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brugh
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ESX deployment appliance v1.05

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.

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hakimzc
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Hello All,

I have messed around with the IP addresses, but the dhcp service just refuses to start no matter what I do.

Has anyone else had this issue? I have posted full details of my set up above.

Getting frustrated!

Kind regards,

Hakimzc

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brugh
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well the error is that you have 2 subnets mixed together. the dhcp server wants a subnet, gateway and the rest all in the same subnet

first off, your esx and eda should be in the same subnet and the subnet for the dhcp scope should be too!

i see you're using bridged networking so your dhcp scope and all options should be in the 10.10.10.x range.

forget about the vmnets, those are not being used. then change the dhcp settings in the appliance to:

allow booting;

allow bootp;

option domain-name "int.dom";

option domain-name-servers 10.10.10.100;

option subnet-mask 255.0.0.0;

default-lease-time 600;

max-lease-time 7200;

subnet 10.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 {

range 10.10.10.20 10.10.10.40;

option broadcast-address 10.255.255.255;

option routers 10.10.10.100;

next-server 10.10.10.100;

filename "pxelinux.0";

}

and your dhcp server should start.

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hakimzc
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Thanks Brugh,

I tried it but I get a new error when I try to start dhcp,

**************************************************************************************

System startup links for /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server already exist.

dhcpd self-test failed. Please fix the config file.

The error was:

/etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf line 18: subnet 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.0.0.0: bad subnet number/mask combination.

subnet 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.0.0.0

^

Configuration file errors encountered -- exiting

Click to close

**************************************************************************************

Just to confirm, I have se the settings of the dhcp server to match those you quoted, the laptop has an IP address of 10.10.10.99, SB = 255.0.0.0 and a blank default gateway. The EDA has an IP of 10.10.10.100, SB = 255.0.0.0, GW = 10.10.10.99 and a Name server of 10.10.10.99.

The laptop is connected to a switch that has nothing else connected to it. I did notice that if I remove the LAN cable from the back of the laptop I can not connect to http://10.10.10.100. I also notice that on the home page there are references to IP addresses for the hosts that are not in the 10.x range (in the "ESX hosts" pane and the "General ESX host settings" pane).

Perhaps you can spot something here or suggest some TCP/IP settings for both the laptop and the EDA that you have successfully used in the past?

Thanks for your patience,

Hakimzc

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hakimzc
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Hi Brugh,

I just tried changing the netmask for the 10.10.10.0 subnet to 255.255.255.0 and the dhcp service started!

I am no TCP/IP wizard, but this seems to have done the trick.

Thanks again,

Hakimzc

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brugh
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ah, right. the network and the subnet mask should match. small typo Smiley Wink if you use a 255.0.0.0 as mask you should use 10.0.0.0 as subnet.

glad it works

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davismisbehavis
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Working with the new EDA for our upcoming vSphere deployment. Basic build works ok however we are having issues with the SMBclient part

We get an error first of all saying (connection refused) and second of all (Error NT_STATUS_CONNECTION_REFUSED)

We hadn't enabled the smbclient service on the firewall in the script but even after doing that we still get the same problem. Is there something I'm missing? I restarted the management agents just to be sure it wasn't something silly but still no luck

Any hepl greatly appreciated

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brugh
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well it shouldn't be a firewall problem on the esx part because the script disables the firewall completely at the beginning an reenables it at the end. opening firewall ports temporarily during script execution isn't necessary that way.

could you confirm that the smb services on the eda are running? check for nmbd and smbd running processes or just restart the smb service with

/etc/init.d/samba restart

if that's looking good, could you try connecting from a windows client to
EDA-IP\dl for read access and
EDA-IP\dl$ for write access? if you didn't change the passwords, it's user/user for the first and root/root for the second. if that works, perhaps you can post a part of the script so we can have a look.

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davismisbehavis
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Thanks for that, we restarted the Appliance and it started working so it must have been something with the SMB Service.

One other thing is there anywhere that the post script run through would be logged to or do I need to specify a location to pipe the output to on each line of the script.

We're just trying to troubleshoot some of the scripting we've done and a log file would be brilliant

Thanks in advance

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brugh
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it doesn't log anything by default. easiest way to log everything is to change /var/www/ks/ks4.php line 56 from:

/root/esxcfg.sh

to

/root/esxcfg.sh | tee /root/esxcfg.log 2>&1

hm, perhaps i should just put that in by default Smiley Wink

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markburse
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Hello, using 0.88 version is it possible to add third partry drivers? or get a promt?

I am building a ESX4.0 Update1 server that requires addtional Vmware network drivers (HP 10GB Flex 10 on a BL490 blade).

any thoughts

Rgds

Mark

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brugh
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during initial setup you can copy extra files from the EDA to the ESX host by selecting 'get remote file' from the script builder. just put the files you want on the
eda-ip-address\DL$ (login with root and the root password) and the scriptlet will copy the files to the host. after that you can run the installer (unattended).

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hharold
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Hi,

Is it, or will it be, possible to do somewhat of a scripted ESX4i install with EDA?

Post-commands? (fi. queue depth commands)

Thanks and kind regards,

Harold

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brugh
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it will be in the near future. at the moment esxi itself doesn't support it. but that should change real soon Smiley Wink

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Hemijimi
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Brugh, I am having trouble deploying the eda-v0.90.ovf file. I have the files downloaded but when I try to deploy the appliance I get "The OVF package cannot be deployed on the selected host. Device "VirtualCDrom" uses a controller that is not supported. This is a general limitation of the virtual machine's virtual hardware on the selected host.

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77seb77
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Je suis absent jusqu'au 4 Janvier 20010. Merci d'ecrire à

ServiceDesk-FR@eads.com.

I am out of the office until January, 4th 2010. Please write to

ServiceDesk-FR@eads.com.

Cordialement, Best Regards,

Sébastien BRIAND

Back Office Operations France / IMS431

EADS Defence and Security

MetaPole

1 Boulevard Jean Moulin

CS 40001

78996 ELANCOURT CEDEX

Tel : +33 (0)1 61 38 70 34

Fax: +33 (0)1 61 38 57 16

Email: sebastien.briand@eads.com

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rosspcs
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I am trying to use EDA .90 to deploy vsphere everything seems to work ok but when the machine reboots i just get Attempting boot from drive (C:) ?

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davismisbehavis
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For the V0.90 EDA there is a seperate OVF file that overcomes this issue. I posted about it previously so you could search for my entry or go to the http://virtuall.eu/downloads/ link and it should be obvious which one to download.

Take the new OVF and put it together with the existing files downloaded, import and it will work fine

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spboyd
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Hardware: HP DL380 G6 with 16x 146 SATA Drives (CD-rom removed and disk caged installed)

I run the PXI boot, Select my server to install, it goes through the install, and reboot.

Upon booting I get:

vsd-mount ...

You have entered the recovery shell. You can try booting in troubleshooting mode to attempt to fix the issue. If that fails, you should ocntact VMware techsupport.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off.

From the messages.log

sysboot: cos-snapshot ...

sysboot: vsd-mount ...

sysboot: Getting 'cosvmdk' parameter from kernel boot line

sysboot: COS VMDK Specified in esx.conf: /vmfs/volumes/4ad47595-ff236508-4ece-002481e-371da/esxconsole-4a4408ae-c328-dc8a-e1d9-002481e371d8/esxconsole.vmdk

sysboot:66.vsd-mount returned critical failure

sysboot: Excecuting 'chvt 1'

Can't seem to get past this, I tried manual install as well.

Thank you,

Sean

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rock0n
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Vielen Dank für Ihre eMail

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Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an :

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Mit freundlichen Grüssen

Raiko Mesterheide

Thank you very much for your E-Mail.

I am not in the office and will return on 5th January.

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mailto:professionalservices@techdata.de

Best Regards

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davismisbehavis
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Hoping someone can assist with a problem we have.

We are using the EDA V0.90 appliance with the V0.87 OVF file (due to problems on original import)

We have used it successfully to rebuild an HP DL 380 G3 (Our scripted install test machine) and we have now moved on to building some of our new production servers which are HP DL 580 G5's.

The deployment is working in that, the server PXE boots, picks up an IP Address from the EDA DHCP scope and then installs ESX 4. However when the machine reboots ready to start up ESX and run the post script we get the error "No COS Nics added by user". It's not something from the post script that is causing the issue as we are not even getting that far. It appears to be related to the address being assigned to the COS by the EDA appliance at the outset of the Kickstart script.

There is not a lot of information out there about this issue, has anyone else experienced it and found a work around? What's strange is it worked on the other server.

Kind Regards

D.Misbehavis

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