Losing connection to the ESX server via the Vmware Infrastructure Client

[gothicreader]

Hi,

I've been trying all morning to add an existing virtual disk to a virtual machine, and I keep receiving an error that the connection failed when I do this through the VI client. Before this failure I was able to add a exising virtual disk. The intent is to add various virtual disk to a virtual machine and assign it to a SCSI which will be shared for clustering.

The virtual machine and virtual disks reside on a datastore (MSA), which I see listed as one of my storage. I can browse the datastore, in fact, I added existing virtual machines to the inventory list. I can confirm that I'm not having connection problems to the datastore, since I'm currently running a script to create serveral virtual disks in preparation for clustering. So, I know I have connection to the datastore.

I can access the ESX server via SSH/Putty without any problem, and like I mentioned before it's running a script to create new virtual disks.

Has anyone experienced this problem?

Also, in reading the RCLI and VMKFSTOOLS, I didn't see any indication that I can use either tools to create a script to add an existing virtual disks to a virtual machine. Do you know of another tool I can use?

Thanks,

Judy

[Yattong]

Hey Judy,

That is strange.

You can always use a text editor, e.g. vi and edit the .vmx file to include the existing disk.

If you are creating an MS cluster, have you zeroed out the virtual disk?

Have you followed the guide? www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/vi3_35_25_u1_mscs.pdf

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[RParker]

Well either the vmdk file is corrupt or something else has that file open. That's what happens whenever I see this type of error message. Have you tried rebooting that host? You may be able to connect but something with the path is not allow you to get access to it.

[gothicreader]

Yattong,

Thanks for the quick response.

So, I can use VI and edit the .vmx file and add those disks with the parameters I need?

Also, the problem ended up being that one of the virtual disks is bad.

It boggles the mind, on how a "connection error" relates to a hard disk problem!

[gothicreader]

RParker,

Yes, I figured out that it was a virtual disk that has gone bad when I was formatting it for clustering.

I can't understand why it would throug off a message that my connection was terminated! I couldn't tell you how much time I've wasted because of this one message!

As for preparing the disk, yes I created a script to create the virtual disks for every server based on the VMware MS clustering document.

Thanks helping me out!!

Judy

[Yattong]

Yep,

Inside the .vmx file, you will see a lin eof text with the connection to the first hard disk.

You just need to add another following the same format but with the slight differences e.g. name of vmdk, scsi controller...

Make sure the vm is powered off though.

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~y