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dbutch1976
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Attempting to boot a nested ESXi Host from Windows Hyper-V on Windows 8.1

Hi guys,

I would like to boot nested ESXi 5.5 hosts in my vCenter 5.5 environment.  I have done this successfully using Workstation 10, however I'm having issues trying to do it using Windows Hyper-V running on Windows 8.1.  I have created some test hosts and attempted to boot, all of them receive IP addresses successfully and download the image, however they hang at "Relocating modules and starting up the kernel..."

Untitled.jpg

Has anyone gotten any further?  Any suggestions?

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admin
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dbutch1976 wrote:

As described earlier in this thread, the host hangs at "relocating modules and starting Kernel." 

I don't believe the host actually hangs at this point.  Since the ACPI FADT under Hyper-V indicates that VGA is not available, the output is redirected to the serial port.  If you can complete the installation "blind," you should be able to get through the rest of the installation just by providing the necessary responses. 

The question is why the ACPI FADT under Hyper-V claims that VGA is not available, when it clearly is.

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admin
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Try setting up a virtual serial port and checking for informative messages on the serial port output.

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dbutch1976
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Sorry... Virtual serial port?  I'm fairly new to Hyper-v:

Untitled.jpg

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admin
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It would be 'COM1' in that image.

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dbutch1976
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I've made some progress:

http://robwillis.info/2014/01/dell-cs24-esxi-5-5-install-stuck-relocating-modules-and-starting-up-th...

Using the attached link I performed the following:

1.  Press shift + O during boot up

2.  Append the boot option : IgnoreHeadless=TRUE

After that I've managed to get further, however I'm now getting this error:

Untitled1.jpg

So it appears as if the virtual hardware is simply incompatible.  I'm not sure attaching the debugger will help.

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admin
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Someone will probably have to port the tulip driver to ESXi 5.5.  See Re: Vmware ESXI within Hyper-v (server 2012) networking issue.

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dbutch1976
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Hi jmattson,


I understand that the present tulip.vib file in the link below probably will not work with ESXi 5.5, but I would still like to get practice adding it to an autodeploy image.  I figure it's worth a shot.  The tulip.vib file I’m using is from this link:


http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/2187254-103100/tulip.vib


I believe that adding the .vib would be similar to the procedure I use to add vSphere HA to the image, those steps are:


New-EsxImageProfile –CloneProfile ESXi-5.5.0-20140302001-standard –Name HYPER_ESXi-5.5.0-20140302001-standard

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot Http://drwsvc.kersmash.local:80/vsphere-HA-depot

Add-EsxSoftwarePackage –ImageProfile HYPER_ESXi-5.5.0-20140302001-standard –SoftwarePackage vmware-fdm -Vendor "HYPER"

Export-EsxImageProfile HYPER_ESXi-5.5.0-20140302001-standard -ExportToBundle -Filepath 'C:\depot\HYPER_ESXi-5.5.0-20140302001-standard.zip' –NoSignatureCheck


Adding a vib to the bundle is probably the same or similar procedure, but all the steps I’ve been able to find have specified .zip files, not .vibs directly.  Do you know how I would accomplish this?

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lamw
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You may want to check out the community tool ESXi-Customizer VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer which supports a variety of forms for creating your own custom images

dbutch1976
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lamw wrote:

You may want to check out the community tool ESXi-Customizer VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer which supports a variety of forms for creating your own custom images

This looks like a great tool, and I've been able to add the .vib into an .iso image, but can this be used to create an autodeploy image also?

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lamw
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You may need to contact the author to see if he has such a tool, I know there's a couple others he's created that may help so you can get it into the right format to import into your Image Profile

dbutch1976
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Do you know who the author is or how I could find out who it is?

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lamw
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It's listed on his blog Smiley Happy in the "About" section VMware Front Experience: About

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dbutch1976
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I contacted the author of the tulip.vib directly and he was a huge help in getting this working.  So here it is, ESXi. 5.5 running on a Windows 8.1 Hyper-V host using an Autodeploy image:

Untitled2.jpg

It was a complete pain the in *** to get to this point, and I'm going to share all the steps that I've used, but there's still one last thing before I can make this perfect.  As described earlier in this thread, the host hangs at "relocating modules and starting Kernel."  Unless I hit shift+o during startup and add the line:
ignoreHeadless=TRUE

So here is the final question to make this perfect:

How do I add this line in the autodeploy image itself so that I don't need to add it manually?

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admin
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dbutch1976 wrote:

As described earlier in this thread, the host hangs at "relocating modules and starting Kernel." 

I don't believe the host actually hangs at this point.  Since the ACPI FADT under Hyper-V indicates that VGA is not available, the output is redirected to the serial port.  If you can complete the installation "blind," you should be able to get through the rest of the installation just by providing the necessary responses. 

The question is why the ACPI FADT under Hyper-V claims that VGA is not available, when it clearly is.

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dbutch1976
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Unbelievable, I didn't even realize that the VMs were booting but only appears to be hung.  The NIC appears to only be coming up as 100 half, but it's working.  Thanks for your help jmattson and Ianw.

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