natewilson's Posts

> Anyone ever get the latest patch (build 914609) applied to these Mini's successfully? I came here looking for the same info..    I have ESXi 5.1 799733 running on my Mac Mini 6,2.  It's work... See more...
> Anyone ever get the latest patch (build 914609) applied to these Mini's successfully? I came here looking for the same info..    I have ESXi 5.1 799733 running on my Mac Mini 6,2.  It's working fine, but there are a lot of ESXi updates availabile after that build.  So, I was thinking about upgrading.     On the other hand, it's not broke.... The questions I have: - Can I apply the standard patches on this system, or do I risk losing some of the updates made to get it working in the first place?  If not, is there a process for applying the update? - Is there a process to apply the SMC fix to my already installed ESXi build?   I have seen others ask the question, but I didn't find an answer.
It's the newest Mini, "Macmini6,2". That thread is huge, so maybe I missed something, but I didn't see any mentions of something resembling my problem.   Is there a specific post you are refe... See more...
It's the newest Mini, "Macmini6,2". That thread is huge, so maybe I missed something, but I didn't see any mentions of something resembling my problem.   Is there a specific post you are referring to?    In general, the Mini is working fine and I am running several Linux and one Windows VM on it. Attached is the vmware.log file.  Note that there are some messages about the CD drive because the install DMG was attached.  I have since removed that and rebooted, but the behavior is still the same.
I have a new Mac Mini system (Quad Core i7, 16GB Memory) runnning ESXi 5, on which I am running a few Linux VMs.   I am now trying to install Mac OS X v8 in another VM, and have run into problems... See more...
I have a new Mac Mini system (Quad Core i7, 16GB Memory) runnning ESXi 5, on which I am running a few Linux VMs.   I am now trying to install Mac OS X v8 in another VM, and have run into problems. I followed the standard installation process in the VMware KB.  The initial installation goes fine.  It reboots once, then finishes the installation.  After that, it reboots again into what should be the initial system setup.  But, it hangs forever at the gray boot screen with the white Apple logo.  The spinner just keeps going and going..  I left it running last night, and in the morning it was still in the same state. I deleted the first VM and did a clean re-install, but got the same result. Is there anything else needed to get Mac OS X to boot?
I have some VI-Perl scripts which track VMs using the bios.uuid, and I am looking into adding SRM into the mix. Can anyone give me some more info on how VMs are tracked in the primary and recov... See more...
I have some VI-Perl scripts which track VMs using the bios.uuid, and I am looking into adding SRM into the mix. Can anyone give me some more info on how VMs are tracked in the primary and recovery sites? As I understand it, SRM has two vCenter servers, one for the primary one for the recovery site. When I look at the VMs in the vSphere client, do they look the same in each location? Are the names, or anything else, different? At a lower level, how do the VMs look? Will their VMX's have same or different bios.uuid and vc.uuid in primary and recovery sites?
I have 2 lab environments, each running their own vCenter server with a local SQL Express DB. Although the environments are not very active, and don't need full SQL server, the DB eventually fil... See more...
I have 2 lab environments, each running their own vCenter server with a local SQL Express DB. Although the environments are not very active, and don't need full SQL server, the DB eventually fills up and stops working. I guess it's probably filling with something like ESX performance data. While making some other changes, I am wanting to get ahead of the game and 1) figure out how to clean the DB, and 2) to automate the cleaning, so maybe once a month it will clear unneeded data out. Has anyone else already solved this issue? Any tips on what data can be dumped, and how to do that (are the needed tools included with SQL Express)?
I know this is an old post, but I'm looking into buying that Sun 7110 unit, and I'm wondering if you found a way to analyze your performance. I am struggling with similar issues with my Linux NF... See more...
I know this is an old post, but I'm looking into buying that Sun 7110 unit, and I'm wondering if you found a way to analyze your performance. I am struggling with similar issues with my Linux NFS server, and hoping that the Sun unit would offer better capabilities. The 7110 is supposed to have very good performance analysis capabilities, with dtrace & all, were you able to figure out anything from that direction? Can the 7110 can tell you which client or even which file is causing the load?
Would vShield zones be able to replace these different VLANs, or does it merely supplement these VLANs by allowing me to set those firewall rules from within VMware instead of at our physical fi... See more...
Would vShield zones be able to replace these different VLANs, or does it merely supplement these VLANs by allowing me to set those firewall rules from within VMware instead of at our physical firewall? I tried vshield recently, looking to do the same thing. I found that it could not secure VMs within a VLAN / "Zone". It can only apply security when packets leave the VLAN. To divide VMs up within a VLAN, you'll need a VMsafe-based firewall.
I've seen several mentions of the same error in this thread, but I didn't see any solutions (or at least diagnosis of what the root cause is). On one of my vCenters, I'm getting the "500" erro... See more...
I've seen several mentions of the same error in this thread, but I didn't see any solutions (or at least diagnosis of what the root cause is). On one of my vCenters, I'm getting the "500" error: GET https://10.13.19.99/folder/repo?dsName=SAN3 unsuccessful : 500 Internal Server Error The error message is not too meaningful.. I tried all the normal steps of verifying credentials/permissions, restarting vCenter, etc. But, no luck. Has anyone solved this in their environment? Any tips on possible causes, or debugging to better understand what the internal error is?
Thanks for the responses. The linked documents had a lot of good info. My main concerns were around the ability to attach to iSCSI shares from multiple ESX hosts.. Some things I read made it... See more...
Thanks for the responses. The linked documents had a lot of good info. My main concerns were around the ability to attach to iSCSI shares from multiple ESX hosts.. Some things I read made it sounds like this was a problem but it sounds like this is do-able. I'll give it a try. am just dropping in and want to know, what are your expectations on iSCSI? Do you get iSCSI HBA or will you use standard network cards (Software iSCSI)? I have had some poor performance with NFS FreeNAS shares and ESX. The performance is much below the performance I get when mounting the shares from Linux servers. I have seen reports of better iSCSI performance, so this is primarily an experiment to verify that and get some hands-on experience to compare the two protocols. Since it's primarily an experiment, I have not installed new HBAs to offload the overhead of iSCSI. If it turns out successful, I will upgrade my hosts and migrate more/all shares to iSCSI.
I currently use NFS for my datastores in a small lab environment, with 6 ESX hosts and a couple Linux servers all mounting the same NFS share. Now I'm looking into deploying an iSCSI datastore, ... See more...
I currently use NFS for my datastores in a small lab environment, with 6 ESX hosts and a couple Linux servers all mounting the same NFS share. Now I'm looking into deploying an iSCSI datastore, and I've been a bit confused by some of the questions and caveats I've seen in posts here. Can anyone recommend a good resource for ramping up on iSCSI, specifically as related to its use with ESX and limitations to be aware of and architect for? Such as: - Attaching several ESX hosts and Linux servers to the same iSCSI export (LUN?) - Best practices for organizing VMs to iSCSI shares. - Implications of "LUNs". If I understand this correctly, a LUN is a logical SCSI disk. Are there limits to VMs per LUN or iSCSI clients attaching to LUNs?
Did you ever come up with any improvements? I am having the same issue with FreeBSD/FreeNAS. When xferring from my Linux server, I get ~25MB/s. With ESX, it's more like 5MB/s.
I'm wondering the same thing.. I just added a FreeNAS box as an NFS NAS. I transferred a few VMs to it, and when copything them via a Linux server which has the old NAS & FreeNAS mounted, I saw... See more...
I'm wondering the same thing.. I just added a FreeNAS box as an NFS NAS. I transferred a few VMs to it, and when copything them via a Linux server which has the old NAS & FreeNAS mounted, I saw ~200-250Mbps throughput. When I moved a VM between the two NAS's via VirtualCenter, I got ~50Mbps throughput. Is ESX just much slower than Linux when accessing NFS? Or can the performance be improved?
Thanks for the responses. The VLAN config within the VSM VM threw me off. In standard VMs, the VM itself is unaware of any VLAN settings when the VLAN configured in the port group.
I have been unable to find the port group settings when running the VSM within a VM addressed in the Cisco docs.. they just say "create 3 port goups". But, the VLAN configuration for those PGs... See more...
I have been unable to find the port group settings when running the VSM within a VM addressed in the Cisco docs.. they just say "create 3 port goups". But, the VLAN configuration for those PGs are not clear to me. Within the VSM configuration, you defined the VLAN that each network (Mgmnt, Control, Packet) are on. This implies that the VSM VM will be generating tagged packets, so the port groups should be set as trunk / virtual guest tag. But, if that's the case, why do they recommend 3 port groups? You should be able to use one trunk port group and let the physical switch handle the VLANs. So, are they instead expecting that the VLAN assignment will be done on the Port Groups? The Cisco config docs give lots of info on the Cisco command-line config.. Can some give, or point to, the settings on the VMware port groups when using the VSM from within a VM?
I am lab testing Intel Dual Port 10 Gigabit NICs ( Intel Corporation 82598EB 10-Gigabit AT CX4 ) to assess the performance and whether I can virtualize some network dependent servers. It is wor... See more...
I am lab testing Intel Dual Port 10 Gigabit NICs ( Intel Corporation 82598EB 10-Gigabit AT CX4 ) to assess the performance and whether I can virtualize some network dependent servers. It is working, but I am not confident I have it all working as well as it could. Some questions I have are: - Is an individual VM throttled to 1Gbps? I get throughput to an individual VM at ~1Gbps. But, if I connect to more than one, all connected via the same 10Gig Ethernet NIC, I get several Gbps. Is there a rate limiting going on (No, I don't have any QoS defined in the vSwitch). - In ESX3.5, you had to manually configure NetQueue, is it enabled by default in vSphere, or do I need to manually enable it? Can I view the status of the NIC features anywhere? - Similar to the NetQueue enabling, is there a process for enabling Jumbo Frames? Any other tips or documents for a 10Gig setup?
Thanks for the responses. Those are helpful. But, judging from the responses, I guess there is no known/definitive problem that would cause performance issues. So, I will feel better ab... See more...
Thanks for the responses. Those are helpful. But, judging from the responses, I guess there is no known/definitive problem that would cause performance issues. So, I will feel better about ordering a couple more low end SATA-based servers for simple testing in my lab. Thanks
I have been using SATA drives with Intel SATA controllers on a few lab test hosts. It seems to work well, ESX recognizes the disks which are usable as local datastores. But, on one host I not... See more...
I have been using SATA drives with Intel SATA controllers on a few lab test hosts. It seems to work well, ESX recognizes the disks which are usable as local datastores. But, on one host I noticed very poor performance after using it for a while. I vaguely recall reading similar reports of SATA disk slowdowns here, but never a conclusive output on whether it was a SATA issue. I searched for info on this, but didn't turn up anything. I realize the SATA controllers/drives are not on the hardware compat. lists. But, I am just trying to use them for lab testing, so I am okay with that. I'm mainly interested to find out if there are known problems with SATA drives and/or any recommended steps to help them work better. Also, it seems like the vSphere release will have broader SATA support. Does this change when that is released?
Thanks for the response. I ended up rebooting the ESX host, and using the LSI Logic BIOS configuration to add the new disk into the array and re-build. Their GUI-based array setup tool is ... See more...
Thanks for the response. I ended up rebooting the ESX host, and using the LSI Logic BIOS configuration to add the new disk into the array and re-build. Their GUI-based array setup tool is quite poor. if anything, the GUI makes it less usable than a decent CLI. Also, I'm still not sure why it didn't rebuild the array when the disk was replaced. This is the default behavior on other RAID controllers I have used. For future systems, I'll be looking for better controllers.
I have an ESX 3.5 host with an LSI Logic (MegaRAID SAS 1078) controller which works great. One of the disks in the RAID array went south, and I'm trying to figure out how to make the controller... See more...
I have an ESX 3.5 host with an LSI Logic (MegaRAID SAS 1078) controller which works great. One of the disks in the RAID array went south, and I'm trying to figure out how to make the controller re-build the array. I have seen downloads for other controllers, to allow them to manage ESX arrays (such as Adaptec Storage Manager). Is there an app like that for LSI Logic controllers? I thought that when I put in the new disk it would automatically rebuild. But, that didn't happen, it noticed the new disk but didn't rebuild.
When you say "Enable EVC", is there a config step needed to enable this? I do have VT and No-Exec enabled in the BIOS, but I am not sure how/where I enable EVC. Also, the thing I'm trying to... See more...
When you say "Enable EVC", is there a config step needed to enable this? I do have VT and No-Exec enabled in the BIOS, but I am not sure how/where I enable EVC. Also, the thing I'm trying to mask is SSE4.1, which the VMware docs say is not supported for EVC ( apparently because they think apps might not respect the mask for this feature. But, there is no chance that this will be used by my VMs, so I would like to mask it if possible)