Hangs during boot after ESX 4 to ESXi 4.1 Migration

[beaconfield]

Hello all,

I migrated a Dell PowerEdge R900 ( 4 x Xeon E7450 and 128 GB RAM ) from ESX 4.0 to ESXi 4.1 U1. During the initial boot for the install and during every subsequent boot, the process hangs during "multiextent loaded".

After it passes this stage, it takes a long time to get past a few other stages and then it comes up fine and (so far) works okay as I am configuring it in vCenter.

Any ideas on why ESXi does this?

Help is appreciated.

Thanks all.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Would you be able to clarify your upgrade process?  Going from ESX to ESXi requires a fresh install as there is no direct upgrade path.

Dave
VMware Communities User Moderator

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[beaconfield]

Thanks for the response Dave.

What I did was a fresh install of ESXi 4.1 U1 on the box. I noticed these hangs, but the box seems to function perfectly fine once it has booted. I can't tell if I should be concerned or not.

I have read elsewhere about people with a similar issue, and often it ends up being a firmware issue, but I want to see what the community thinks. Is this an issue with my Dell R900? It's in the HCL for ESXi 4.1 U1, so I don't think that's a problem.

[DSTAVERT]

I would watch the realtime logs ALT + F12 during a restart to see if there is anything obvious at the points where the machine hangs.

Firnware updates are certainly worth looking into.

[beaconfield]

Thanks, will do! I didn't know about that handy dandy shortcut for watching the logs. I'll report back what I find.

[DSTAVERT]

Will be interested in what you find. Good hunting.

[DSTAVERT]

If you haven't.  

ESXi writes logs to RAM disk so a restart blows them away. You might want to create a permanent location for logs on a datastore. You can add the log storage location from the vSphere client Configuration Tab -> Advanced Settings -> Syslog 

http://kb/vmware.com/kb/1016621 

If you discover something and want to take a closer look, note the time. It will be in UTC time. Makes it easier to find in the logs when you aren't searching for something that looks your like local time.

[beaconfield]

@DSTAVERT

I deployed the vMA and use that to host all of my host's log files via the vilogger commands. Thanks for the tip though!

[DSTAVERT]

In the event that you have issues -- services become un responsive or network issues -- vilogger may not be able to collect logs. It may not be able to collect the last few seconds immediately before a crash.

[beaconfield]

Did. Not. Know. That....

Alrighty, I'll be looking into the KB you linked to on Monday and see about setting up local datastore for logs. Thanks again for the tip.

[beaconfield]

Just got this setup on all of my ESXi hosts today! Thanks for the tip!

[beaconfield]

Quick question though, if I've pressed ALT+F12 to watch the boot log live, does it automatically move on to the configuration screen when it's ready? Or do I have to press another key combination to see the login/configure screen???

Thanks,

Matt