VMware Cloud Community
r0ck
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMware Autodeploy on ESXi 5.5U2 newest

Hi guys

We are using Autodeploy since a while and very happy with this feature. Right now we are using statless caching on local disk.

VMware says that this also works with usb drives, thats a great statement, because we have not to buy anymore some raid controller and disks in our servers.

Now we tested in the lab the implementation with usb disks and autodeploy statless caching. After short time we found out, that this isnt working like vmware describe.

Whats excatly the problem?

Well, when we plug in a usb stick in the esxi and reboot this host with autodeploy, everytime usb-arbitration service is reserving the usb disk for virtual machines.

Because of this, we cant see the usb drive on the esxi locally and caching is not possible. There is no way to disable usb-arbitration service when you're booting up

your host with aut deploy. But we should disable it like described in this kb: VMware KB: Accessing USB storage and other USB devices from the service console

and then we found also this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=204751...

So there is vmware saying, there is no soultion for autodeploy stateful/stateless and usb drives?? really? so they speaking about a feature that isnt really working?

This KB is not new, it was written for esxi 5.1 and its not fixed since today? the only thing is to implement a function into the host profile to disable the arbitration service on startup.

absolutley unbelievable!


btw, we opened a case on vmware support.

maybe someone have a similiar problem with autodeploy or maybe a advice to get it working?

thank you very much.

Reply
0 Kudos
0 Replies