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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘ESXi5.1’ Category

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Oops: Exception 14 in world – ESXi 5.1

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/10

Need to figure out if VMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.1, Patch ESXi510-Update02: ESXi 5.1 Complete Update 2 indeed solved the issue below as it seems to beVMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.x host experiences a purple diagnostic screen mentioning E1000PollRxRing and E1000DevRx:

VMware ESXi 5.1.0 [Releasebuild-1065491 x86_64]
Exception 14 in world 8194:idle2 IP 0x418017779c226 addr 0x0
...
PTEs:0xnnnnnnnn;0xnnnnnnnn;0x0;
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]E1000PollRxRing@vmkernel#nover+ 0xdb9 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]E1000DevRx@vmkernel#nover+0x18a stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]IOChain_Resume@vmkernel#nover+0x247 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]PortOutput@vmkernel#nover+0xe3 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]EtherswitchForwardLeafPortsQuick@#+0xd6 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]EtherswitchPortDispatch@#+0x13bb stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]Port_InputResume@vmkernel#nover+0x146 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]Port_Input_Committed@vmkernel#nover+0x29 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]E1000DevAsyncTx@vmkernel#nover+0x190 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]NetWorldletPerVMCB@vmkernel#nover+0xae stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn
0xnnnnnnnnnnnn:[0xnnnnnnnnnnnn]WorldletProcessQueue@vmkernel#nover+0x486 stack: 0xnnnnnnnnnnnn 
Debugger waiting(world 8194) -- no port for remote debugger. "Escape" for local debugger.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi5.1, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Increasing your Windows NTFS disk size under VMware ESXi

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/03

A really long time I wrote about Increasing your Windows XP NTFS disk size under VMware Workstation 7.

I totally forgot that article also included a link to do the same on ESXi the old fashioned style. The tool you needed back then (and still works) there is vmkfstools (the ESXi version, not the vCLI version), and use it like this to extend the VMDK disk to 60 gigabyte:

vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 60G /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/disk_name.vmdk

You can replace --extendvirtualdisk with -X.

However, nowadays you can do the same from the vSphere Client as explained by David Davis at How to Extend a vSphere Windows VM Disk Volume.

After that you follow the steps in the original article to increase the partition size inside Windows.

As of Windows Vista, this has become much easier, so there you go.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Fusion, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Accessing the ESXi Direct Console User Interface DCUI via SSH – Wahl Network

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/05

I just learned (thanks Chris Wahl!) about the dcui command: often easier to configure basic parameters than the other UIs.

The DCUI is normally available from the console after you login, for instance to enable SSH.

This was new to me:

DCUI is available over SSH.

Even more embarrassing: duic has been actually there since ESXi 4.1 (:

–jeroen

via: Accessing the ESXi Direct Console User Interface DCUI via SSH – Wahl Network.

Posted in *nix, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Mac/PC: sending Wake-on-LAN (WOL) packets

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/25

I’ve succesfully woken up these machines:

  • HP XW6600 running ESXi 5.1
  • ThinkPad W701U running Windows 7

I still need to try to wake up a Mac Mini Server running OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

MacBook Air on 10.7 (Lion) and Retina on 10.8 (Mountain Lion) won’t work as they are WiFi only, and WOL does not work over WiFi.

On 10.7 and up it might not work on a Mac Mini Server either, as Apple Introduced Dark Wake.

I used these tools to send WOL packets: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Apple, ESXi5.1, Ethernet, Hardware, HP XW6600, Linux, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Network-and-equipment, openSuSE, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, SuSE Linux, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Wake-on-LAN (WoL), Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Windows 8.1 on VMware ESXi 5.1: Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons are invisible but functional

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/25

(Another one in the missed schedule list: this post was scheduled for this morning 06:00)

When you run a Windows 8.1 guest on VMware ESXi 5.1 with the VMware tools that belong to ESXi 5.1, the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons are invisible but functional.

It doesn’t matter how you access that VM:

  • Through an RDP session (from either the MS RDP client on Mac OS X or MSTSC on a Windows machine).
  • Through a Console Window from vSphere Client connected to the ESXi host (if that client does not run on Windows XP).
  • Through a Console Window from VMware Workstation connected to the ESXi host.

It is good to know that this is just a visual artefact, the Minimize/Maximixe/Close buttons still work:

I was having the same exact problem with my Windows 8.1 VM.  If you click the location where the buttons should be, it still works like they are there.

But he uses a solution that is not really the kind I like:

I opened Device Manager on the VM and then uninstalled the VMware Display Adaptor, including the software for the driver.  After doing that, I scanned for hardware changes and it reinstalled the display adaptor using a windows driver.

The youngest VMware Tools version it fails with on my system is this one: 9.6.1.1378637.

Uninstalling the driver from the device manager indeed solves the issue, but:   Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

7zip on ESXi through p7zip

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/13

A while ago, I wrote about getting rsync on ESXi: ESXi 5.1 and rsync – damiendebin.net.

Now I needed [WayBack] 7zip on ESXi to make sure I could test unpack some 7zip archives.

This turned out much easier than I thought, thanks to [WayBack] 7Zip for ESXI | Vladimir Lukianov: Заметки who pointed me to the [WayBack] P7ZIP project. P7ZIP actually created three things:

  • p7zip (a POSIX 7zip),
  • J7ZIP (a Java port of 7zip)
  • java_lzma (the Java port of the [WayBack] 7zip lzma SDK which had the first implementation of [WayBack] lzma).

Here are the full steps to get 7zip on ESXi 5.x:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Linux, Power User, SuSE Linux, VMware, VMware ESXi | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/11

Interesting:

ESXi-Customizer is a user-friendly script that automates the process of customizing the ESXi install-ISO with drivers that are not originally included. Unlike other scripts and manuals that are available for this purpose ESXi-Customizer runs entirely on Windows and does not require any knowledge of or access to Linux.

Download latest version | Donate to support

Requirements:

  • The script runs on Windows XP or newer (both 32-bit and 64-bit) including the latest version Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2.
  • For customizing ESXi 4.1 Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) or Windows Server 2008 R2 and administrative privileges are required.
  • You need to have a copy of the original VMware install-ISO. It is available at VMware (free registration required to download). The script currently supports ESXi version 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5.
  • For ESXi 4.1 you need to have a OEM.tgz file with a custom driver.
  • For ESXi 5.x you need to have a OEM.tgz, a VIB file or an Offline Bundle ZIP file.
  • A good source for ESXi 4.1 and 5.x community drivers is Dave Mishchenko’s vm-help.com site. See the ESXi 4.1 Whitebox HCL and the forums there.

–jeroen

via: VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer.

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

VMware ESXi: renaming a VM and VMDK

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

This turned out to be much more manual work than I hoped: renaming a VM and the VMDK used by the VM in ESXi.

If you prefer to do all steps by hand on the command-line plus two vi sessions for the vmx* files and the main vmdk file: Just one more esxi-guy: How to Rename a Virtual Machine with the CLI in esxi 5.0.

If you have vCenter, you can do it from the guy. Note for Free ESXi users: vCenter is a payed product, but there is a trial of vCenter.

A bit less manual work, but a bit more scripting from the console (if you are comfortable with that) is at Howto: Rename a VM – Yellow Bricks to which you might want to add the script mentioned at Rename multiple files by replacing a particular pattern in the filenames using a shell script – Stack Overflow.

You can also script from vMA or vCLI: VMware KB: Renaming a virtual machine disk (VMDK) via the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) or vSphere CLI (vCLI).

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ECC vs non-ECC RAM: The Great Debate (via: Nex7’s Blog). Use the ECC dude.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/30

Read this very nice post on Nex7’s Blog: ECC vs non-ECC RAM: The Great Debate.

There is no debate. Use ECC dude.

Use ECC especially for server side things (storage, virtualization, databases, etc) where you employ some kind of redundancy/correction in the storage (ZFS, RAID, etc) side of things.

And think about using ECC for the rest of your stuff, especially when things stay in memory for a longer period of time (in-memory processing of data can speed up things a lot, but also increase the risk).

Summary:

There is no debate here. None.

[…]

if you think non-ECC RAM can compete with ECC RAM, you are mistaken. If you think there’s a risk/reward analysis here, you’re correct. The risk is not gigantic, and there’s a real cost to alleviating that risk. You have to decide if that cost is worth alleviating that risk.

[…]

If you believe there’s a risk/reward plan where you can take the reward and apply to to mitigate the risk, you are back to being mistaken. The only benefit of non-ECC RAM (and thus the only reward in its choice over ECC RAM) is it will make the solution cheaper. There is not, however, any way (that I’ve heard of, yet) you can use the cost savings to mitigate the risk using non-ECC RAM will introduce.

[…]

If you choose to use non-ECC RAM, you open yourself up to a new vector for data corruption/loss/downtime/errors/etc,

one that could (rarely) even cause you to lose your entire filesystem, and one ZFS does not (cannot) resolve for you. Indeed, one it likely can’t even see at all. If you choose to employ non-ECC RAM, or are forced to do so because of circumstance or environmental constraint, that’s potentially understandable (and even acceptable) – but do not then attempt to validate or explain away that choice with pseudoscience or downplaying the risk you’ve added. You are using an inferior solution with an extra vector for data corruption/loss that ECC RAM solutions simply do not have. It is that simple.

[…]

Hint 3: There’s a reason we’re so gung-ho about using ECC RAM for ZFS, and it’s not just because we’re paranoid about data loss (which goes hand in hand with being a ZFS zealot, really). It is because you likely don’t realize how at risk you are. Due to the nature of how ZFS handles writes, your incoming (write) data is at risk of RAM-related bit errors for likely significantly longer than traditional storage solutions or alternative filesystems. 5, 10, 30, 60 or more seconds in a state where it is at risk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, ECC memory, Endian, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Hardware, Hyper-V, Linux, Memory, Power User, SuSE Linux, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

World’s Smallest VMware ESXi Server « HackingAway.org

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/30

Kewl: World’s Smallest VMware ESXi Server « HackingAway.org.

SSD, ECC, Xeon CPU. Nice!

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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