ESXi 4 becomes unreachable after starting VM's

[cjwirweazel]

having installed done a P2V conversion i then i started having issues where after 5mins it drops it connetion - if i restarted the management interface then i can contact it again

i can't see anything in the logs - but not sure whether i am looking in the right palce.

This is installed on to an HP PC - using a broadcom NIC - there is only one in there

any help would be good

cheers

chris

[rmagoon]

Try starting the VM with no network connection attached. If the management console stays connected, it's your virtual switch configuration.

[cjwirweazel]

it turns out it migth not be just a network issue

can in this morning to look at it and there is a PCPU error - it said PCPU Halted and then lots of other error codes

if it was windows it would bea blue screen of death.

it looks to me like either the install doesn't like the AMD CPU or i haven't reduced the ammount of the CPU the VM can take enough.

[J1mbo]

What machine is it?

[cjwirweazel]

HP DC5850s

4GB RAM

AMD Athlon

[rmagoon]

How many cores on that processor? I'm not sure if ESXi 4.0 even runs on single processor, but they changed the licensing around so it may... If single processor, you have VMs and your vmkernel fighting for the same CPU cycles.

[J1mbo]

ESXi will run on 1 CPU, at least as a VM (IIRC ESX needs 2 though). It VT enabled in the BIOS?

[cjwirweazel]

its a single processor but dual core

its did a hardware check on hardware when installing and it passed through ok

is there any way round this, if that is the problem?

[rmagoon]

if you have any vm's running at 2 VCPU's, set it to use only one. That way it's not scheduling threads on both CPU's, but only use the second core. That's the only thing I can think of right now.

[cjwirweazel]

have just rebooted and found the enable VT in the BIOS have just booted it up (a lot faster this time) and will wait 10-15mis and see how it goes

[RenatoDelGaudio]

Hi,

I got a similar problem. After I start my VM, the ESXi host is not longer reachable.

As suggested, I modified the Virtual Network configuration (e.g. do not connect at boot time) and the problem is gone but I don't know how to configure the virtual switch to get it working on my network.

It looks like that the phisical switches in my network don't allow multiple MAC addresses. I have also tried with no success to specify manually a MAC address for the VM instead to let VMWare generate one.

I tried to start the same VM on another ESXi host on another network and it works fine.

Is there any work around for my specific problem (e.g. special configuration of virtual switch) ?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You'll need to update the physical switch to allow for multiple MAC addresses.




Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

[RenatoDelGaudio]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply. At least now I don't have anymore doubts about where the problem is.

Unfortunately modify the physical switch configuration is not an option.

Probably I'll go for another solution (e.g. add another network card. One card for management network and the other one for VM network. Unfortunately only one VM at time but it is enough for my needs)

Cheers

Renato