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Archive for the ‘ESXi6’ Category

Creating a bootable USB installer for ESXi and use it to create a bootable ESXi installation

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/05

VMware and USB sticks have two aspects:

Creating an installable USB stick
Boot from it and install on another USB stick

Some motherboard and servers offer an internal USB socket to plug in the second stick.

If not, search for “usb 3” motherboard header adapter “usb a”.

Getting the ISO installer on a USB stick to install from

Download Rufus (I’ve used the portable version from)
Run Rufus, select ISO image type
Choose the image (the button on the right of the image type), in my case VMware-VMvisor-Installer-201701001-4887370.x86_64.iso from https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6 which Rufus recognises as ESXI-6.5.0-20170104001-STANDARD:

Confirm the menu file replacement (note they forgot to translate the Ja button to Yes and Nee to No):

---------------------------
Replace menu.c32?
---------------------------
This ISO image seems to use an obsolete version of 'menu.c32'.
Boot menus may not display properly because of this.

A newer version can be downloaded by Rufus to fix this issue:
- Choose 'Yes' to connect to the internet and download the file
- Choose 'No' to leave the existing ISO file unmodified
If you don't know what to do, you should select 'Yes'.

Note: The new file will be downloaded in the current directory and once a 'menu.c32' exists there, it will be reused automatically.
---------------------------
Ja Nee
---------------------------

If you get this, then just choose No in the previous dialog:

--------------------------- File download --------------------------- Unknown internet error 0x00002F0D --------------------------- OK ---------------------------
Confirm erasure of the USB device data (here the Cancel button is still Dutch Annuleren:

--------------------------- Rufus --------------------------- WARNING: ALL DATA ON DEVICE 'NO_LABEL (F:) [4.1GB]' WILL BE DESTROYED. To continue with this operation, click OK. To quit click CANCEL. --------------------------- OK Annuleren ---------------------------

Installing from the USB based installer onto another target USB stick

Yes, you need a second USB to install onto. Which means that it’s best if the two sticks are different models or different brands so it is easier to set them apart.

Insert both sticks in your machine
Power on the machine and go into BIOS settings
Boot from the first

Posted in ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Intel Sightings in ESXi Bundled Microcode Patches for VMSA-2018-0004 (52345)

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/15

If you’ve installed this patch [WayBack] Intel Sightings in ESXi Bundled Microcode Patches for VMSA-2018-0004 (52345), then please read the article if your processor is affected by microcode updates in it.

To inspect which processor is in your machine, please see:

On my system, this was enough:

vim-cmd hostsvc/hostsummary | grep cpuModel vim-cmd hostsvc/hosthardware | grep -w -A7 "cpuPkg\|cpuFeature" | grep "description\|eax\|ebx\|ecx\|edx\|vendor"

The above statements are based on:

[WayBack] How to get ESXi CPU model through command line?? |VMware Communities

[WayBack] get vmware esxi cpu info | ForDoDone

I was lucky, but for now, ESXi has retracted it.

So please disregard my previous post VMware ESXi 6.5.0 Patch History.

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

how to resize (grow) device partition of a multi-device BTRFS filesystem?

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/11

To grow you must first change the size of the container: the partition, the LV, or arraydevice. Then you can resize the file system. It’s the same with XFS, and NTFS. I’m only aware of Apple’sdiskutil resizevolume command that resizes the flavors of HFS+ and at the same time sets the new end valuefor the partition entry.

Source: Development of the BTRFS linux file system (not yet archived at the WayBack machine)

I will need the above for a single disk device having a BTRFS partition sandwiched between a swap and xfs partition:

# parted -l
Model: VMware Virtual disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 21.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  1562MB  1561MB  primary  linux-swap(v1)  type=82
 2      1562MB  17.7GB  16.1GB  primary  btrfs           boot, type=83
 3      17.7GB  21.5GB  3799MB  primary  xfs             type=83

I’ll likekly be:

extend the disk inin ESXi
use gparted to move the xfs partition to the end of the disk
use gparted to extend the btrfs partition
use btrfs to extend the volume inside the btrfs partition

I might be able to do all this from the gparted live CD as moving xfs and growing btrfs is on the GParted — Features list.

Fingers crossed. Luckily I’ve backups (:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux, Tumbleweed, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Determine TBW from SSDs with S.M.A.R.T Values in ESXi (smartctl) | Virten.net

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/31

On my research list: Determine TBW from SSDs with S.M.A.R.T Values in ESXi (smartctl) | Virten.net

Via Matthijs ter Woord.

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 1 Comment »

VMware ESXi – converting a thick disk to a thin disk – via: Server Fault

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/17

There are various places that tell you you cannot resize a thick disk to a thin disk using vmkfstools.

When you do it wrong, you get this error:

DiskLib_Check() failed for source disk. The file specified is not a virtual disk (15).

This happens when you directly try to resize the physical disk image:

# vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk msmxp-flat.vmdk --diskformat thin msmxp-flat.thin.vmdk
DiskLib_Check() failed for source disk The file specified is not a virtual disk (15).

Whereas you should point vmkfstools to the disk descriptor file which has the shortest name:

# vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk msmxp.vmdk --diskformat thin msmxp.thin.vmdk
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk 'msmxp.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

(Note that many people shorten the --clonevirtualdisk to -i and --diskformat to -d).

For performance, it doesn’t matter much if your disk is thick or thin as explained by Death to false myths: The type of virtual disk used determines your performance.

But various people issues expanding a thick disk. With thin disks, that usually works fine.

This post explains the correct steps of resizing: VMWare ESXi 5.1–convert virtual disk (vmdk) from thick to thin provision.

Here is a summary:

Step zero: shutdown the VM and ensure you have a backup!

For instance with rsync is great for making a local backup:

# time ./850EVO1TBR1B/bin/rsync -aiv --info=progress2 --progress ./850EVO1TBR1B/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp/ ./850EVO1TBR1A/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp/

Step one: show the disk files:

/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk

There are two: msmxp.vmdk describes the disk and msmxp-flat.vmdk has the data.

Step two: ensure you have enough free space on the volume:

# ls -al /vmfs/volumes | grep "552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed"
drwxr-xr-t    1 root     root          2660 Aug  5 04:35 552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root     root            35 Aug  5 06:11 850EVO1TBR1B -> 552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed
# df -h | grep "850EVO1TBR1B\|Use%"
Filesystem   Size   Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFS-5     930.8G 736.8G    194.0G  79% /vmfs/volumes/850EVO1TBR1B

Convert the disk:

# vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk msmxp.vmdk --diskformat thin msmxp.thin.vmdk
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk 'msmxp.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

Observe the size:

In my case the flat disk was almost full and fragmented, so the thin disk is not smaller:

/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp.thin-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.thin.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk

Rename both disks

Use vmkfstools (do not use mv as that will not keep the descriptor/data vmdk files bound together) and check the rename.

You can replace --renamevirtualdisk with -E:

/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --renamevirtualdisk msmxp.thin.vmdk msmxp.vmdk
## /vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools -E msmxp.vmdk msmxp.thick.vmdk
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp.thick-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.thick.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk

Turn on the Virtual Machine to verify it still works.

If it does, then delete it (you can replace --deletevirtualdisk with -U) which will remove both both the descriptor and data vmdk file:

/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --deletevirtualdisk msmxp.vmdk 
## /vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools -U msmxp.vmdk 
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk

After shutting down the VM again and making a new backup, you can now expand the disk as described in VMware KB: Adding space to an ESXi/ESX host virtual disk.

You can replace --extendvirtualdisk with -X.

/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 14G msmxp.vmdk 
## /vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools -X 14G msmxp.vmdk 
Grow: 100% done.
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk


/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --renamevirtualdisk msmxp.vmdk msmxp.thick.vmdk
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --clonevirtualdisk msmxp.thick.vmdk msmxp.vmdk --diskformat thin
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk 'msmxp.thick.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # diff msmxp.thick.vmdk msmxp.vmdk
--- msmxp.thick.vmdk
+++ msmxp.vmdk
@@ -7,18 +7,18 @@
 createType="vmfs"
 
 # Extent description
-RW 29360128 VMFS "msmxp.thick-flat.vmdk"
+RW 29360128 VMFS "msmxp-flat.vmdk"
 
 # The Disk Data Base 
 #DDB
 
-ddb.adapterType = "ide"
-ddb.thinProvisioned = "1"
-ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
-ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
-ddb.geometry.cylinders = "29127"
-ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9f 5e f8 33 76-6e c5 48 3c f2 84 d8 1e"
-ddb.longContentID = "5659579edebed2ebdd8e0c8fda15abd4"
 ddb.toolsVersion = "9221"
 ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"
 ddb.deletable = "true"
+ddb.longContentID = "5659579edebed2ebdd8e0c8fda15abd4"
+ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 95 66 1b cf 7a-e3 db 3f 30 17 7e 00 2d"
+ddb.geometry.cylinders = "29127"
+ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
+ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
+ddb.thinProvisioned = "1"
+ddb.adapterType = "ide"
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp.thick-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.thick.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 14G msmxp.vmdk
Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid (1).
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 14G msmxp.vmdk
Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid (1).
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 14G msmxp.vmdk
Failed to extend disk : One of the parameters supplied is invalid (1).
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 15G msmxp.vmdk
Grow: 100% done.
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp.thick-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.thick.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # vmkfstools --deletevirtualdisk msmxp.thick.vmdk 
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp # du -h *.vmdk
12.0G   msmxp-flat.vmdk
0   msmxp.vmdk
/vmfs/volumes/552f5788-33e30274-8dba-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD-VM/msmxp #

–jeroen

via: vmware esxi – vmkfstools returns error when trying to copy thin vmdk – Server Fault.

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi: when esxtop shows garbage.

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/14

The ESXi console top to show processes is not available *, the alternative is esxtop. But that can show garbage because the ESXi console has a very limited support of terminals **.

For instance, when connecting from a Mac OS X terminal through ssh, this is my terminal:

# echo $TERM xterm-256color

The solution:

TERM=xterm esxtop

–jeroen

via: VMware KB: Output of esxtop defaults to non-interactive CSV with unknown TermInfo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, bash, Development, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Scripting, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 2 Comments »

vim-cmd suspending/resuming a bunch of VMs

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/09/13

These two vim-cmd scripts come in very handy:

	#!/bin/sh
	VMS=`vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms \| grep -v Vmid \| awk '{print $1}'`
	for VM in $VMS ; do
	# echo "Probing VM with id: $VM."
	PWR=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate $VM \| grep -v "Retrieved runtime info"`
	name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config $VM \| grep -i "name =" \| awk '{print $3}' \| head -1 \| awk -F'"' '{print $2}'`
	echo "VM with id $VM has power state $PWR (name = $name)."
	done

view raw

esxi-show-power-state-of-all-VMs.sh

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

	#!/bin/sh
	# https://wiert.me/2021/04/30/vmware-esxi-console-viewing-all-vms-suspending-and-waking-them-up-part-5/
	RUNNING=0
	vmids=`vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms \| sed -n -E -e "s/^([[:digit:]]+)\s+((\S.+\S)?)\s+(\[\S+\])\s+(.+\.vmx)\s+(\S+)\s+(vmx-[[:digit:]]+)\s*?((\S.+)?)$/\1/p"`
	for vmid in ${vmids} ; do
	# echo "Probing VM with id: $vmid."
	powerState=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate ${vmid} \| sed '1d'`
	name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} \| sed -n -E -e '/$vim.vm.ConfigInfo$ \{/,/files = $vim.vm.FileInfo$ \{/ s/^ +name = "(.)",.?/\1/p'`
	vmPathName=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} \| sed -n -E -e '/files = $vim.vm.FileInfo$ \{/,/tools = $vim.vm.ToolsConfigInfo$ \{/ s/^ +vmPathName = "(.)",.?/\1/p'`
	# echo "VM with id ${vmid} has power state ${powerState} (name = ${name}; vmPathName = ${vmPathName})."
	if [ "${powerState}" == "Powered on" ] ; then
	RUNNING=1
	echo "Powered on VM with id ${vmid} and name: $name"
	echo "Suspending VM with id ${vmid} and name: $name"
	vim-cmd vmsvc/power.suspend ${vmid} > /dev/null &
	fi
	done

	while true ; do
	if [ $RUNNING -eq 0 ] ; then
	echo "Gone…"
	break
	fi
	RUNNING=0
	for vmid in ${vmids} ; do
	# echo "Probing VM with id: $vmid."
	powerState=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate ${vmid} \| sed '1d'`
	name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} \| sed -n -E -e '/$vim.vm.ConfigInfo$ \{/,/files = $vim.vm.FileInfo$ \{/ s/^ +name = "(.)",.?/\1/p'`
	vmPathName=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config ${vmid} \| sed -n -E -e '/files = $vim.vm.FileInfo$ \{/,/tools = $vim.vm.ToolsConfigInfo$ \{/ s/^ +vmPathName = "(.)",.?/\1/p'`
	# echo "VM with id ${vmid} has power state ${powerState} (name = ${name}; vmPathName = ${vmPathName})."
	if [ "${powerState}" == "Powered on" ] ; then
	RUNNING=1
	echo "Waiting for id ${vmid} and name: $name…"
	fi
	done
	sleep 1
	done

	exit 0

view raw

esxi-suspend-all-VMs.sh

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

	#!/bin/sh
	SUSPENDED=0
	VMS=`vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms \| grep -v Vmid \| awk '{print $1}'`
	VMstateToProcess="Suspended"
	for VM in $VMS ; do
	# echo "Probing VM with id: $VM."
	PWR=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate $VM \| grep -v "Retrieved runtime info"`
	name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config $VM \| grep -i "name =" \| awk '{print $3}' \| head -1 \| awk -F'"' '{print $2}'`
	echo "VM with id $VM has power state $PWR (name = $name)."
	if [ "$PWR" == "$VMstateToProcess" ] ; then
	SUSPENDED=1
	echo "Suspended VM with id $VM and name: $name"
	echo "Resuming VM with id $VM and name: $name"
	# you'd think power.suspendResume is the inverse of power.suspend, but actually power.on is:
	vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on $VM > /dev/null &
	fi
	done

	while true ; do
	if [ $SUSPENDED -eq 0 ] ; then
	echo "Gone…"
	break
	fi
	SUSPENDED=0
	for VM in $VMS ; do
	PWR=`vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate $VM \| grep -v "Retrieved runtime info"`
	if [ "$PWR" == "$VMstateToProcess" ] ; then
	name=`vim-cmd vmsvc/get.config $VM \| grep -i "name =" \| awk '{print $3}' \| head -1 \| awk -F'"' '{print $2}'`
	echo "Waiting for id $VM and name: $name…"
	SUSPENDED=1
	fi
	done
	sleep 1
	done

view raw

esxi-resume-all-suspended-VMs.sh

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

–jeroen

Posted in bash, Development, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on apcupsd, a SUA3000XLI and a SUA48XLBP battery pack

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/22

I’ve had a SUA3000XLI for years using the USB cable and default Windows support as PowerChute Personal Edition would fail to recognise it and abort installation (so I could not use APC drivers as described on youtube).

A while ago, Liander – the energy distribution company – wanted to replace both the gas and electricity meters to become “smart” during day time. The server configuration load was heavy enough for Windows to indicate the UPS would last about 30 minutes. At night that’s not much of a problem but during 1 hour replacement day-time it would be a problem.

So I bought a SUA48XLBP battery pack (and a SUA039 cable as the cable wasn’t long enough to keep an inch or so air space between UPS and battery pack) so the battery would last about 3 times as long.

Windows would still show it would last about 30 minutes. Strange. So I started looking around and it appeared the SUA3000XLI needed calibration which requires PowerChute. Since PowerChute won’t work, I was almost back at square 1. Almost, as I know knew it required calibration.

In the past I had come across apcupcd but that was a long time ago when it supported a limited set of operating systems and a limited set of features so I never installed it.

But when searching how to calibrate the without using PowerChute, it quickly appeared that the apctest part of apcupsd can do just that: soft calibrate the UPS/battery combo. There are some steps and prerequisites (the most important ones are to turn off the apcupsd and provide enough load and 100% battery charge at start).

Spoiler: the combined UPS/battery-pack now lasts for almost 2 hours which is long enough.

Installing apcupsd

I’m describing this from a Windows perspective and it’s dead easy:

download the latest release
run the installer
allow the driver to be installed
1. indicate it’s OK to install an unsigned driver
2. now Windows won’t recognise the UPS any more, but in a few steps the apcupsd and helper program will
update the configuration file (no changes needed when it’s a USB connected one)
wait for the service to start
wait for the apctray helper program to start
look in the “system tray” for apctray helper program icon
optionally configure your system to auto-start apctray after logon

The USB connection to the UPS delivers slightly less options than using a serial cable

Using a serial cable instead of a USB one

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in APC Smart-UPS, apcupsd, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Liander, Power User, UPS, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows XP | 1 Comment »

Some links on Hyperthreading, ESXi and vSphere

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/07/22

In case I bump into vSphere/ESXi machines that have hyper threading (HT) enabled:

Short summary: HyperThreading: What is it and does it benefit ESXi? | VMXP.
Extensive list of considerations: Tune ESXi Host CPU Configuration.
Short list of configuration steps: Enable Configure or Disable Hyperthreading on Vsphere ESXi Hosts | RouteMyBrain.
Back in 2010 you could already benefit from HT: Hyper-Threading on vSphere « vPivot.
NUMA can benefit from using HT; in vSphere 4 you had to enable NUMA.preferHT for processor cache intensive work: Optimizing vSphere for Hyper-threading « vPivot.
vSphere 4, 5 and up are HT aware: virtualTodd’s Big Blog: Enabling HyperThreading for vSphere Servers.
Intel HyperThreaded CPU cores do not count towards the CPU resources: intel – CPU Resource pool with and without hyperthreading in vmware esx/esxi – Server Fault.
Pros and Cons: Use Hyperthreading in ESX or not? | The VMguy.
Extensive PDF: Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5.0.
Great analysis atvia Dasher Blog | Will Hyper-Threading Improve Processing Performance?. including a list of potential cons you should test:
- the server has more than two sockets,
- the server has a large number of physical cores,
- the operating system is not hyper-threading aware (example: Windows Server 2003),
- the application is single-threaded or does not handle multiple threads efficiently,
- the application is already designed to maximize the use of the execution units in each core, or
- the application has a very high rate of memory I/O.
Great discussion in the comments; always measure! Hyper-Threading Gotcha with Virtual Machine vCPU Sizing – Wahl Network.

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed notes

Posted by jpluimers on 2016/06/13

After zypper dup (dist-upgrade) or zypper up (update) a zypper ps will list processes using deleted files (i.e. processes that likely need to be restarted).

Some processes that can be restarted without reboot:

vmtoolsd or vmware-vmblock-fuse
- rcvmtoolsd restart
irqbalance
- rcirqbalance restart
login
- logoff
polkitd or dbus-daemon
- rcdbus restart
nscd
- rcnscd restart
sshd
- rcsshd restart
- logoff/logon if you are holding one of the ssh sessions
named
- rcnamed restart
cron
- rccron restart
ntpd
- rcntp restart
smbd
- rcsmd restart
nmbd
- rcnmb restart
cupsd
- rccups restart
dmeventd
- dmeventd -R
snapperd
- rcdbus restart
shellinaboxd
- rcshellinabox restart
monit
- rcmonit restart
auditd
- rcauditd restart
haveged
- rchaveged restart
systemd
- systemctl daemon-reexec

To research

dhcpcd
rs:main
agetty
lvmetad
agetty
dmeventd

Some processes that require a reboot:

systemd-journald
systemd-udevd
systemd-logind
login
(sd-pam
- although maybe not, but better safe than sorry
gpg-agent
wickedd, wickedd-auto4,wickedd-dhcp6,wickedd-dhcp4 and wickedd-nanny

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Linux, openSuSE, Power User, SuSE Linux, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘ESXi6’ Category

Creating a bootable USB installer for ESXi and use it to create a bootable ESXi installation

Getting the ISO installer on a USB stick to install from

Installing from the USB based installer onto another target USB stick

Intel Sightings in ESXi Bundled Microcode Patches for VMSA-2018-0004 (52345)

how to resize (grow) device partition of a multi-device BTRFS filesystem?

Determine TBW from SSDs with S.M.A.R.T Values in ESXi (smartctl) | Virten.net

VMware ESXi – converting a thick disk to a thin disk – via: Server Fault

Here is a summary:

Step zero: shutdown the VM and ensure you have a backup!

Step one: show the disk files:

Step two: ensure you have enough free space on the volume:

Convert the disk:

Observe the size:

Rename both disks

Turn on the Virtual Machine to verify it still works.

ESXi: when esxtop shows garbage.

vim-cmd suspending/resuming a bunch of VMs

Some notes on apcupsd, a SUA3000XLI and a SUA48XLBP battery pack

Installing apcupsd

Using a serial cable instead of a USB one

Some links on Hyperthreading, ESXi and vSphere

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed notes

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

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Archive for the ‘ESXi6’ Category

Getting the ISO installer on a USB stick to install from

Installing from the USB based installer onto another target USB stick

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Here is a summary:

Step zero: shutdown the VM and ensure you have a backup!

Step one: show the disk files:

Step two: ensure you have enough free space on the volume:

Convert the disk:

Observe the size:

Rename both disks

Turn on the Virtual Machine to verify it still works.

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Installing apcupsd

Using a serial cable instead of a USB one

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