JarryG's Posts

That might be true for "classic" drives, but I think it becomes less important with SSD (which OP is going to use), because SSDs come with much large own cache. Typically HDD cache size is somewh... See more...
That might be true for "classic" drives, but I think it becomes less important with SSD (which OP is going to use), because SSDs come with much large own cache. Typically HDD cache size is somewhere between 16MB and 128MB, while common cache size for SSD is 512MB - 2GB. There is no need to cache the same data twice (in raid-controller cache, and in ssd-cache)...
Basically you can do it (check if your esxi-management has correct IP, and try if routing works), but be very carefull. Someone else might try to do it in the same way as you, and take over contr... See more...
Basically you can do it (check if your esxi-management has correct IP, and try if routing works), but be very carefull. Someone else might try to do it in the same way as you, and take over control of your esxi-server. ESXi-firewall is not state-of-art, because it is probably not expected someone will deploy esxi to internet directly, without any protection (and I strongly discourage you from doing this)... I personally have hw-firewall with vpn-server sitting between my esxi and internet, and my esxi-server I have one more extra NIC with IP from private address space for management interface. So first I have to connect to vpn-server running on HW-firewall, create VPN-connection, then I have access to esxi-console and management interface. You could run vpn on VM (VMA) too, but it is not that safe, because if you shutdown that VM, then you have no access to esxi.
First, I just hope you skipped one line in that input, because as it is, "admin1" is not member of any group (no output to "groups admin1") Next, cold you please check permissions for that "vi... See more...
First, I just hope you skipped one line in that input, because as it is, "admin1" is not member of any group (no output to "groups admin1") Next, cold you please check permissions for that "vifp" command (find with i.e. "whereis" and check with "ls -l")? Also check if "admin1" has path to vifp command in his PATH variable...
Xeon 1240v2 has only 4 cores. Forget that hyperthreading crap, those are not true cpu-cores. So one cpu-core for esxi (it needs cpu too) and four vCPUs for VM, that is more than 4 true cores you ... See more...
Xeon 1240v2 has only 4 cores. Forget that hyperthreading crap, those are not true cpu-cores. So one cpu-core for esxi (it needs cpu too) and four vCPUs for VM, that is more than 4 true cores you have => over-commiting! Your VM does not know anything about hyperthreading, it thinks it has 4 full cores for all the time only for itself (which is not true) and tries to ballance cpu-load (even in case of single-threaded application). Give only 2 (max 3) vCPUs to your web-server VM and check what happens. Look at buffers/cache, it takes ~22GB of 24GB you assigned for VM. That is a symptom of heavy i/o operations and poor memory management. I do not know your web-server configuration, but I suppose it is maybe not optimal. I think at least 1/3 of ram should be used by reverse-proxy cache, the other 30% by database-cache (if you have one), rest for OS/apps. In your case nearly all RAM is used by OS for disk cache/buffers. Concerning disk speed, you can not compare sequential r/w (which is done during VM-migration) and random i/o, that is typical for web-server. If you have classic disks (not ssd), random r/w speed can drop even to a few MB/s, depending on fragmentation...
I think it depends on what content is the web-server serving. But if you have properly configured web-services, then your network-capacity and/or disk i/o is bottleneck, not cpu... Next thing,... See more...
I think it depends on what content is the web-server serving. But if you have properly configured web-services, then your network-capacity and/or disk i/o is bottleneck, not cpu... Next thing, your cpu has actually only 4 cores, the other 4 are fakes. Because I do not know any web-server which could use hyperthreading effectively, you are actually over-commiting your cpu resources, even if there is no other VM on your esxi-server. Check this report. It is a nice example how sometimes with "less" you can achieve "more"... A pdf demonstrating the effects of CPU overcommitment
I'd say there is not much special concerning size of pagefile for Win2008 running on ESXi, or running Win2008 on "plain" hardware. The same rules as for standard Win2k8 installation applies here.... See more...
I'd say there is not much special concerning size of pagefile for Win2008 running on ESXi, or running Win2008 on "plain" hardware. The same rules as for standard Win2k8 installation applies here. The "good" size is the one you need... I'm running a few windows servers with no pagefile at all. Some say it is a bad idea, but it works for me, because I try to have so much ram (which is quite cheap these days) that my servers never touch swap/pagefile. There was (and maybe still is?) some app-software which refuses to start if there is no pagefile at all, but I do not have it. Moreover, I do not see a reason why some application should "talk" to memory management, it is a task for OS: if app needs "X" GB, it put request on it, and it is up to OS to deal with it (either as full ram commitment, or partially in pagefile)... One more reason I do not use pagefile (in addition to "I do not need it") is that "I'm affraid of security implications". If pagefile is not cleaned/removed at shutdown (which takes some time), or encrypted (which takes cpu-cycles), there might be sensitive data saved there (i.e. passwords, pins, etc), sometimes even as plaintext, which are not difficult to recover...
I see you use common seagate barracuda 7200.14 drives, which are *not* recommended for any serious server usage. Problem is they sometimes become temporarily unresponsive for quite long time (eve... See more...
I see you use common seagate barracuda 7200.14 drives, which are *not* recommended for any serious server usage. Problem is they sometimes become temporarily unresponsive for quite long time (even a few seconds) due to error-recovery, weak sector re-allocation, etc. That is quite normal for desktop-drives (even new ones) and accepted by desktop-OS, but if this happens during high I/O load, it is all what server-OS needs to mark drive as "failed" and disconnect it. This is even bigger problem for raid-controllers, which prefer to drop drive very easily, if it becomes unresponsive. If you want to use affordable sata-drives, pick at least "server" drives (sometimes marked as "24/7", or "raid-edition"), i.e. "Barracuda ES". They come with low TLER value (time-limited error recovery), so if sector re-allocation takes long time, it is interrupted before OS (or controller) disconnects it due to stalled I/O operations, and disk-maintenance routine is performed later when the drive is not under load. I had problem with very similar symptoms as you describe, frequent disconnects for a drive, without any apparent reason. I consulted it with our hw-supplier and got the info mentioned above. So I simply switched the disk for other of "24/7" edition, and the problem was over. Interesting, the disk which caused so many problems in my esxi-server has since then been used for a few years in heavily loaded workstation, without single disconnect or any other problem...
you can run cron-job on esxi, but probably not php! esxi is light-weight hypervisor, stripped down to minimum, with security in mind. It is not like common OS where you can install whatever you w... See more...
you can run cron-job on esxi, but probably not php! esxi is light-weight hypervisor, stripped down to minimum, with security in mind. It is not like common OS where you can install whatever you want. But you can create VM, install OS and necessary tools, and run php there.
If what vmroyale says is true (and think he is right), then you can either filter messages on syslog-server, or if you can not touch syslog-server filters/settings, then set-up syslog-relay on VM... See more...
If what vmroyale says is true (and think he is right), then you can either filter messages on syslog-server, or if you can not touch syslog-server filters/settings, then set-up syslog-relay on VM, filter messages there, and forward to syslog-server only what you want...
What is the easiest way of moving existing VM from one local datastore to the other one? I thought about backing up VM (i.e. with ghettoVCB), deleting VM, restoring VM on new datastore and cre... See more...
What is the easiest way of moving existing VM from one local datastore to the other one? I thought about backing up VM (i.e. with ghettoVCB), deleting VM, restoring VM on new datastore and creating new VM with existing files, but maybe there is some easier way...
you can, but you have to update hosts file on the computer from which you want to connect to esxi (i.e. the one running vsphere-client or vsphere-server)...
If you do not have dns-server, you can still resolve names using "hosts" file which lists static IP/dn pairs. In mac/unix/linux it is in /etc/hosts, windows has it somewhere in C:\windows\system3... See more...
If you do not have dns-server, you can still resolve names using "hosts" file which lists static IP/dn pairs. In mac/unix/linux it is in /etc/hosts, windows has it somewhere in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Just add line: 192.168.1.1     esx5i
Seems to me like hardware/driver type of problem. The only other hw-component I can identify from the screenshot is (maybe) some Intel 1000/Pro series network adapter (e1000 driver) or its deriva... See more...
Seems to me like hardware/driver type of problem. The only other hw-component I can identify from the screenshot is (maybe) some Intel 1000/Pro series network adapter (e1000 driver) or its derivative. Try to change it for different one (not e1000-driver, if you have some at hand) or disable, or if it is add-on card, move it to different slot and avoid irq-sharing if possible (check your motherboard-manual). Apart from that, do all that classical "housekeeping": 1. update esxi (might come with new/updated e1000 driver) 2. update motherboard-bios (you might try even beta-version) 3. update e1000 driver (download from Intel web) 4. update cpu-microcode (comes with bios, but amd/intel might have newer version)
If you are using free ESXi, possibilities of VM-backup are rather restricted. I'm using ghettoVCB.sh - Free alternative for backing up VM's for ESX(i) 3.5, 4.x & 5.x . IIRC, ghettoVCB.sh can... See more...
If you are using free ESXi, possibilities of VM-backup are rather restricted. I'm using ghettoVCB.sh - Free alternative for backing up VM's for ESX(i) 3.5, 4.x & 5.x . IIRC, ghettoVCB.sh can backup VMs even without shutting VMs down (but I'm not sure).
vMA is basically just linux-based (not sure which distro) VM, with some pre-installed vm-tools and 3rd party agents (cli, vsphere/sdk, etc). You can add users as in any other *nix (check "man use... See more...
vMA is basically just linux-based (not sure which distro) VM, with some pre-installed vm-tools and 3rd party agents (cli, vsphere/sdk, etc). You can add users as in any other *nix (check "man useradd" or "man adduser"). You just have to verify new user is in proper user group, the same as vi-admin...
As log says, it is probably some kind of hardware error. I recommend to try two things: 1. update bios of your motherboard to the latest you find, 2. if that does not help, update cpu-microcode... See more...
As log says, it is probably some kind of hardware error. I recommend to try two things: 1. update bios of your motherboard to the latest you find, 2. if that does not help, update cpu-microcode (on esxi, not in vms)
Ad.Q1: Of course it will, but if you want really good disk-i/o, consider SSD. I'm running just a few VMs, but since I switched to SSD, everything is amazingly fast (i.e. W7 boot-time just a few s... See more...
Ad.Q1: Of course it will, but if you want really good disk-i/o, consider SSD. I'm running just a few VMs, but since I switched to SSD, everything is amazingly fast (i.e. W7 boot-time just a few seconds)...
If you can, pick the one with memory and batery-backup unit. And activate in controller-bios both "read" and "write" caching. Raid-controllers without cache/BBU have very poor performance...
Just a tip: There's third party software called NUT (network ups tools) with support of many common ups: http://www.networkupstools.org/index.html And there is also esxi vib-package (reporte... See more...
Just a tip: There's third party software called NUT (network ups tools) with support of many common ups: http://www.networkupstools.org/index.html And there is also esxi vib-package (reported to work with esxi 5.0/5.1): http://rene.margar.fr/2012/05/client-nut-pour-esxi-5-0/  (use google-translate if you do not speak french)
You are right that's not normal, but on the other hand, I'm affraid this model is not officially supported. You can check yourself: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php As... See more...
You are right that's not normal, but on the other hand, I'm affraid this model is not officially supported. You can check yourself: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php As a rule of thumb, try to avoid raid-0/1/10 controllers. Those are basically very low-end models, with no cache, no batery-backup unit, very weak (or none) cpu, no hw xor-unit, etc. Performance of such controllers (especially if you want to run multiple VMs) is very low...