esxi 4.1 inside VMware workstation 7 - not saving config or anything!

[masloff]

Hi,

I downloaded esxi 4.1 hypervisor, and installed it inside VMware workstation 7, gave it 2 core, 2Gb RAM, 40GB HDD - everything seemed OK. I`m seeing it in vCenter, gave it a license.

Sounds easy, right?

Yes, everything works until you reboot the esxi host. Then it looses all config I need - IP, license key! How comes?! When I`m ssh`ing inside esxi host, i can see that FS is r/w, i can touch files in /var, and in general everything seems ok.Haven`t tried though to put some random file inside and look will is still exist after reboot.

Q:

- how can virtual esxi host lose all config?

- what file inside esxi hosts IP/DNS config? usual linux-style /etc/resolv.conf & /etc/hostname ?

- what file inside esxi hosts the license key?

Thanks!

[continuum]

easiest explanation : the vmdk file is set to nonpersistent

[masloff]

Surprisingly, but no - vmdk was in persistent state. I reinstalled the virtual esxi host - and it all started working as it should, nice!

I guess, that was because I installed first esxi server, and others were copied from him.

Well, we`ll never know for sure now.

Thanks everyone!

[Dave_Mishchenko]

> I guess, that was because I installed first esxi server, and others were copied from him.

So were you cloning ESXi VMs?   ESXi uses the MAC of the first "physical" NIC that it detects for it's management network so cloning will result in duplicate MACs on your network.

[masloff]

Yes, I installed ESXi 4.1 inside Workstation7, then copy others from it. This was a mistake, as I can tell now. Anyway, everything is working, and me playing with home-brewn cluster

[Walfordr]

Just as a heads up...

I found out (the hardway) that you have to give the ESXi 4.1 VM a little more than 2GB for the cluster configuration to work.  I use 2112MB (2.2GB as display on the host DCUI).  The standard 2048MB errored outwith "Other HA configuration error" when the host was being re-configured for HA.

[masloff]

Thanks Walfordr - but is there any explanation or message in logs that explains this? Or it`s just an undocumented minimum of host`s RAM for HA/FT/DRS to work?

NM

[Walfordr]

masloff wrote:

Thanks Walfordr - but is there any explanation or message in logs that explains this? Or it`s just an undocumented minimum of host`s RAM for HA/FT/DRS to work?

NM

I spent almost an entire day trying to resolve this. I even went through all the steps in the HA troubleshooting guide. Just thought maybe I could save someone else the headache.

The exact errors are below.

in vCenter:

--Task

Configuring HA esxlab01.mylab.lab Cannot complete the configuration of the HA agent on the host. Other HA configuration error.

--Event

HA agent has an error : cmd addnode failed for secondary node: Error creating ramdisk for HA agent configuration. : Unknown HA error

in /var/log/vmware/aam/ft_startup.log:

Starting agent for domain vmware
mount: mounting visorfs on /var/lib/vmware/aam failed: No space left on device
Create Ramdisk Failed with error 255
Results: Could not successfully create the ramdisk for configuration.
Please correct and re-run this script.

It seem to be undocumented.  There is nothing about Hosts RAM in http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_ha_wp.pdf. In reality who would be running ESXi with only 2GB of RAM in a production environment...

I found a thread in the forums about it as well: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1619290.