ESX deployment appliance v1.05

[brugh]

https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/esx-deployment-appliance-eda

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) is a small and easy to use appliance

that makes deploying ESX servers a breeze. It has a very intuitive

web-interface that can configure and deploy dozens of ESX servers in

minutes. It has a script-builder that will allow any admin to create

%post-scripts that will do most anything one needs to get the ESX hosts

up and running! Even if deploying with RDP/Altiris or the UDA, this

script-builder can help setting those up very quickly.

[brugh]

that's usually a networking issue. could be a VLAN problem or a spanning tree problem. in most cases this happens when the pxe nic is on a different nic or in a different VLAn than the nic that gets activated after the bootfiles are loaded. you can try setting ksdevice to 'bootif' to force it to be the same nic or check your native VLAN settings on the switch. try a 'tail -f /var/log/daemon.log' and see if the second DHCP request gets to the EDA.

[cmors]

I have tried the ksdevice setting. This results in me getting a list of all nics at the start of the installation process. The upside is that I can se what ethx is assigned to each nic. The downside is that choosing eth8 which is the nic I PXE boot of still doesnt work. Everything is VLAN'ed so its important that installation happens on the same nic that I PXE on. I know I can set ksdevice=eth8 but is there any way of forcing a VLAN tag at this stage?

[brugh]

best way to work with VLANs is to use a management network where the COS and the EDA are both connected to. create a portgroup without a vlan tag and set your physical switch to trunc ports. dont use any host ports. use the native vlan of the trunk ports to tag the untagged management traffic. that way all traffic coming out of the ESX is tagged but pxe traffic (which doesn't know about tags) can still work without problems.

[dmaster]

Hi brugh,

I did my tests now with EDA 0.71 instead of 0.61

but still i am not able to use EDA 0.71 with VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2 (other releases work fine).

when booting the EDA appliance i see the following warning/error messages, maybe this make sense to you ?

a manual install works fine ?

Are there allready succesfull EDA deployments on VMware Workstation 6.04 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 2 ?

[dmaster]

hi brugh,

can it be that you accidently removed the following driver, with the process to remove SAN drivers during mounting of the vmware .iso ?

or has something of the structure of the esx server 3.5 update 2 .iso changed since this release ?

with kickstart build i see the following message..

module(s) e1000 mptscsi_2xx not found

[brugh]

strange. can't speak for others but i run workstation 6.5 beta and it installs a virtual ESX3.5u2 server without problems. so i dont think it's the EDA that's missing something. the esx host even starts a small test vm

Apparmour modules aren't loaded in EDA. i'll remove it completely in the next release since it doens't do anything now anyway but the error looks ugly.

The VMware message is in there because the eda was created on vmware server 2.0 beta and that has a slightly different vmx builtup than workstation. this can be safely ignored and will also be gone in the next release

could you try using eda on a physical machine or workstation 6.5? i think it's more likely that workstation 6.0 doesn't know how to handle a 3.5 kernel than that there's a problem with the EDA..

[dmaster]

Hi brugh,

i will do a test of EDA 0.71 with VMware Workstation 6.5 asap and post the results..

i will also do a test deploying a virtual esx host on a physical esx host with EDA 0.71..

is it important to first use the vmware converter to make the EDA appliance more compatible with VMware workstation ? (this step i skipped)

[brugh]

there's no need to convert to workstation or server because it was created on both of them simultaniously. only if you want to put the appliance on ESX you need to import the harddisk with vmkfstools or vmware converter.

[dmaster]

Hi brugh,

I installed the latest beta of VMware Workstation 6.5 e.x.p build-99530

but still the same behaviour wiht esx 3.5 update 2 ? maybe there is something wrong with my downloaded iso ?

will try the new .iso of esx 3.5 update 2 ..and post the results

[brugh]

hm very strange. did you check the xtravirt pdf how to create the VM? perhaps forgot to check the 'replicate settings .. something' on the bridged network controller?

[cmors]

I noticed release 0.8 is ready but nowhere for download. Anyone know where I can get version 0.8?

[cmors]

I am still having trouble getting this to work.

I can PXE fine and select the installation I want from the initial EDA screen

ESX then proceeds to boot and stops at the select language screen which is where it should be doing the scriptet install. Behind the scenes I get:

reverse name lookup failed

ks location: http://myipaddress/ks/ks.php?hostname=myhostname

transferring http://myipaddress/./ks/ks.php?hostname=myhostname to a fd

failed to retrieve http://myipaddress///ks/ks.php?hostname=myhostname

This is on a closed swtich with no vlans. I am setting ksdevice=eth8 and I have checked this manually. I can click through the installation and choose http install and catch the EDA no problems.

I am at a loss here, feel like I have tried everything. Anyone have any usefull hints?

[brugh2]

the ks location is incorrect. it shows 'myipaddress' but should show your actual EDA ip address. can you make a backup of the appliance and post it here? remember to set your rootpassword to something else if you dont want people to know it.

as for 0.8, i already updated the descriptive part on vmware.com and the 0.8 is ready but i only tested it with 3.5u2 on workstation. hopefully it'll be ready by the coming weekend or somewhere next week.

[brugh]

just for the fun of it i recorded a small video of a EDA-VM deploying an ESX-vm check it out on .

it's a preview of the 0.8 and it works like a charm

[cmors]

It does show my actual address, the myipaddress is just a habit of not posting IPs publicly :smileygrin:

[brugh]

it does still sound like a networking issue. did you check the dhcp logs to see if the second request ever arrives? perhaps you have a second dhcp server that answers the second request?

[cmors]

I thought it might be something like that but I am on a closed loop. Set everything up on a switch with no outside access... Dont have access to the dhcp log at this time but will check it when I am on site next time.

[brugh]

OK! EDA 0.80 is out now. download it through . as far as my hardware goes it works like a charm but if you find any problems, please post them here..

[dmaster]

Hi brugh,

With the new Whitepaper from Xtravirt released in august 2008, based on VMware Workstation 6.5.

EDA 0.71 works fine with ESX 3.5 Update 2..

Finally

will now check out your new release of EDA.

[ExCon]

Any chance that doc will be available anytime soon? Even rudimentary doc would help.

All I'm getting after boot is http:// with no IP address... I assume that's because I'm not pulling a DHCP address, and I'm hoping that I can set the IP address manually (root password would help!)