ESXi 5.5 quality is bad

[wilber822]

When we was on ESXi 5.1 last year, everything was fine, it's pretty stable.

Then we upgraded to ESXi 5.5 at the  end of the year, now we got looooooot of problem. All are different scope.

It points to driver, VMware tools or something else. It's related to ESXi host, or guest OS. I'm still working with VMware on these problems. (Check my blog you will see two  problem of new version)

I'm considering roll back to ESXi 5.1.

This is just a personally comment: Stay in ESXi 5.1 if you are using HP blade system or Cisco UCS.

Someone told me same but I didn't take it seriously. Now I pay for it.

[Luben88]

This is just a personally comment: Stay in ESXi 5.1 if you are using HP blade system or Cisco UCS.

I can't agree with you regarding that point as we have 6 HP Blade ESXI servers (HP ProLiant BL460c G1 and HP ProLiant BL480c G1) in a C7000 all running ESXI 5.5 and so far (over 12 months) we have not had a single problem.

We are about to convert another  8 blades on a another site that we are converting from citrix (very problematic) to ESXI 5.5.

Regards,

Luben

[AlbertWT]

What about using ESXi 5.5 Update 2 ? it has just been released.

[schepp]

AlbertWT wrote:

What about using ESXi 5.5 Update 2 ? it has just been released.

And by "just" you mean september 2014, right?

[wilber822]

Hi Luban88,

I'm glad to hear you ran it so stable. I hope it can keep it.

Btw, G1 is not support by ESXi 5.5 as I know. Are you using it in production?

[wilber822]

I never tried, but I know some bug is not fixed till now.

[Luben88]

Yes we are using them in production for infrastructure as well as building/testing virtual machines for software development. I know they are quite old but they still work really well even if it's not supported officially.

As for the version we are using 5.5.0 update 1 (VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1 Release Notes)

Otherwise we also have 3- 4 HP ProLiant DL360 G7 and a couple of HP ProLiant DL380 G5 all working really well with no problems (all production all running the above version).

I am not sure what version you are using but given the amount of success i have had with the above version i would recommend giving it a try.

Regards,

Luben

[wilber822]

I have BL460 G6, G7, Gen8 and DL380 G6, G7 and Gen8

It's working fine on Gen8, but not G6 and G7.

I also have some BL480G1 running ESXi 5.5u1, it's stable but only few testing VM on it.

May I know what firmware level your G6 and G7 stay on? Is it SPP2014.x?

[Luben88]

I only run about 10 Vm per server so that i don't overload the disk with I/O as we don't use shared storage rather local attached raid 10 sas 10k disks.

but as for firmware my DL360 G7 use:

System ROM P68 05/05/2011

ILO 1.28 Jan 13 2012

When i upgrade firmware and drivers i usually do all components so you just need to find the version that has the ILO 1.28 Jan 13 2012.

A word of caution as i used to work for HP for 4 years. Unless something is broken or not working do not upgrade the firmware.

Sometimes new firmware will fix one thing but brake another you may try and downgrade to 2012 and see if that helps i assume you got the latest firmware versions and it's not helping ?

Regards,

Luben

[wilber822]

Your firmware is pretty old, how about driver?

i agree with you about firmware. Funny thing is HP states that they only support SPP for one year.

Whenever you have a problem they will ask you upgrade driver and FW to support version.

And if you look at HP VMware receipts. ESXi 5.5 in SPP2014 suppory matrix.

[Luben88]

Hehe we used to have fights with the hardware engineers, the only words they new is "have you upgrade tot he latest firmware" otherwise they refused to go on site.

I tend to ignore there support matrix as my servers are out of warranty anyway and i do quite a lot of testing before i move them to production, if i had to follow there matrix i would have to change all my servers :smileygrin:.

As for the drivers i use the default one that come with VMware i find them real stable.

I should mention that almost all of our server are running Windows Server 2012 R2 with maybe a few 2008 R2 and a couple of old 2003 R2 to be removed soon.

And we have 3 linux servers Pfsense, Owncloud and Linux Lamp 3.2.0/ Debian 3.2.63 (deb 7u2).

So my success is really Windows only as 3 Linux servers are hardly a benchmark :smileygrin:

The way i set up all the server was:

• Make sure i was using the 2012 firmware for the G7 servers (same on all servers)
• install VMware
• Configure it
• then install the bellow 4 packages.(the reason is that i wanted to be able to see the storage under "Health Status" and run acu commands from esxi shell for the smart array controller)

[NavalgundRaj]

Hi Wilber,

Answer is you are wrong,:-(

Don't role back, ESXi 5.5 is 100% much better than earlier version.

I apologize for being  straight forward.

Please check and skip some not required or issue creating updates and there are article which can help you to skip. It is common after upgrading.

ex: esxi 4.x--esxi 5.5 or vCenter 5.1 --to --vCenter 5.5

Regards

Basavaraj.R Navalgund

,

[AlbertWT]

Tim Scheppeit wrote:

AlbertWT wrote:

What about using ESXi 5.5 Update 2 ? it has just been released.

And by "just" you mean september 2014, right?

yes, that is correct. and also update the firmware of the servers to the latest HP SPP 2014.09 with October 10.2014 additional maintenance pack.

Hope that helps.

[wilber822]

Thanks for the information.

[wilber822]

I hope I'm wrong. I'm glad to  see your environment is stable. I'm  struggling by the situation now. lol.

[wilber822]

You are always with me 🙂

My new baseline is 2014.06 but looks like it's not so solid like 2013.02 w/ ESXi 5.1

HP suggested me updated to 2014.09 but no help.

How your environment now? Is it stable?