ESXi 5.5 Host "forgets" Virtual Machines...

[Pfalztomas]

Hi There,

I have a strange problem and I don't know how to solve it.

I am nearly sure that there was already a discussion about that theme but I didn't find anything - maybe because I searched not correctly...

Here my problem:

I installed in a new server the ESXi 5.5 host onto an 8GB USB 3.0 Stick so that the ESXi system does not need HDD space on that sever.

Then I installed one VM onto that host and installed the OS into that VM (Server 2012).

Because I have got the RAID Controller only a few days after I have started installing, I made a partition copy, installed the RAID Controller and installed a RAID1 hdd system in that server.

After that, I started the esxi host from the usb stick again, which worked fine.

There I found that the VM was shown as "Unknown". This is of course so, because the HDDs were initialized when building the RAID storage.

So I started my partition software tool and copied back the partition information back from my external storage onto the newly installed raid system.

Then I deleted the "unknown" VM and installed a new VM with bounding-in the restored partitions.

After that, the Server 2012 started perfectly, all installed applications were available!

The shock came after switching off the VM Host: Again I saw the VM as unknown and I had to re-install a new VM with the existing HDDs!

The HDD Raid system itself contains all information about the VM storage inside, but it seems to not keep the information about the VM itself....

So I hope that I don't have to re-install the VM's each time after the VM Host was re-booted... ??

On other VM Hosts I've installed in the past, I did not have such symptoms, also after I have changed the HDD storage completely (but kept the ESXi host onto a separate USB Stick).

So my problem is, that the VM Host does not keep in memory the information about the installed VM's...

I think that I am right to say that the information about the VM is stored somewhere where it will be erased, but I have no sense what I can do to solve the problem.

So I would be very happy if someone could give me any tipp to solve the problem.

How can I change the Storage place of the information about the VM ESXi Host and the installed VM's on that VM Host?

Can I put that information onto the USB Stick with the ESXi host or do I have to put it onto the RAID storage?

Many thanks for any hint!

Kind regards

Tom

[vNEX]

Hi Tom,

just a little note, using 8GB/USB stick have some limitations...please, check this KB:

Installing ESXi 5.x on a supported USB flash drive or SD flash card (2004784)

VMware KB: Installing ESXi 5.x on a supported USB flash drive or SD flash card

"Limitation when installing on USB flash drive or SD flash card:

When installing ESXi onto a USB flash drive or SD flash card, if the drive is less that 8GB is space, this prevents the allocation of a scratch partition onto the flash device.

VMware recommends using a retail purchased USB flash drive of 16GB or larger so that the "extra" flash cells can prolong the life of the boot media but high quality parts of 4GB or larger are sufficient to hold the extended coredump partition."

Because of this also check your scratch partition location in your case it will probably be located in ramdisk instead on USB stick. It's always better to have persistent location for scratch partition.

Check your host Advanced settings, "ScratchConfig" (/tmp/scratch/ = RAMDISK)if scratch is redirected to RAM you can change it to some persistent location by following above or this KB:

Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x and 5.x (1033696)

VMware KB: Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 4.x and 5.x

When this happen to your VM's can you check if you are able to browse host datastore and find VM's folders?

If you can see VM folder try to open folder and right-click on .vmx file, then select "Add to Inventory" then you will have your VM back...

What you see when you edit (healthy and registered) VM under options tab - > General options. What is in VM config file and working directory path?

Just for Info:

Changing VM working directory (location of .vmx, vswap, delta.vmdk files) is possible when you add a line to the .vmx configuration file for the virtual machine,

specifying a full path to the directory on a datastore for the workingDir option:

workingDir = "new_path_location

see: VMware KB: Creating snapshots in a different location than default virtual machine directory

In the meantime can you check your hardware compatibility with ESXi 5.5 here:

VMware Compatibility Guide: System Search

Regards,

P.