anyone been in the same boat and what did they do if different.

Thank you

Performance problems on Windows 2008 failover cluster file server on VSphere 4

jimdavies — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:42:03 GMT

We have successfully setup a Windows 2008 failover cluster running on two VMS on two separate VSphere 4 hosts. We're using this as a high availability file store (file server failover cluster service installed) for use as a repository for web page images. The configured share is mounted as a virtual directory on web servers.

The content share itself is on a clustered RDM disk.

Anyway, technically it all works OK and we have a more complex setup running SQL 2008 on a virtualised Win 2008 cluster that is good too.

The problem though is this...

When we run high-ish volumes of traffic on the web servers, the page load times increase exponentially and is due to the images loading slowly. We know that the HAFS is responsible as we've moved the images locally to the web servers and it runs much quicker/as expected.

We have eliminated network restrictions between VMs (the web servers are virtual guests also) and between hosts.
We find manually copying and reading files to the HAFS runs at comparatively normal speed, the problem only manifests itself when used as an image store. I guess the nature of high number of consecutive/concurrent reads.

There are around 6000 image files from 1K to 128K in size.
I don't have the read request/sec or read bytes/sec info but might be able to get something.

There's no mention we can find that talks about access thresholds in this setup. Anyone had similar problems or does anyone actually use VMWare/Windows in this way?

Any response would be appreciated.

Physical hard drive exclusively for virtual machine

Kay Hidde — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:37:17 GMT

It would be great if a physical hard drive connected via SATA or Firewire could be dedicated to a virtual machine so that it can be physically managed by the guest operating system. Of course you can add a USB drive to the guest but that is kind of slower than SATA or even Firewire and not all features are passed through (e.g., S.M.A.R.T. to name just one).

I am using Fusion 3.0.0 for MacOSX on a MacPro. And no, to use a BootCamp partition with Windows installed is no alternative since I want to use the physical disk as a secondary drive to an existing virtual host.

Thanks for considering!

Best,
Kay Hidde

VM V7 "Safely remove hardware" problem...

kot99 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:31:06 GMT

Please help After upgrading VM to version 7 and changing it network controller to vmxnet3 i've got a "safely remove hardware" icon in taskbar. So any user can detach NIC from this VM !!!! And stop additional HDD controller This is damn BAD !

I've tried to disable hotplug as mentioned in KB 1012225 but nothing changes...anyone still can stop NIC and controller as hotplug device...HEEELP!

Thanks a lot.

VM is Windows 2008, ESXi build 193498.

Virtual Desktop Performance issues - ESX 3.5 VM View

ciberweb — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:26:43 GMT

Sorry, wasn't sure what category to submit this under.

I have a small environment running 1 VM server and 5 VM Desktops. Performance on the Desktop side is the issue.

Server Hardware:
1 - Dell 2950 / 2-Quad 2.8ghz Proc / 16gb RAM / 1.2TB of local storage - 15k RPM HD's / 2 - Dual NIC's (1 NIC = 2 VM Desktops, 1 NIC = 3 VM Desktops and 2 NIC = Server)

Software:
Server -> SBS 2008
PC's -> Windows XP Pro SP3 - Office 2003, ERP Application, File Maker, Adobe and WinZip

Virtual Hardware:
1 2.8ghz Proc / 1gb RAM / 25gb C:\ drive (15gb free)

Physical Hardware used for Virtual PC's:
Dell Dimension 2400 -> 2.4ghz Single Proc, 512mb or 768mb RAM, 100mb NIC

Issues:
VM users are seeing slowness issues when attaching documents to emails in Outlook.
Refresh is slow when changing from one email to another.
Working in one application and then toggling to another hangs the desktop for a bit.
Generally speaking applications seem to be slow.

What is my bottleneck? Is this typical or is there a config change that can be made to resolve the issues?

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Marc

Application with Oracle 9i doesn't work after migrate from esx 3.0.1 to 3.5 update 4

dokfvd1 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:03:55 GMT

Hi there,

We've got at the company 2 Esx clusters. The first cluster is a ESX 3.0.1 cluster (build-34176), the otherone is a ESX 3.5 update 4 cluster.

We've got a virtual machine with windows 2003 standard edition with a oracle 9i database. The application is also running on this virtual machine.

Last week ik migrated the virtual machine from the esx 3.0.1 version to the esx 3.5 version. (remove from inventory -> add to inventory). We also updated the vmware tools to the latest version (build 184236).

If we want to start the application it isn't possible on the esx 3.5 cluster. If i do a remove from inventory and add the virtual machine to the 3.0.1 cluster, the application is running again. ((this had been done with the latest vmware tools (build 184236).

I've chat with the company but the don't give official support on the application on vmware.

The hardware from the 3.0.1 and 3.5 are the same.

Has someone an idea? I heard something that it can come because tcp/ip ports aren't open.

note: the dutch version is writte here: http://www.vmug.nl/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4410

greets Frans

Application with Oracle 9i doesn't work after migrate from esx 3.0.1 to 3.5 update 4

dokfvd1 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:49:48 GMT

Hi there,

We've got at the company 2 Esx clusters. The first cluster is a ESX 3.0.1 cluster (build-34176), the otherone is a ESX 3.5 update 4 cluster.

We've got a virtual machine with windows 2003 standard edition with a oracle 9i database. The application is also running on this virtual machine.

I've chat with the company but the don't give official support on the application on vmware.

The hardware from the 3.0.1 and 3.5 are the same.

Has someone an idea? I heard something that it can come because tcp/ip ports aren't open.

note: the dutch version is writte here: http://www.vmug.nl/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4410

greets Frans

Performance Issues for 32-bit VM after 64-Host Bios setting changed

KLeach — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:44:39 GMT

I am running esx 3.5 build 153875 on a HP FL580 G5 It shows 8 CPU x 2.933GHz and 32GB of RAM

I have a 32-bit WIndows 2003 Server VM on that host running SQL Server on 4 vCPUsand 12GB of RAM (with PAE on)

The VM ran OK (not great) but when I changed the BIOS settings to turn on to get maximum Dit Length of 64 bit and turn on DEP and Hardware Virtualization; I now get slower performacne on the 32bit VM.

I turned them on because I want to build a 64 Bit VM on the same host with Server 2008 and SQL Server (hopefully I can relocate)

Does anyone have any idea why I would see slower perfformance on the vm. The new 64bit OS isn't even fully installed yet so that is not taking any power away...

The "Securable" tool reads 64,Yes,Yes on my 32bit VM.

Suggestions?

-Ken

Performance on nic

Emmermacher — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:50:45 GMT

Hello list.

We're running several SLES 10 Sp2 guests on a ESX 3.5 update 4 server. The performance on normal acces on this machines is ok, but for Backup i wish to have more power here. We're using BackupExec 11d remote agents here.

What setting are well to a maximum power here?

Thanks ins advance for your tips.

Best regards.

Dirk Emmermacher

Deploying Windows 2008 From Template using vCenter

Hurstel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:34:51 GMT

I have a Windows 2008 template that has some minor custom changes like a renamed admin account and some changes on the desktop. When I deploy the template using the custimization Wizard, the admin account reverts back to being named "admin" and the desktop is back to looking like a clean installed. However other changes such as installed software does show up.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen or if there is a way to make the first to changes stick after deploying the template.

Hurstel

VNC server compression issues on Win2k3

peterlewis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:34:22 GMT

I've noted an issue with vncserver in Windows 2003 server running on VMWare ESX 3.5.0 (153875).

After a few days/weeks of running the vncserver on some of my systems, connections to vnc stops working and I get a disconnect message while trying to connect.

plewis@perdain:~$ vncviewer servername

Connected to RFB server, using protocol version 3.3
Performing standard VNC authentication
Password:
Authentication successful
Desktop name "servername"
VNC server default format:

32 bits per pixel.*
Least significant byte first in each pixel.*
True colour: max red 255 green 255 blue 255, shift red 16 green 8 blue 0*

Using default colormap which is TrueColor. Pixel format:

32 bits per pixel.*
Least significant byte first in each pixel.*
True colour: max red 255 green 255 blue 255, shift red 16 green 8 blue 0*

vncviewer: read: Connection reset by peer

I can successfully connect if I force the compression to -bgr233

plewis@perdain:~$ vncviewer servername -brg233

Then the connection works fine.

However, there are other issues with some of the software on the server itself at this point. Our software does html conversions and image proofs. This conversion process also breaks. Until a restart, vncserver and the image process will not work.

The two issues definately seem to corespond to each other. I believe it has to do with some image compression library that is shared between the two processes. This has never happened on a physical machine.

This does not happen on all of my virtual windows servers and might be related to setting the video hardware acceleration. The only systems that seem to be effected by this had it set to full. The uneffected machines had it set to the first notch. I've throttled back the hardware settings to the first notch and rebooted. I'll keep this thread posted to see if the issue appears again.

Hope this helps someone else.

creating vm pc's?

KNardi — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:28:37 GMT

VSphere 4.0, VCenter 4.0, ESX hosts = 9 all using HA and DRS on one Cluster

My question is, Is it possible to deploy a PC workstation using LANdesk on the VIC?

Can we use a PXE boot?

AMD Opteron 2435 2.60 GHz Six Core VS Quad Core AMD Opteron(tm) 8384; 2.7GHz

fanzalone — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:31:57 GMT

Dear All,

I'm new in the vmware community.

I'm using vmware Enterprise 3.5 since 3 years.

I need to change two of my vmware hosts and I would like to know which benchmark score this two different machines have.

both machine are dual socket equiped.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Disaster Recovery/Direct USB Access From Host system to Guest OS...

Johnysteaks — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:23:49 GMT

Hello,

I am implementing Our Disaster Recovery scenario and come to find out that there isn't any direct support for USB Access Through the Host (ESX 4.0) to the Guest VM. This is an issue as there are many scenario, such as Mine, that have application Validate through a USB Key. Especially, with the movement to VDI, I would think this would be an important feature to include.

I am a new user and disappointed with the Lack of support with this..

Virtual CPU and VP consolidation

KDubb — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:00:01 GMT

Hello,

We are getting ready to consolidate our vmware servers from 8 ESX to 4 ESX servers. We have about 45 VMs. The ESX Servers are 2.3 x 8 core, and 32 GB of memory. Most of our VMs are configured with 2 virtual VMs, as they seem to work best with this config, and it is also how HP\VM engineers set it up.

After consolidation, each ESX server will have about 18-20 Virtual CPUs assigned to servers. Is this going to present a performance problem? Current CPU usage is never high, so it is not like these servers are using all of their resources that they have been assigned, however, i understand that if 2 virtual CPUs are assigned to a server that when a process is executed it will have to wait until 2 physcal cores are aviable for usage.

Going off of current usage, each ESX Server uses at most 1/3 of it's resources for 7 of the 8 ESX servers (1 is offline).

Should I be consernced with this consoildaion?

Increase interval of Data Recovery Integrity Checks (better yet make them manual!)

MarkLomas — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:17:51 GMT

I can't stress enough how crushingly useless Data Recovery is rendered by the integrity checks. Even configured at 7 days (the maximum), checks can often take days to complete, leaving little time for Data Recovery to operate and take backups before it begins all over again!

The integrity check interval desperately needs extending so we can perhaps configure it to run every 30 days? Or perhaps even longer. Better yet, the addition of an option to make the integrity check run only when manually initiated by the administrator would be useful.

I see the need for an integrity check system, but the length of time it takes significantly hampers the products ability to actually do the job it's supposed to do.

VMWare - please help us!

Mark Lomas VCP

VMware emulated hardware specifications

mterwoord — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:46:44 GMT

Hi,

I'm working on the Cosmos project (www.gocosmos.org), and we want to implement a driver for the VMware graphics card, but we are unable to find any specification for it. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Regards,

Matthijs ter Woord

Happy Halloween!

vJoe3970 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:46:46 GMT

Wishing you all a virtually-ghoulish and fun Halloween!

Thanks for all the expert help and support!

:-}

Joe

VM is unable to communicate to network

techguru007 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:11:03 GMT

Issue: Sometimes VM is unable to communicate to network (Not pingable). VM is in running state when checked from VI console.

Reboot from VI client fixes the problem. (ESX 3.5 U4 / VC 2.5)

Question: Is there any permanent solution to fix this issue.

Thanks in Advance !

What VMware product to use? Your dream setup high-powered personal workstation...

EricBryant — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:20:47 GMT

Hello All,

If you want to run multiple guest O/S's for your personal workstation, and want the absolute highest possible desktop performance ever (including graphics performance) and you had a big beefy host with plenty of CPU & RAM to put it on, would you run vSphere, ESXi, or Workstation 7 on it (all cost considerations aside) and if you chose Workstation, what base O/S would you use assuming you want maximum RAM available to guests?

Thanks!

Eric

upgrade server 2000 to 2003 problems

woodsp — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:07:29 GMT

We are upgrading a server 2000 guest O/S to 2003 and the upgrade justs hangs with 100% cpu and 0% performance readings for network, disk and memory.

A reset and shutdown and estart have all been attempted to kick start the process, but to no avail.

The guest O/S has 2GB memory and a single cpu, there was no issues with the 2000 box other than it was decided to upgrade to 2003.

Any one had a similar scenario or can offer any solutions.

Many thanks.

VM suddenly running VERY slow

mattstewartcsd — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:31:20 GMT

Hi, I am running Virtual Servers on an ESX 4.0 host. The host has plenty of grunt and all servers are running ok,....apart from one. All of a sudden I can no longer RDP to to (although I can see it on the network and ping it). I can logon the the server using the console but it takes an age to do so and sits on the 'applying computer settings' window for minutes at a time. The server is Win 2K3 R2 x86 with 2 vProcessors, 4gb RAM, and plenty of disk space. It was running fine a few days ago.

Any ideas what can casue this?

vSphere vcpu scheduling imbalance

ltbraswell — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:16:11 GMT

My group has been doing some testing comparing virtual to bare-metal performance with a particularly high-compute utilizing application.

Platform: Intel E5540 (Nehalem) quad-core, dual-socket. 48GB of 1066MHz memory (properly balanced)

OS/guest OS: RHEL 4.7 (for both bare-metal and virtual configs)
Configuration: Hyper-threading off for both esx and bare-metal. Numa enabled and verified on both ESX and RHEL 4.7 (bare-metal)
ESX version: 4.0u0 build 164009
ESX host power.CpuPolicy is set to "static"

The application is a single-threaded modeling/simulation type program. It is not I/O intensive at all and basically each job generates a load average contribution of 1 (i.e. it pegs a cpu for each job). What we have been doing is running 1,2,4, and 8 simultaneous jobs and comparing the virtual to bare-metal physical performance with different combinations of VM vcpu counts (1,2,4 vcpu). Don't know a lot of details about the application other than when scaling from 1 to 8 jobs on bare-metal, the performance of any one job degrades somewhat so it seems to be memory constrained (not sure if the is sensitive to last level cache size or raw RAM performance). The "model" size itself for each job is 1.5GB.

The observation is that when simultaneously running 2 and 4 of these applications, each in its own 2vcpu virtual (so 2 and 4 virtuals respectively but all running on one 2-socket physical). More often that not for the 2 job case, we will see the worlds representing these active vcpus both running on 1 socket (with the other socket basically idle). For the 4 job case (though not as frequently), we have seen the load split 3/1 across the 2 sockets. When we run 8 jobs we get an even distribution of active vcpu worlds across the 2 sockets (4 on each).

The question is: Why is it that when there are 2 active vcpus does ESX schedule these vcpus on one socket more often than not. Same thing for 4 active vcpus, lopsided scheduling 3/1, though not as frequently. The hypothesis is that this behavior is related to some power management function of the scheduler (i.e. it would rather load up one socket more fully so that the cores on the other socket have a chance to be freq scaled down or in the halted state and therefore save power).

Ordinarily for an application that is not sensitive to memory performance or last level cache size this might not be an issue but for our application it apparently is sensitive the load being spread across sockets.

We can workaround this lopsided scheduling by using affinity rules to pin virtuals to sockets and manually force the load to be spread but we were hoping for some way to get it to balance the load without using affinity rules. Note that our hosts are running with power.CpuPolicy static.

Any ideas?

Message was edited by: ltbraswell changed subject to remove the reference to version 4

ESXi 4.0 shows incorrect memory usage at host level

dasbacgl — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:33:56 GMT

Hey,

I've installed the Nehlem patch on my ESXi 4.0 boxes (current build #193498). The individual guest VM's now report their Active memory correctly, and Memory Usage is also correct, however at the host level it now appears that ESX is reporting Memory Usage (%) based on Consumed memory instead of Active Memory.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Thanks,

Garrick

Oracle Runaway Process Consumes All vCPUs

TimothyGaray — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:28:21 GMT

A question was posed to us by our DBAs in regards to Oracle 10g running in a VM.

When the server was physical, if one Oracle process took off, it did not chew up all available computing resources - just the CPU that the particular process was running on.

Now that the server is virtual, if an Oracle process takes off, it chews up both vCPUs doing whatever.

We were considering giving it 4 vCPUs but their concern is that if someone submits a huge query then it will just consume 4 vCPUs at 100%.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this? I'm not very familiar with Oracle.

Thanks!

-Tim

support beyond the forum - how do you handle it ?

continuum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:56:46 GMT

I don't know if this applies to anyone else ... anyway maybe we can find a way that suits all ...

What do you do if a problem can not be fixed with a short answer in a post and the user asks you if you can fix the issue via a remote-login ?

I specialize in vmdk and snapshot problems and in most of the cases this problems really require more work than a short reply.
So occasionally I agree to fix the issue via a remote-login. This happens more and more often since ESX 4 appeared.

In maybe 33 % of those cases the users are nice and keep their promise to make a donation or post a success report.
In the other cases the users make me regret having helped them at all.

Worst example so far : I spend a whole saturday night recovering data from a user-mistake on ESX 4 - the user promised to donate 1000 dollars.
When the work was done I never heard from that guy again.

Last case was yesterday night - all in all I spend maybe 2 hours on a deleted snapshot - 30 minutes via a remote-login.
The work was successful and the user promised to make a donation ... which of course never arrived.

Obviously a lot of frustration is building up ...
If it goes on like this I guess I will soon stop to invest more than 5 - 10 minutes for a users problems - just to avoid this feeling of beeing cheated.

Do you have similar experiences ? - if yes - how do you handle such cases ?

What do you do if you see a post and you know that you could fix the problem if you spend maybe a full hour on it - do you spend the time ?

Ulli

___________________________________

VMX-parameters- VMware-liveCD - VM-Sickbay

Time sync between ESX and guests

Bzor — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:30:05 GMT

Hello All,

I have a question regarding the time sync behaviour.

I have several virtualized DC on ESX and I disabled the time sync between the host and the guests. All is ok.
But I wonder if time is still sync between the host and the emulated guest BIOS or not. Because, if my computer use the W32Time parameter NoSync, it trusts the computer's clock. If I disabled the time sync on ESX tools, when I shut down my Windows, is the emulated bios time still accurate? Does my question make sense?

Thanks.

Bz!

Hi Guys.. my VMware get conrinuous reboot

kurva1979 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:37:38 GMT

Hi Friends,

I am using vmware workstation and installed solaris 10, every thing look good for 1 month and later it get loop reboop( it get reboot continuour at GRUB options after 10 seconds) you can find the attachment .. pls can any one help me how to resolve this issue.. as it is very important for me pls guys.. help me to come out from this issue.. tks in Advance...

Windows 2008 R2 still in experimental mode?

russrimm — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:47:30 GMT

All the discussion about the Windows 2008 R2 SVGA issue mention it won't be supported until 2008 R2 goes GA. It's now GA, but it appears to be still flagged as experimentally supported. Anyone have any ideas when VMWare plans to officially support 2008 R2?

Wireless adapter on VM partition suddenly...

michael8930 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:04:16 GMT

I cant connect to the internet on my Virtual machine today. I get a error saying that it cant connect with my ethernet adapter. I have been using Vm fusion for about a month with no issues.

I have tried to restart everything, add a new connection, blah blah blah....I am running snow leopard on a macbook pro(2009). Settings are identicle to my other office MacBook Pro (2009) and it connects without issue.

opinions on the 10gb network cards

cxo — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:19:49 GMT

Would like to know people's opinions on the 10gb network cards. In particular the "Intel 10 Gigabit AF DA Dual Port Server Adapter" and the "Chelsio Communications S320E: 10 Gbe Nework Adapter".
Just looking for horror stories.

2008 vms losing ping

tdubb123 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:06:38 GMT

I setup some new 2008 VMs on ESX 3.5 but ater vms are idle for a while they cannot be pinged. I gt a request timed out for 1 packet or 2 then the ping comes back. any idea?

VMs and Windows Performance Monitor

AtlasAdmin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:50:22 GMT

In the next few days I will be preparing load testing on a clients existing physical environment and newly created virtual environment to compare system performance under load.

After reading up on the subject, my understanding of various online documents has shown that we cannot rely accurately on data captured from within the virtual machines using Windows Performance Monitor because of a skewing of time within the virtual machine.

Could anyone confirm that using Windows performance Monitor from a remote physical machine to capture data from the virtual machine machine overcome this problem?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

Issues with the website

PayamDamghani — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:08:55 GMT

Seem like no emails are going out and could not download anything? Whats going on?

I keep getting an error message "Error Caused by File"

kevinadavis — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:27:47 GMT

I am brand new to the virtual world and just recently installed blade servers and VMWare. I am running VSphere 4.0. I created my first VM Template and when I try and create a new VM from that template I get an error message "Error Caused by File" and the VM creation terminates. I created a 600 GB volume on my SAN to place the VMs I create so space should not be an issues since I only have my virtual center VM currently in that volume. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank You!

Kevin

The Poor performance of this site in general

markzz — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:10:50 GMT

Hi there all.

I'm posting this question on the weekend as this seems the time when this site performs the best.

Yes I know it's the weekend, I'm at home I should be digging the gardens. The kids are hammering the Optus cable currently, but I can type on this forum without a 20 charactor lag..

Of course being in Australia I can't be sure there isn't a performance issue somewhere between me and VMWare's servers in the US, but hey I don't have this issue on the Microsoft Site or Citrix Site.

Above and beyond everything else this lacking performance must to the unenlightened appear that VMWare's site just doesn't perform well, likely due to the fact that it's vitalized on VMWare!

Come on guys. This is your forward facing/customer facing environment. Give it some resources, get some end to end monitoring in place. I understand this is not a critical business application which generates income directly, but indirectly it must sway the unenlightened peoples opinions.

Thanks for listening to my gripe

Regards

The unenlightened.

Spoke too soon the lags back..

Convert XenServer To VMware

h0tsh0t00 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:43:53 GMT

Hi,

I have a big problem... I am moving from XenServer to Vmware. I'm trying to convert the Xen VM (Cold Clone VMware Enterprise) but the thing is... when i'm converting, i see only one disk (C:) and not the F: and G:.

Anyone have a cue or another solution ?

Thx

Ghis

Resource Pools

Mr G Grant — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:11:55 GMT

We are currently hosting 417 virtual machines on a cluster containing 11 servers. Should i be looking at creating resource pools now as some machines are performing at bit worse now.

Any advise is much appreciated.

A Newbie needs help in a big way....HELP!!!

Dinube — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:19:50 GMT

Aloha:

I just installed VMware-Fusion-2.0.6-196839.dmg on My MacBook Pro running OS 10.5.8. It seems to work well.

However I am having problems installing a Hanger 9 simulator. It's on 4 separate disks. The first disk goes on ok asked for disk 2, but does not eject disk one.

I get an error panel which is attached.

Any ideas??

Thanks
Dan Page

Upload a Profile Image + Avatar, and Win!

RDellimmagine — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:48:14 GMT

Hello Lounge Lizards (and I use the term endearingly),

Upload a profile image and avatar into your VMware Communities profile, and you could win a $50 iTunes gift card!
It's that simple! VMware Communities has enabled both profile images and avatars, so now we want you to let other community members know what you look like! Or at least let us know what you wish you looked like.

Avatars are the small graphics that display next to all of your posts. Profile images are the large images that display on your profile page. For some good examples, let me introduce to you some people on the VMware Communities team:

How do I upload?
Go to VMware Communities, log in, then click your name at the upper right of the page.

- Avatar: Click "Change avatar" in the "Actions" box at the right.
- Profile Image: Click "Edit Communities profile" in the "Actions" box at the right.

How to Win!

Make sure you have both an avatar and a profile image uploaded into your VMware Communities profile before midnight Pacific on Wednesday, October 28. If you already have an avatar, that's great -- you don't need to upload a new one.
I will pick one VMware Communities member at random who has both an avatar and a profile image uploaded by the deadline, and I'll send that person a $50 iTunes gift card. Then I'll announce the winner here.
There's no need to tell me you've uploaded an image and avatar -- I will find them in your profile. VMware employees are not eligible to win the prize. No purchase necessary to win.

Have fun getting connected! - Robert

Issues with PXE and obtaining IP

cdowgos — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:03:01 GMT

Not sure if this is the right section but I have intermittent PXE issues with VMware Workstation 6.5.3

We run a Novell ZCM server which handles our PXE/imaging, I have been creating images in vmware and trying to upload them to zcm but every once in awhile it just stops working and refuses to get an IP in the preboot environment, the only way to even get to the interface to create an image is to use a boot cd, but once i get to the bash for that, ifconfig shows no IP. Also what might be of relevance is sometimes it lets me try and pull an image down to a blank vm then crashes out with a segmentation fault.

VMware's nic is set to bridged as I've read everywhere this is what its supposed to be set to and physical machines can connect to pxe with no issues whatsoever.

Would getting a second nic for the pc and dedicating it to vmware help at all? Thanks in advance for the help on this as its been frustrating.

-Chris

VMware for the non-technical

vJoe3970 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:15:21 GMT

Hi, after VMware has been fully implemented into production at our office, I expect that I'll be required to provide some sort of presentation to our users about it. Does anyone know of an existing Powerpoint presentation or video download that gives a very basic presentation of what VMware and virtualization in general is?

Thanks

Joe

VA deployment degradation on vSphere4

Lexus16 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:08:21 GMT

Hello,

We have high performance degradation when our Appliance is deployed to ESX server via Virtual Center. When the appliance is deployed to ESX directly we don’t have such problem.
We are using the following script:

curl -u username:NfelMC2Ub -k -T upload https://10.250.148.27/folder/LR1_11133_ESXAppliance/upload.dat?dcPath=Center&dsName=Storage1

where 10.250.148.27 is the address of Virtual Center. If we specify the address of ESX instead of Virtual Center, everything works fast.
BTW such problem appeared on vSphere 4, on previous versions everything was fine.
Could you please answer:

What could be the reason of this degradation?
How can we tune up the speed of deployment via Virtual Center?
If we have correct credentials on Virtual Center, is it possible to deploy directly to the ESX registered on it?

Thank you

Help in Active Directory/Exchange 2007 SCC Guest VM for Disaster Recovery

habibalby — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:54:50 GMT

Hello,
I have completed the VMware Vi3 at our Disaster Recovery
Data Center. And what I'm looking for, what options available to move
the existing Active Directory and Exchange Environment from our
Production to the DR Site.

I though of the below options, and i would like to know what is the best from the expert.

Domain Controller(s) Options:

[1]Build an additional vDC to be part of the existing Domain architecture.
[2]Backup the vDC with vRanegr and restore at DR Site.
[3]P2V exisiting DC(s), which is not recommended at all.

Exchange SCC Servers Options:

The current Exchange Setup is SCC under SAN Storage. Two MBx Clustered, 1 HT and 1 CAS.

[1]P2V the Passive Node only C: Drive without the Shared LUNs.
[2]P2V the second Passive Node also only C: drive without the Shared LUNs.
[3]Once the conversion is done, backup the vNode(s) with vRanger.
[4]At DR Site, will create the same LUN(s) size and present them to the ESX Servers as RDM
[5]Restore the Production vNode(s), map the new LUNs to the VM and boot. "Hope they boot fine"
[6]Reconfigure the Cluster Quorum and DB LUN(s)
[7]Restore DB Backup and check DB integrity and start the services.

Or is there another option that i can consider since i'm in the planning stage of DR Services?

Thanks or your feedback in advance.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

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

Message was edited by: habibalby

VMware Data Recovery - Feature Req.

jcwuerfl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:00:06 GMT

I have two features that I am wondering can be built into the VMware Data Recovery Product.

1) When you are adding a new Backup Job, and you are at the "Retention Policy" Step, Can you please add based on your Retention Policy and the VM's/VMDK's selected how much total disk space that policy will require and also notifications if you are trying to select a destination that does not have enough free space.

2) Ability to just turn off the "Dedupe" Feature and the result of the Destination Store be a Copy of your VMDK Files. All I want to see is the "Latest Version" of the *.VMDK, *.VMX Files from my VM that I am Backing up so I can on my Destination CIFS Store be able to backup those files to tape.

Thanks

Help in Active Directory/Exchange 2007 SCC for Disaster Recovery

habibalby — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:04:57 GMT

Exchange SCC Servers Options:

The current Exchange Setup is SCC under SAN Storage. Two MBx Clustered, 1 HT and 1 CAS.

Or is there another option that i can consider since i'm in the planning stage of DR Services?

Thanks or your feedback in advance.

Best Regards,

Hussain Al Sayed

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

Linux Guest and LSI 4.x scsi driver

pcldd — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:24:48 GMT

I have a linux guest (2.6.23 based) that uses the new-ish LSI driver, version 4002100. However, it fails to see any disks, and fails during probe with

mptspi: ioc0: WARNING - Skipping because it's not operational!

This is not the problem of a few years ago where 'pfacts' was incorrectly reporting the max number of sub-devs.

My guess is that in mptbase.c, when mpt_GetIocState() calls

s = CHIPREG_READ32(&ioc->chip->Doorbell);

it is not getting the correct value.

Anyone (LSI????) have any ideas on what to try?

STP data analysis using STP navigator

sujsada — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:03:24 GMT

Can anyone help me to analyse the STP data using STP navigator for checkin the performance?

Proper error message in Update Manager

maxel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:12:00 GMT

If you try to stage patches to an ESX 3 server, VUM 4 brings a "unknown failure" But: VUM 4 does not support staging on 3.5 hosts. You can stage only on 4.0. See VUM Admin guide.

Please add an proper error message in that case...

Windows 2008 x64 and Sysprep

ChristianWickham — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:33:03 GMT

I get an error "Windows could not be configured to run on your hardware" after running the Windows 2008 (x64) Sysprep process. I get the same error when I use the ESX customisation process when deploying from a template, and when I run the built-in Sysprep command (as per http://www.brajkovic.info/windows-server-2008/windows-server-2008-r2/how-to-change-sid-on-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2-using-sysprep/ ) But, I can run the old NewSID command (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=736) and this works fine, but Microsoft do not support that method.

I can create a new installation of Windows 2008 x64 and Windows 2008 R2 x64, but each time I try to use Sysprep on any 2008 x6 machine on ESX, I get the generic warning that it can't continue, with only an OK button and then it reboots.

Am I doing something wrong here?