VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘esxi’ Category

I’ve posted about dealing with ESX snapshots before, but it seems to always be a topic that resurfaces. It’s almost as if there is a “virtualization school of hard knocks” and dealing with open ESX snapshots is a required course. Maybe the misunderstanding is so widespread because a lot of administrators first use VMware Workstation before implementing production servers hosted on ESX?

Anyways, there is a lot of information about snapshots and the problems they can get you in already on the web, but this week Jason Boche posted Know thy open snapshots
which I found to be very informative and helpful. The title of my post was taken from an eye opening quote from Jason:

“Unfortunately in the current builds, VMware doesn’t give us real good (or automated) visibility of open snapshots. I liken it to handing a loaded gun to a child – it’s only a matter of time before an accident happens. That analogy is quite extreme but it gets my point across …”

Read Jason’s post in it’s entirety for much more information, but I particularly like his explanation Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike Windows Sever and various Linux distributions that have separate installation media for 32 bit and 64 bit versions, there is only one VMware ESX installation CD. If you have 64 bit hardware you need to download and install the same media available at https://www.vmware.com/download/vi/ that you would use for 32 bit hardware. There is an additional requirement and configuration for 64 bit guest VMs, however.

To enable hosting of virtual machines running 64 bit operating systems and applications you must have an ESX host that has CPUs with modern virtualization assist technologies. This would be either the Intel-VT or the AMD-V processors. Once you have hardware with these processors you need to enable them in the server BIOS. A common example for enabling this feature would be to hit whatever key your hardware requires duing boot (F2, F12, DEL, F9, etc), and then once in the BIOS go to Advanced Features > Processors > Virtualization Assist. This will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Note that you can install ESX with virtualization assist disabled, and you can P2V or build 32 bit VMs without issue, but once you try to add a 64 bit guest Read the rest of this entry »

If you are like me you’ve probably wondered “if VMware’s ESXi hypervisor is supposed to be so small, then why is the downloadable installation media so huge?” As you can see from the image to the right, the current version is 241 MB! A download that size does not appear to be the tiny, embeddable hypervisor minus the Linux based Service Console we’ve all heard so much about. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to participate in a phone conversation a few weeks back with Amir Sharif, VMware Senior Product Manager, where I got the answer to this very question.

Amir explained to me that the VMware ESXi downloads (both for installation media and patches) contain 4 major components.  These components and their approximate sizes are:
Read the rest of this entry »

The problem surfaced from a ESX 3.5 U2 host fiber connected (FC) to a NetApp filer. An AutoSupport email was generated (NetApp’s filer “phone home” feature) with the following information:

This AutoSupport indicates that there is a configuration issue in the FCP partner path.

Information:
============

[hostname: scsitarget.partnerPath.misconfigured:error]: FCP Partner Path Misconfigured.
[hostname: scsitarget.partnerPath.misconfigured:error]: FCP Partner Path Misconfigured – Host I/O access through a non-primary and non-optimal path was detected.

The AutoSupport email even explained what causes the misconfigured path.

This message occurs when the system detects that host I/O access to logical units (LUNs) is not through a primary path. NetApp clustered storage controllers allow access to LUNs through primary, optimized paths, and secondary, non-optimized paths.  Secondary(non-primary) paths provide access to LUNs through the partner storage controller’s FCP target ports. Under normal operating conditions, a host should not perform I/O to LUNs using a non-primary path. Access through a non-primary path should only occur when a host’s MPIO software detects a failure of all primary paths.

The mystery for me was “what caused a failure of the primary path?“. Believe it or not, Read the rest of this entry »

This post is a summary of notes from the 1:30 pm VMworld 2008 session titled Managing ESX in a COS-less World. The discussion was about various options for managing ESXi without the Service Console OS (COS). The session was hosted by members of the ESXi team and contained forward looking statements about possible future directions. As always, the disclaimer was discussed with the audience before the presentation began. (Do I need to keep explaining this? Probably the safe thing to do.)

Scott Lowe apparently was in the same session so check his
TA2659: Managing ESX in a COS-less World post for a lot of additional information besides what I have recorded here.  Scott, my 3 finger “peck typing” doesn’t compare to your keyboard skills!

One of the first things mentioned was that the next major release of ESX/ESXi would be the last release of the two products together. I guess this means that ESXi kernel development will be independent of the ESX versions that provide the VDC-OS. We were told ESXi will continue without the COS and that ESX would include a stripped down COS.

There are several reasons VMware needed to remove the COS from ESX. Read the rest of this entry »

Some VM /ETC readers may remember a weekly series of posts I was doing earlier this year – “things that make you go hmmm“. Well, the August 12 ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 BUG definitely deserves a resurrection of that series and a post all to itself. Although this topic is still a little too sensitive to be humorous today, I’ve included a mix of comic and serious links. Hopefully we can all look back and at least chuckle about these events sometime in the future. So, here is a sampling of of the various reactions and opinions on the VMware time bomb bug from around the internet. Laugh if you can. After all, it’s Friday … Read the rest of this entry »

Being that it is the end of the week and I have fallen a day or so behind in keeping up with the VMware updates for the August 12 time bomb bug, I decided that I would post the remaining emails I received from VMware. I’m also including an update from John Troyer from the VMTN Blog providing some clarity on version number information differences between the install media and the express patched ESX/ESXi 3.5 versions. Read the rest of this entry »