VMware Cloud Community
tachijuan99
Contributor
Contributor

problems with NFS ISO store

I'm doing something boneheaded and I can't figure it out.

I have a Dell 2850 set up with VI3. It has two physical network interfaces that are enabled. One of them is dedicated for service console and vmkernel traffic. The other is for the vm's to use (as per best practices). My network is 10.10.1.0/24, netmask 255.255.255.0. When I configure the interface for the service console, it says that that network card can see 10.10.1.64- 10.10.1.127. I didn't really worry about this until I tried to connect to an NFS data store where I keep my ISO's. When I tried to connect my vm's to the ISO, I can select the ISO from the data store in the vm configuration screen, but when I go boot the machine, all I get is the network boot thing (yes, the virtual CD is connected). It can't find the ISO. I configured my vmkernel to use address 10.10.1.11 (the service console is 10.10.1.10). The default gateway for my network is 10.10.1.1. I've tried using that for the vmkernel default gateway as well as 10.10.1.10. I also tried changing the IP of the vmkernel to 10.10.1.75 to put it in the range that is reported for the physical network interface. Ahhhh!!!!!

Does anyone know what boneheaded thing I'm doing? Is there a way to change what networks the physical interface thinks it can see? How'd it pull 10.10.1.64-127 out of its rear-end? I looked and there's no obvious place I can find to tell VI that that interface can see more of the network than that.

Thanks ---

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
Paul_Lalonde
Commander
Commander

Can you verify that the ISO image you're pointing to is, in fact, bootable?

If the VM BIOS detects that the CDROM image isn't bootable, it'll skip to the next boot source.

Paul

Reply
0 Kudos
tachijuan99
Contributor
Contributor

it is indeed bootable. I copied those very same ISO images over to a local vmfs and used them to boot the new vm's.

Reply
0 Kudos
Paul_Lalonde
Commander
Commander

From the ESX server, can you vmkping the NFS server ?

Paul

tachijuan99
Contributor
Contributor

yes, vmkping works to the NFS server (netapp)

Reply
0 Kudos
_the_dude_
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I've had problems before trying to mount ISO files over an NFS mount (actually under a linux flavor). When I set the permissions on the file, the directory and the NFS export to writable for everybody, problems disappeared.

Of course you should reset the permissions after use...

Good luck!

Reply
0 Kudos