BjornJohansson's Posts

Hello all, Environment: ESX 3.5 U3, VC 2.5 U3, HP C7000/BL480c G1 Blades, EVA3000/EVA4000 Problem: We are experiencing intermittent performance issues on some of the virtual machines. C... See more...
Hello all, Environment: ESX 3.5 U3, VC 2.5 U3, HP C7000/BL480c G1 Blades, EVA3000/EVA4000 Problem: We are experiencing intermittent performance issues on some of the virtual machines. Can't really find the reason. Problem is sluggish performance in GUI, some actions time out or takes too long time. VM's are Windows Server 2003 with latest VMware Tools and updates. Deployed from template. Some actions take forever. Example: When installing SQL 2005, the setup scans the system for installed components. This takes normally 5-10 secs with ~70% CPU load. When problem occurs this takes 4-6 mins and the CPU is at 100% during this time. Since this is the pretty much the only way I have been able re-produce the problem I used this SQL Setup scan as a benchmark. All kinds of combinations on different vm's, vm configurations, Windows settings, hosts, datastores is tested and timed. Observations: When pagefile is moved to another disk it sometimes improves performance </div> Using a local account during setup solves the problem, still the source of the problem is unknown We have no known hardware, network or Active Directory issues. A VMware health check was conducted 6 weeks ago. No issues were found that could cause these problems. Remember that problems only occurs in the virtual environment. Any suggestions on how to move on with the troubleshooting are highly appreciated! Thank you! Björn
Hello and thank you for your post. Suprisingly, I seem to found that E5345 actually has FlexMigration. All I had to do was enable Intel VT and Execute Disable in BIOS and Enhanced vMotion ... See more...
Hello and thank you for your post. Suprisingly, I seem to found that E5345 actually has FlexMigration. All I had to do was enable Intel VT and Execute Disable in BIOS and Enhanced vMotion Compability (EVC) was available on the cluster. Now I can combine the new hosts with the old ones. Great success. KB1003212 confirms that E5345, and even older Xeons, is compatible with EVC. EVC seems like a really good workaround/feature in our case. But I am a bit worried about using it in production when I read following about EVC in vMotion and CPU Compability: "EVC utilizes hardware support to modify the semantics of the CPUID instruction only. It does not disable the feature itself. For example, if an attempt to disable SSE4.1 is made by applying the appropriate masks to a CPU that has these features, this feature bit indicates SSE4.1 is not available to the guest or the application, but the feature and the SSE4.1 instructions themselves (such as PTESE and PMULLD) are still available for use. This implies applications that do not use the CPUID instruction to determine the list of supported features, but use try‐catch undefined instructions (#UD) instead, can still detect the existence of this feature. " So is EVC fully supported and recommended by VMware under these circumstances? Thanks
Hello all, We bought another HP BL480c G1 and joined it to our cluster, running ESX Server 3.5 U3. First then I realised that our supplier sent a version with a Xeon E5440. Our other hosts, al... See more...
Hello all, We bought another HP BL480c G1 and joined it to our cluster, running ESX Server 3.5 U3. First then I realised that our supplier sent a version with a Xeon E5440. Our other hosts, also BL480c G1, uses a bit older Xeon E5345 which apparently is a minor product family difference. This genereates following error message when trying vMotion: "Unable to migrate from esx1 to esx4. Host CPU is incomatible with the virtual machine's requirements at CPUID level 0x1 register 'ecx'. .... Mismatch detected for these features: * SSE4.1; refer to KB article 1993 for a possible solution" I have tested a vMotion mask override (according to KB1993) on a test server and vMotion then works as expected. Overriding masks is of course neither supported or recommended since it can cause instability with vMotion. Have anyone found a supported solution around this matter? Or have anyone ever encountered problems with overriding? I found nothing in BIOS to disable SSE4.1. Please post your solutions, workarounds and experiences. Thank you, Björn Johansson
Hi guys, Just wanna give you an update. I unfortunately never got any of the suggestions posted to work. This is the workaround that worked: Created a new custom, identical VM except... See more...
Hi guys, Just wanna give you an update. I unfortunately never got any of the suggestions posted to work. This is the workaround that worked: Created a new custom, identical VM except without any hard drive Copied the .vmdk to the new VM's folder Edited the the new VM hardware and added an existing .vmdk - the one I copied to the folder Successfully started the VM Thanks for all suggestions! /Björn
atbnet, thank you. Editing ntp.conf solved the problem for me. I had some problems to get the ntp client running, but with a restart of the services you mentioned + vpxa got everything u... See more...
atbnet, thank you. Editing ntp.conf solved the problem for me. I had some problems to get the ntp client running, but with a restart of the services you mentioned + vpxa got everything up and running /Björn
Hmm... good thought. We are running HP EVA, anyone has any experience about this issue there? Since my last post I have tried: Upgrade Virtual Center to Update 3 - still no luc... See more...
Hmm... good thought. We are running HP EVA, anyone has any experience about this issue there? Since my last post I have tried: Upgrade Virtual Center to Update 3 - still no luck trying the stuff above Removed the host from the cluster and added it again - no luck I'm thinking about shutting down the troublesome VMs (from remote desktop) and copy the vmdk files. Then I create new virtual machines and use the existing vmdk's. Would that be something that might work? But now I'm going home... long f**king day hitting my head into the wall... Thanks guys! /Björn
Yep, I was replying to deppings post. You posted while as I was writing it Thanks for the tip though, I did as you suggested without any luck. It got acually worse when another VM is also n... See more...
Yep, I was replying to deppings post. You posted while as I was writing it Thanks for the tip though, I did as you suggested without any luck. It got acually worse when another VM is also now marked as invalid. BUT, they reside on the very same LUN which implies that it is a storage problem. Also the VMs resides on the same host. The LUN itself contains a bunch of VMs that is successfully registered. I have also checked that it is visible from all hosts that has the LUN presented to them. Any suggestions? (except removing and adding esx from cluster - I will try that asap) Thanks guys! /B ps. What will happen with the invalid machines during host removal from cluster? I can't migrate them because they are invalid... AFAIK they should continue to run. Or...? Catch 22... ds.
Thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps a stupid question: When I re-registered it again it ended up on another host. Does that mean I have to remove all hosts (we got three) from the cluster? Or wo... See more...
Thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps a stupid question: When I re-registered it again it ended up on another host. Does that mean I have to remove all hosts (we got three) from the cluster? Or would it be sufficient with the current host? The register Virtual Machine wizard does not allow me to specify host, only cluster. I guess that is because DRS is enabled. Thanks /Björn
Thanks guys, Unfortunately I already tried that without success. Just to be sure, I tried it again and did following: Unregistrered VM from infrastructure client Stopped VMware V... See more...
Thanks guys, Unfortunately I already tried that without success. Just to be sure, I tried it again and did following: Unregistrered VM from infrastructure client Stopped VMware VirtualCenter Service Restarted vpxa, mgmt, webAccess and vmkauthd services on all hosts in the cluster Disabled HA on cluster Started VirtualCenter service Added vmx to inventory Enabled HA on cluster Still no luck, still marked as invalid. I guess I covered everything there... order ok? I also checked vc logs logs via PowerShell : Get-VM "blackberry-srv" | Get-VIEvent | Format-Table CreatedTime, FullFormattedMessage -AutoSize) No clues there either, just that machine is now registered in the datacenter. Anyone see anything fishy in the .vmx or have any other suggestion? Thanks! /Björn
Hello all! I have looked into the other threads regards invalid machines in Infrastructure Client, but none of them seems to apply on my problem. 3 x ESX 3.5 U1/Virtual Center 2.5 U... See more...
Hello all! I have looked into the other threads regards invalid machines in Infrastructure Client, but none of them seems to apply on my problem. 3 x ESX 3.5 U1/Virtual Center 2.5 U1 When you look into infrastructure client, the VM (running W2k3 + Blackberry Enterprise Server) is greyed out and marked as "invalid". If I connect directly to the host (with powershell) it says the machine is not running. But it is and responding. I have restarted services on all esx servers, re-registrered the VM and restarted the VM. No luck. I cannot see anything weird in the .vmx. But I attached it if I missed something. Please advice, thank you! Best regards Björn Johansson
Thanks guys, that was it! Changed CD-ROM to client device and the fishy datastore (well it wasnt very fishy when you think about it) went away. "Great succes!" /Borat Thank... See more...
Thanks guys, that was it! Changed CD-ROM to client device and the fishy datastore (well it wasnt very fishy when you think about it) went away. "Great succes!" /Borat Thanks again /Björn
Hello all, ESX 3.5 U1, HP Blade C7000, BL480c, EVA3000/4000 I have searched Google + forum but have not found any useful info regarding a small problem: According to Virtual Infr... See more...
Hello all, ESX 3.5 U1, HP Blade C7000, BL480c, EVA3000/4000 I have searched Google + forum but have not found any useful info regarding a small problem: According to Virtual Infrastructure Client some of the VM's looks like the are residing on two different datastores. Of course they only reside on one datastore, I can easily confirm this by browsing the datastore. This is confusing and a bit irritating. I have not seen any pattern, the phenomena apeears on different SANs, different hosts. The agents have been restarted as well as the hosts. Any thougts? Thank you /Björn Johansson
Hello all, On our Virtual Center 2.5U1 server we are running SQL Express 2005. Everything seems to work fine but after reboot our server monitoring system (MOM 2005) detects degraded datab... See more...
Hello all, On our Virtual Center 2.5U1 server we are running SQL Express 2005. Everything seems to work fine but after reboot our server monitoring system (MOM 2005) detects degraded database health. At one or two occasions after reboot an alarm is raised that database is in suspect state. After that no more alarms occurs. I have found nothing in eventlogs that points to a problem with the database. Anyone seen this? Any thoughts? Thank you! /Björn Here is the alarm: Description: The database VIM_UMDB in instance SQLEXP_VIM is in a critical state. The state is Suspect. Name: SQL Server Database Health - Database is unhealthy Severity: Warning Resolution State: New Domain: DOMAIN Computer: SERVER Time of First Event: 2008-08-19 22:30:04 Time of Last Event: 2008-08-20 03:00:03 Alert latency: 4 sec Problem State: Active Repeat Count: 1 Age: Source: SQL Server 2005 Database Health Alert Id: c991af06-fa4c-4f01-858c-38563d0377d1 Rule (enabled): Microsoft SQL Server\SQL Server 2005\State Monitoring and Service Discovery\SQL Server Database Health - Database is unhealthy |
I think I found the problem: When I changed the paging file to "system managed" on another drive with 20 gb of diskspace the slow boot went away. Done approx 15 reboots and every boot is ver... See more...
I think I found the problem: When I changed the paging file to "system managed" on another drive with 20 gb of diskspace the slow boot went away. Done approx 15 reboots and every boot is very fast now. Noticed that the page file was set to 2048-4096 mb on system drive, that seems to work bad with 10 gb of ram. Therefore I until further, I declare this issue solved /Björn
My bad, it is R2. But since you mentioned it, I had a look in the guests settings. I notice that the guest operating system is set to the initial release of 2003 server. R2 is not available. ... See more...
My bad, it is R2. But since you mentioned it, I had a look in the guests settings. I notice that the guest operating system is set to the initial release of 2003 server. R2 is not available. Can that be the reason for the recommended size is 4096 mb? Thanks /Björn
Host has 24 gb ram. Guest 10240 mb ram, 1 CPU, 1 NIC, LSI Logic controller. Thanks, /Björn
Hello all, I have noticed on a guest, Windows Server 2003 X64 (Standard), that if you look on the Hardware properties the maximum recommended Guest OS ram is 4096 mb. Both ESX 3.5 host and... See more...
Hello all, I have noticed on a guest, Windows Server 2003 X64 (Standard), that if you look on the Hardware properties the maximum recommended Guest OS ram is 4096 mb. Both ESX 3.5 host and the guest OS supports much more ram. Why is that? I have another thread open where I experience intermittent slow boot on 64-bit guest with alot of ram. Suspicious... Here is the other thread: Thanks, /Björn
Correct, during progress bar. Unfortunately I've not yet gained knowledge and experience to determine where the problem lies. But Windows seems fine according to the logs. Thanks /B ... See more...
Correct, during progress bar. Unfortunately I've not yet gained knowledge and experience to determine where the problem lies. But Windows seems fine according to the logs. Thanks /B
Dear all, Problem: Windows Server 2003 R2 X64 boots awfully slow sometimes (up to 20 mins), every ten times or so. Hanging during boot screen. When the slow boot occurs, I notice high cpu... See more...
Dear all, Problem: Windows Server 2003 R2 X64 boots awfully slow sometimes (up to 20 mins), every ten times or so. Hanging during boot screen. When the slow boot occurs, I notice high cpu on both guest and host. Please see attached pic. Environment: Two ESX 3.5 in a cluster running on a HP Blade 7000, BL480c (2 quad core and 24 gb ram) and storage to a EVA3000 SAN. Virtual Center 2.5.0. Configuration: Guest with Windows Server 2003 R2 X64. It has two cpu's and 8 gb ram. I have tried following: Searched this forum and google Tested reboot guest 30-40 times, have failed to notice any pattern i terms of load on hosts etc. Checked eventlogs, enabled boot loggning and checked our monitoring application (MOM) Installed guest from template. And then made a clean install from iso with cpu and ram set pre installation Migrated the guest between the two host and tested Verified configuration from document "Guest OS Guide" Verified configuration that memory limit and cpu limit is set to unlimited. As you can see on attached picture the slow boots are where CPU peaks has "flat tops". Normal boot generate a sharp peak and the guest starts within 1-2 mins. Any suggestions? Thank you! Best regards Björn
Hello all, I have searched on this without finding any information about it. I have a VI3 infrastructure running with ESX 3.5 hosts. I have deployed an isolated network for test and develo... See more...
Hello all, I have searched on this without finding any information about it. I have a VI3 infrastructure running with ESX 3.5 hosts. I have deployed an isolated network for test and development by connecting it to a vSwitch without any NICs connected. That works fine except that now I cannot copy files from and to the guests in the isolated network. What I understand I should use one of the applicance routers to solve that problem. I want to be able to copy files to a production server without interferring with our production network. This was really easy in VMware Server where Host Only option did the trick. Is there a best practice for how the configuration of this should look like? Thanks in advance! /Björn ps. I now that VMware Workstation or Lab Manager is more suitable for stuff like this. But Workstation cannot be controlled by IT department (system developers uses the lab) and Lab Manager has low priority.