Recover ESXi 5 Install - USB Failure

[skinner84]

Hi guys,

I have ESXi installed on my HP Microserver N40L. I installed the OS on a USB stick, and all the VMDK files etc are on the HDD that came with the Server.

Today we lost power in the house and I think this has corrupted my USB stick that ESXi was installed on. Now when I boot the server I get a:

Loading /v s00

Fatal Error 6 (Buffer too small)

I managed to get ESX back after a few reboots, but now it seems i've lost it completely.

Assuming my HDD with all the VMDK files are still in tact, what is the easiest way for me to get the OS back?

Apologies for the newb question

Thanks

Luke

[nielse]

If the VM's are on a seperate disc, can't you just reinstall ESXi on another USB disk?

[skinner84]

I can, but will ESX know about the existing VMs and just restore everything to how it was?

[nielse]

No, you will have to backup the configuration using vicfg-cfgbackup. You can find more information about this here: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcli.ref.doc%2Fvicfg-cfgbackup.html

[skinner84]

OK, but how can I do that if I can't boot into ESX?

[nielse]

Ah I mistook the first post and thought it booted. This means that state.tgz is corrupted on the USB disk. A reboot might resolve this but if it doesn't you are looking at a reinstall with loss of data. You could try to use another USB disk for the install, mount the current one using Linux and restore configuration files from the USB disk. This is highly unsupported tho and the chances of this actually working are rather small.

[prashanthbgoud]

yes, if you have a config backup.

you can install the ESXi on to the other host and make sure you select leave existing vmfs partitions.

later you can configure the ESXi and then add the vms back to the ESXi from the local datastore.

[skinner84]

Ok luckily i've managed to boot into ESX again. So, I need to backup my config using vSphere CLi. Once I have that config, do I then reinstall ESX onto another USB stick, and somehow restore the config files that way?

EDIT: Thanks for your help thus far

[nielse]

You can use vicfg-cfgbackup --save to save the config to a file. With --load you can restore a configuration file :-). Just read up on the link I provided, it will help you very easily.

[skinner84]

Thanks Nielse.

Config is now backed up. Currently installing ESX onto a new USB Stick, and once that's done I will restore the config using cfgbackup. Fingers crossed

[nick05]

Hi,

I have exactly the same problem of the Fatal Error 6 (Buffer too small) message after a power failure.

I have tried to reboot many times but with no success. I have made a new USB stick with EXSI 5.0 onm it but don't know how to make it restore my virtual machine.

Is there any way to get the information from the old usb stick and reboot to get the old vm back? I'm assuming that all the information is still on the discs, but I don't know how to get the vmware to look for it.

I'm not sure how to do the config back up from the existing usb stick as I've never used the command line in vmware

Sorry for the dumb questions, any help would be gratefully received.

Nick

[ScreamingSilenc]

Hi Nick,

You need to use vSphere Management Assistant to execute the command if your using.

vSphere Management Assistant Documentation

[nick05]

Thanks, i managed to rebuild the vm by congfiguring it to use the existing files., Now I just need to back up the config so that i can make a spare usb stick in case it goes again.