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vm_sjo
Contributor
Contributor

How to make my new ESXi host fault-tolerant?

Hi all,

So i've finally got ESXi installed on my Intel S3210SH-based system (albeit it with only one NIC - working on #2). Due to non-support of the Intel ICH9 RAID controller (for disk mirroring) I have had to present the two SATA disks as seperate devices and install ESXi onto the first disk. This leaves me in an uncomfortable position.

Can someone/people suggest a way of utilising the second disk in the machine as either a mirror or how to manually mirror the primary disk to this secondary one, with appropriate failover actions as necessary?

Thanks in advance!

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weinstein5
Immortal
Immortal

Other than getting a supported RAID SATA controller I think you are out of luck - the ESXi does not support any type of software RAID -

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vm_sjo
Contributor
Contributor

If this is the case, what is the recommended method of rebuilding a vmware host as quickly as possible? Is it possible to backup the configuration?

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Yattong
Expert
Expert

The quickest way to rebuild an ESX box is via a script.

As you have referred to ESXi, there is a tool that you can download onto Windows or linux, called Remote CLI.

It comes as an Virtual Appliance aswell.

D/L the manual, and you can then see what commands you can use to create vSwitches, port groups etc...

Add your commands to a script and you can run this against your ESXi server, or tweak it so that you can use the same script when you come to build additional ESXi servers.

As to backup, ESXi does not have a service console, so you will not be able to install a backup agent.



~y

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

Not sure if this works for an existing install to the hard drive but it's worth a quick try. Install ESXi to a USB memory stick. Directions can be found in this forum and elsewhere. Configure your server to start from the USB stick.

I have all my ESXi installs using USB sticks and they work really well. I have swapped out the USB sticks and all that one needs to do is add the existing VMs to the inventory.Up and running in 5 minutes. Pretty sure you can backup the config from the RCLI tool.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

You can backup the configuration of the host with vicfg-cfgbackup.pl from the RCLI. In the case of a failure, you would run the repair option with the CD and then restore the configuration. For your VMs you could script something to copy the files from one disk to another or to a network store (iSCSI / NFS).

You might also consider adding an Adaptec or Silicon Image SATA RAID card to your system.

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AndreyYor
Contributor
Contributor

Hi vm_sjo,

I see you have installed ESXi on Intel S3210SH based server. I have the same MB with 3 disks in IDE mode but i can't install on it ESXi. Could you provide some clue how did you the installation.

Thanks in advance

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Robert_F
Contributor
Contributor

Hi DSTAVERT, I am using the USB stick installation.

How can i add the existing VMs to the inventory when i swapp a new USB stick?

Thanks.

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Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

If you can see the existing datastore, then right click on it and select browse. Then fine the VMX files for your VMs, right click and select add to inventory.

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Robert_F
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you Dave, that works beautifully

Robert

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alextsa
Contributor
Contributor

Dear VM_Sjo

I saw your post and you said you have install your ESXI in the Intel S3210SH Server Board, I am also trying to install the ESXi to this board but no matter I configured the SATA controller as SATA, AHCI or RAID, the ESXi also cannot find the storage controller to install the ESXi. May you give me some advice on how to install ESXi to the Intel S3210SH Server Board? Many thanks

Alex Tsang

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vm_sjo
Contributor
Contributor

You need to use SATA channel 5/6 (or 4/5 if it starts from 0, i cant remember)..

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TCCVM
Contributor
Contributor

I know this is an ancient thread, it is one of the more relevant ones that I have found in my searching...

I understand the idea of running ESXi on a memory stick, and I think it is a great idea. I further understand that you have had sucess swapping usb sticks after adding the VM's to the inventory. My question is:

What do you do if the hard drive dies?

I am trying desperatly to figure out how to create a 1 physical server network and it is working great except for there is no fault tolerance for the VMs on a single hard drive. I would be OK backing up to an external drive, but everything I read suggests that isn't do-able. I can run the VMs off of a NAS like OpenFiler, but like I mentioned before I would love to keep this to one machine.

Hopefully someone can point me somewhere!

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

You can use the VMware Converter to regularly copy the Virtual machine to the other disk. The source ESXi host and the destination host are the same. Only the destination datastore is different.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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DavidDeGraff
Contributor
Contributor

I'm interested in using a USB stick, but am concerned about that as a single point of failure.

What happens if the USB stick goes bad after the VM host has booted? Is the USB stick no longer needed until the next boot, or would this cause downtime?

Dave

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Erik_Zandboer
Expert
Expert

The stick is a single point of failure. However, I think you can even unplug the stick after boot. ESXi might appear to die, but the VMs will keep going I guess. Easily tested Smiley Happy . So it might be enough for you to have a backup stick laying around.

As far as the disk is concerned - That is another matter. This is where your VMs live. Dead disk means VMs gone. Simple as that.

You might consider to use something I call "poor mans synchronous replication". Basically to install a VM on the first disk, then you add a second disk (equal in size) to the VM which is housed on the seocnd disk. Now use the operating system inside the VM to create a software mirror.

This way you will have two base disks of your VM, which are 100% equal. You have to do some tricks though to get it working, as I have described here:

If a disk dies, your VMs just keep going on the second one (or the other way round). After you replace the faulty disk, simply ad the mirrors again and you're all set.

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

I'm interested in using a USB stick, but am concerned about that as a single point of failure.

What happens if the USB stick goes bad after the VM host has booted? Is the USB stick no longer needed until the next boot, or would this cause downtime?

Dave

The USB stick is a single point of failure but so is the drive controller or the motherboard. ESXi does very little writing to the disk, USB drives are solid state devices with no moving parts. USB sticks can fail but all major server manufacturers are shipping servers with ESXi pre installed on USN sticks or SD cards. They wouldn't do it if they were more likely to fail than hard drives. The reasons we do heroic things to protect hard drives is because they WILL ABSOLUTELY FAIL.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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TCCVM
Contributor
Contributor

That is a clever idea. Havn't played with Converter much. Can you schedule the task from within VMware Converter or did you script it somehow? I'll start playing around with that, it sounds like a promising solution for SOHO clients.

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