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pmhausen
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi hoses BMC/IPMI, hangs on soft reboot

Hi, all,

I have converted our two Ubuntu/VMware server machines to ESXi resulting in a spectacular increase in interactive performance. The systems are Fujitsu-Siemens TX150 S2 and S4, respectively. They are not officially supported, but all the important components like LSI SCSI RAID and network are, so I had to give it a try ...

I have only one minor oddity remaining:

Whenever I reboot or shut down the systems after running ESXi, one of them completely hangs on next boot, the other one with the newer mainboard displays "baseboard management controller error", recovers, but afterwards hangs when ESXi tries to load ipmi_si_drv.

The systems can be cured by completely disconnecting power to reset the BMC. Works every time, reproduceably.

Is there a VMware kernel setting or similar to keep ESXi from messing with the BMC at all? I don't really need the system health info, which doesn't give consistent readings, anyway. Possibly I can disable the ipmi_si_drv module? I already enabled the "hidden" ssh access and I am fluent with vi Smiley Wink

These are internal development machines, otherwise I would use supported hardware and licensed ESX.

Fujitsu-Siemens does provide a ESX/ESXi support CD, but it contains only RPMs - I figure, they are not installable on ESXi?

Thanks for any insight,

Patrick

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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal

Is there any sort of web interface or remote management utility for your BMC? I know Dell's BMC allows you to assign an IP and then they have a remote interface you can download to manage the BMC. I believe it allows for viewing BMC events. If your BMC supports this you may be able to see what sort of event is causing it to hang.

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pmhausen
Contributor
Contributor

Mornin',

yes, there is an interface to the BMC. Unfortunately it stops responding to IP once ESXi is booted.

Patrick

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

It depends if it's an incompatibility between the driver and BMC or the management software and the BMC.

If it's the latter, you can completely disable CIM (the sub-system which monitors the server health) in the Advanced Settings of the VI client. I don't have a 3.5 system handy at the moment to verify, but if I remember correctly, it's under the vmkernel tree. If the issue is between the driver and the BMC, I'm not aware of an easy mechanism to disable it.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Do you mean Misc.CimEnabled?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

That sounds right. Set to false/zero and on the next boot the CIM functionality will be disabled.

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pmhausen
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks to all - that seems to have done the trick. I was out of the office for a couple of days and could only try it today. Just soft-rebooted one of the two servers without problems.

No health status anymore, but I can live with that.

Patrick

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xxxmisterxx
Contributor
Contributor

Can you tell me where i can find: Misc.CimEnabled

I have the same problem.

Thnx

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jmbutler99
Contributor
Contributor

The Misc.CimEnabled setting is under the Configuration tab for the ESX server, Advanced Settings, Misc.

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MrBaba
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello,

I wanna know if someone tried with TX150 S6 ?

I woul install esx3.5 foundation or ESXi3.5 but I cant'

If someone can help me !

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