VMware Cloud Community
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 5.0 loses network settings on restart

Hey all,

I installed ESXi 5.0.0.768111 onto a Buffalo USB 2GB stick on 3 servers of mine (generic rack servers w/ ASUS Mother Board).

After I configure the network settings on all three and once I restart the hosts, all the settings I configured have been deleted.This happens on all 3 servers as soon as I restart.

How can I resolve this?

I have tried everything on:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200178...

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1710379

Thanks a bunch!

Reply
0 Kudos
16 Replies
rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

Do you only lose the network settings or other configurated items as well?

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

Only network configuration.

I have been reading that a lot of people with this issue have generally one thing in common. That is, they are using a USB memory stick to install ESXi on.

I tried installing to a internal hard drive and now it works great. Still wish I could figure this out ,as installing to a USB memory stick is very handy.

Any suggestions would be great!

Thank you

Reply
0 Kudos
sparrowangelste
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

it probably the usb sticks then.

I notice their external drives also have a high rate of failure when used hard.

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
krishnaprasad
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Is it persistent if you manually run /sbin/auto-backup.sh command from the shell and rebooted the system?

Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

Ok well... Just tried to restart this morning and again all my settings were lost even on a regular hard drive.

I have ran /sbin/auto-backup.sh many times and I see the date stamp update on the state.tgz, but still poof gone.

there has to be a fix to this.

Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

One thing to add is the network settings for all BUT the management network dissapear.

I have 3 nics

1. Management network

2. External

3. Internal

External and Internal disappear everytime

Reply
0 Kudos
sparrowangelste
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

have you redownloaded the isntall cd?

just a thought might be a bad version, not that I know of any to be like that.

This situation is strainge...

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

i have tried the latest v5 build from vmware`s site

and also an older version of v5 that I had from before.

Same results :smileycry:

Reply
0 Kudos
rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

hypercloud wrote:

I have 3 nics

1. Management network

2. External

3. Internal

External and Internal disappear everytime

When you say three NICs and that they disappear, what is this exactly? Do you create several vSwitches or just many Vmkernel interfaces?

If you create just a random VM portgroup with any name and then reboot, does it disappear as well?

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

i have created a standard vswitch for each of the nics.

The only one that has vmkernal is the management network.

I have not try your suggestion.

Reply
0 Kudos
rickardnobel
Champion
Champion

You are of course not using any advanced vCenter features as Host Profiles?

My VMware blog: www.rickardnobel.se
Reply
0 Kudos
hypercloud
Contributor
Contributor

no right now its all in trial mode.

Reply
0 Kudos
NealSu
Contributor
Contributor

i can confirm this. My setup is an HP ProLiant ML110 G7, ESXi (768111) installed on a 2 GB Sandisk USB key (a few years old). i'm currently running in trial mode.

Some VMs get lost, though they can be reimported from the datastore. vSwitches other than the default VM network also disappear and the network configuration is reset to how i set it up initally.

Will try reinstalling on an SD-Card now. Thought i'd let you know.

Edit: SD-Card discarded changes as well. During book i was able to see an error message, was too fast for me to read though. BTW, i'm using the customised image by HP. Since others are reporting these issues with customised images, maybe that's where to look. i'm going to use a harddisk now. Will be switching to SSD soon anyway.

Edit2: so far after one reboot, it really seems that switching to HDD solved this issue. What a pitty for those who want to use USB keys or SD-cards. Thanks to SSDs there is an alternative to mechanical drives though 🙂

Reply
0 Kudos
Alistar
Expert
Expert

Unfortunately using flash-based "pluggable drives" - USB Keys and Memory Cards as your local storage doesn't allow you to save state information to your host bydefault and that information is saved on a ramdisk, because the frequent writing to scratch directory would kill the storage pretty quickly. Although I was not aware it would also forget the state information for your ESXi host - maybe that is because the "default" scratch partition is set to be 4GB and the space on plugged storage is not large enough?

Try this VMware KB for remediation and create a scratch partition yourself: VMware KB:    Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x and 5.x

Stop by my blog if you'd like 🙂 I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/
Reply
0 Kudos
weblee
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had the same issue using a SSD that was not on the HCL

Weblee, Exploring the virtual world!
Reply
0 Kudos
Alistar
Expert
Expert

Yes, because the VMkernel thinks that this is a generic flash-based storage such as USB key/SD Card (without any regard how it is connected), so behaves as such.

Stop by my blog if you'd like 🙂 I dabble in vSphere troubleshooting, PowerCLI scripting and NetApp storage - and I share my journeys at http://vmxp.wordpress.com/
Reply
0 Kudos