Hi all,

I have an ESXi 4 host (Update 1, build 381591, clean install) standalone installed. This server is not connected to any vCenter server, it is only managed via vSphere Client. Under /var/log/messages I see a lot of errors like this:

Jun  8 16:17:40 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:17:40.012 3D1F7B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:17:40 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:17:40.017 3D1F7B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:17:40 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:17:40.022 3D1F7B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:17:40 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:17:40.026 3D1F7B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:00 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:00.011 3C740B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:00 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:00.016 3C740B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:00 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:00.020 3C740B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:00 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:00.024 3C740B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:20 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:20.012 3D191B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:20 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:20.017 3D191B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:20 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:20.021 3D191B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.
Jun  8 16:18:20 hobbiton Hostd: [2011-06-08 16:18:20.025 3D191B90 verbose 'Statssvc'] HostCtl exception Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.

According to this kb, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1037671 is solved under ESXi 4 Update 1, and my host is this version but produces these errors. In the same KB, appoints to another kb, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003490 and as a work around restart management agents can resolve this problem ... But my ESXi is not connected to any vCenter server and doesn't shows me this option.

Is this a bug?? Is it possible to resolve this problem.

Many thanks.

Hi All

I am pretty new to ESX but have bene using workstation, and server for some time.  My department have now moved to ESXi and I am copying the VM images from one server to another.

I wanted know is there a way to cancel a copy task in vsphere client once its in progress?  I noticed that when I select the task the opion to cancel the task is greyed out.  I  connect to the server via ssh and ran a ps -ef|more but could not see anything that resembled a copy process.

Also the copy and move option seems to be very slow considering I am copying from one vmfs file system to another vmfs filesystem.

Thanks

E

Hello community!

I've got 4 vmware esxi 4.1 servers with vCenter:

- 2 running on ProLiant DL380 G5 - theese are OK

- 2 running on ProLiant DL380 G6 - here are random reboot problem.

Randomly once per 2 weeks one of two ProLiant DL380 G6 servers goes unnormal reboot. Monitoring system HP SIM says only "host x.x.x.x unreachable" then when machine boots it says "host x.x.x.x reachable". I've updated all firmwares on servers, run several stress tests, updated vmware - nothing solved problem.

Logs are clean, exept iLo 2 log:

Informational	iLO 2	09/27/2011 09:36	09/27/2011 09:36	2	Server power restored.
Informational	iLO 2	09/27/2011 09:36	09/27/2011 09:36	1	Server power removed.
Caution	iLO 2	09/27/2011 09:36	09/27/2011 09:36	2	Server reset.

That's all.

How can I catch a cause of this problem?

Point me to the right direction, I've got no ideas what to look at.

I downloaded the latest ESXi 4.1U3 ISO to install on a brand new Dell R720 host & I recieved the following error at the begining of the install...VMFS module failed to load

There are 4 network adapters, all Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet BCM5720

Hello VM community,

I've come across a few forum posts about this but was hoping for some definitive answers and maybe some step by step commands or links on how to do this. The Windows Server '08 VM guest in question lives on a server running ESXi 4.0. I would just copy from server to server via vCenter but my trial licensing expired on my two host servers and I haven't been able to install my paid licensing because my old host is not ESXi 5 yet so my two host servers are not connected anymore and so on...

I'm planning to upgrade my old ESXi 4 server to 5 and want to backup one VM guest server in case anything breaks

I basically wish to:

-mount a USB hard drive to the ESXi 4 VM host via the CLI (I'm guessing)

-copy the VM guest to the USB hard drive

-unmount the USB drive

-attach it to my other VM host server running ESXi 5.0

-copy the VM guest from the USB drive to the ESXi 5.0 server and boot it up to ensure it worked.

Any help or links to articles anybody's found would be very greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-Ben

I am having a problem with ESXi 4 that i cant figure out. I have enabled the iscsi feature and have pointed it to the correct place. But when i do a rescan for new storage it doesnt bring anything up. If i click on the "Paths" button it shows the Lun number correctly but under Status it shows as DEAD with a red diamond. What am i missing here? This is the ESXi 4 60-day trial version...im guessing it is licensed for iSCSI use. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

When I try to install VMware ESXi 4.1 from CD onto our server at our office, it fails with the error "vmkctl.HostCtlException Unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vkmod/vmfs3: Failure".  I get as far as accepting the license and seeing a progress bar move across the screen, but as the bar finishes, it dies.

The server is a PC with a Gigabyte P45 based (ICH10) motherboard and Intel Q9550 (45nm Core 2 Quad).  The BIOS has settings to turn AHCI on and off, as well as switching ports 0-3 between native and legacy mode.  I have tried all combinations, and none of them work.  If I turn of AHCI, the install CD often does not boot at all, just giving me a disk error.

I was switching from VMware Server to ESXi because Server 2.0 only has a non-functioning web interface, with well documented fatal bugs.  However, it's beginning to look like the better option of the two.  I may have to abandon VMware.

Hi:

I have installed in a server the free version of ESXi, I have installed on my PC vSphere Client and I have create virtual machines but when I try to power on one virtual machine and its console the console stays  black!

what ´s happens?????????????

thanks!

I am troubleshooting an environment generating unicast flooding during vMotion'ing.  The environment isn't exactly best practice (vMotion IP, Management IP and Virtual Machine Networks are all on the same logical subnet).  This will be corrected, but I'm trying to understand how and why the unicast flooding is occurring.

We have Dell blades (M1000e) in a Dell chassis with multiple blade center switches.  Each of these switches uplinks to Cisco gear.  When we do a vMotion between a host in the Blade Center and an external host, things work OK for a few minutes, but then unicast flooding begins.  I can send out an ARP request for the vMotion IP (target IP) from a non-involved host -- this seems to add the corresponding MAC address back to the Cisco's CAM table at which point the unicast flooding stops.

Based on my observations, the MAC address is present in the Dynamic Address List on the Dell switch (equivalent of CAM table).  So why is the Cisco expiring it (presumably after 600 seconds have passed)?

I encountered this post which asserts:

Make sure you have all your vkernel ports on separate subnets e.g.  separate vmotion/management/iscsi. Failure to do this can cause lots of flooding during vmotion as the  physical switch does not learn the MAC address for the vmotion port  correctly. And continuously broadcasts to find it.

Is this true?  Known bug?  Is there any documentation describing this?  My theory was that perhaps the ESXi server acting as the vMotion source has the destination IP in its ARP table.  It hasn't expired when the Cisco prunes on the MAC address from its CAM table and keeps transmitting without sending an ARP request.  The Cisco no longer knows where to send the packet so it Unicast Floods.

Am I way off in the weeds here?

Thanks!

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 with 12GB RAM and dual processors hyperthread with 350GB of diskspace.

This box was originally installed with Redhat Linux ES 5.4 64bits and CentOS 5.5 64bits OS without any issues so I know the processor supports 64-bits.

I then installed VMWare ESXi version 4.1 on the Dell Poweredge 2850 without any issues.

I then created a few VM instances that I want to install CentOS 5.5 64bits.  During the VMware instance setup, I get this:

msg.cpuid.notLongmodeQuestionFmt:This veritual is configured for 64-bit guest operating systems.
However, 64-bit operation is not possible.
Longmode is disabled for this virtual machine.
For more detailed information, see http://vmware.com/info?id=152
Continue without 64-bit support?

Now the question I have is this:  Since VMWare is having issues with 64-bits guest OSes, how come I can install CentOS 5.5 64 bits on this Dell PowerEdge 2850 without any issues.  It seems obvious to me that the PowerEdge 2850 works well with 64bits OS but not ESXi 4.1.

How can I get around this?

Comments?  Thanks in advance.

Hi All,

Recently,  we can no longer ssh into our ESXi 4.1 box. vSphere into it is OK and all the VMs are running fine.

Using putty to ssh into the ESXi 4.1 exits straight away with "Server unexpectedly closed network connection"

I have created a temporary symbolic link to dropbearmulti to use as an ssh client on the box itself via TSM and I am getting the same result.

The only error we get in /var/log/messages is:

dropbear[######]: premature exit: bad buf_getptr

This happened after adding ssh keys. These keys have since been removed to no effect.

We have tried to disable remote SSH and TSM and restarted management network and then enabled TSM and remote SSH and restarted the management network to no effect.

I've done some search but all the articles are talking about ESX 4.1 and to check the sshd_config file etc which does not exist in ESXi 4.1.

All help much appreciated,

Vlad

Hi,

send ctrl Alt Del is not working in few VMs. Checked the VMware tools, it's up to date and running. Rebooted or Reset the VMs but still the issue exists.

Guest os is Windows xp (32 bit) running on ESXi4.1 and ESX 3.5 hosts.

Any help on this? Thanks in advance.

Every time I reboot a host, it gets stuck on "iscsi_vmk loaded successfully" for about 10-15 minutes. The first couple of times, I've gotten impatient and powered off the host and rebooted thinking it's locked up. One time I let it go and it successfully completed the boot process. Now I'm thinking this is normal and the host's vmware iSCSI software initiator must be rescanning all my iSCSI datastores. Can anyone confirm this is what's taking place or do I have a potential problem here?

Hi all,

This is my first post since I'm new to ESXi and much of the VM family.

I recently downloaded and installed ESXi 4.0 to test on a Dell Optiplex 740 (call it 'A'). I successfully installed it, and am running several VMs without any problems.

I wanted to set up a second ESXi 4.0 server, so I grabbed another Optiplex 740 (call it 'B'), but this time the installation failed with the message:

Fatal: out of memory reading sys.vgz

This begins a loop back to the installation menu, and it will continue to loop with the same error.

I began comparing the hardware between the two and I noticed a few differences.

1) The BIOSs were different versions. 'A' is running ver 2.1.6 (05/04/08). 'B' was running 1.1.6, but I upgraded it to 2.2.4. The upgrade did not help. Also, I notice 'A' BIOS is titled Opt 740 Enhanced. 'B' does not have the Enhanced title. 'A' includes a Performance option in the BIOS that handles HDD Acoustic Mode, where as 'B' lacks this option. All other options are the same.

2) CPU: 'A' has AMD Athlon 64 X2 DC 5200.  'B' has AMD Athlon 64 X2 DC 6000. No major difference

3) Drives: 'A' has a WD 75GB SATA drive. 'B' has a Seagate 145GB drive.

Every other component is the same. I find it odd that two systems that are so similar (similar enough to be called the same model 740), would be unable to install ESXi 4 on both.

Any help on what that error message means?

Is there any hope of being able to install ESXi 4 on system 'B'? Also, it should be known that I am using a CD iso for installation.

Thanks!

Hi guys,

I need to do automated snapshots of some VMs running on our ESXi cluster. This is no problem as you can simply make a new task which is doing snapshots of some machine every friday night, for example. The problem is i need to delete some of the older snapshots, which i'd like to do automated as well. First i thought about using ghettovcb. But to my understanding ghettovcb will only work on one ESXi and not on a cluster. Once our VMs might be switched to another ESXi ghettovcb is no option. Is there any solution which is able to do the automated deleting in a cluster?

Help would be mostly appreciated.

Simon

I currently have a support case open with vmware regarding this issue but wanted to post in the forums as well incase someone has run into this issue. I am currently experiencing an issue with my storage volumes loosing connectivity for several seconds and then being restored. This is impacting VM response and performance in my environment. It also hampers my ability to vmotion guests around in order to perform maintenance for some of the troubleshooting since during a migration the particular storage volume the guest is on might become disconnected. Very frustrating!! I am current with all driver versions for the hardware involved and even tried forcing my HBA's down from 8gb to 4gb but the problem remains. This is a brand new setup in a new datacenter that we are currently migrating to. The previous datacenter we were in we are using DS8300 and XIV storage without any issues. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Environment:

ESXi 4.1 U1 hosts

IBM HX5 blade

IBM X3850 X5

IBM DS8700 FC storage

Brocade FC switch

QLogic HBA's

Got below error while trying to combine snapshot files.

vmkfstools -i AXTST167-000001.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/axtstbundled/AXTST167.vmdk

Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick

Failed to open 'AXTST167-000001.vmdk': Invalid argument (1441801).

I am trying to create a network bridge between 2 vSwitches using Linux (CentOS 5.4 / 2.6.18-164.15.1 bridge-utils 1.1)- pretty straight forward setup.

vSwitch0 has the physical NICs in the ESXi box connected and promiscuous mode allowed. vSwitch1 has no physical NICs and promiscuous mode allowed as well.  ESXi has 2 VMs, Linux machine with 2 vNICs (one in each vSwitch) and a Windows machine with a single vNIC in vSwitch1.

I've created a ethernet bridge on the Linux machine enslaving both eth0 and eth1, disabled selinux, flushed iptables and ensured both vNICs are up.

With this setup, the windows VM can not get arp replies back over the linux bridge so it never gets the mac address of the physical network GW (a cisco switch in this case). I can see the arp broadcast from the windows VM go over the bridge, and get replied too from the switch... but the reply never makes it back over the linux bridge. The response never gets sent out eth1 in vSwitch1. If I set the GW mac statically in the arp table on the windows machine, everything seems to work- so its only layer 2, ethernet broadcasts that do not seem to be able to make it over the bridge- in only one direction.

Cisco GW <-> Physical host NIC <-> vSwitch0 <-> Linux Machine vNIC eth0 <-> Linux bridge br0 <-> Linux machine vNIC eth1 <-> vSwitch1 <-> Windows vNIC

I know it sounds like a Linux issue, but this is a very basic bridge which works in the physical environment. (i set it up in the lab on physical hardware just to test that i am not forgettting something basic, and it works as expected.)

I can't be the first person to try this- is host bridging of vSwitches not supported?

(The Linux machine will -if this works- end up being a transparent Snort sensor)

Hello everyone,

As the subject suggests, when you are managing individual VMs, which is best to use? Hosts and Clusters? VMs and Templates?

This is our setup:

Previously we had been solely using "Hosts and Clusters" to manage all of our VMs. We would organize individual's objects within vApps and Resource Pools. We had also setup permissions on these parent objects as well to denote who had access to what.

We basically have about 12 users. Each has their own VMs that they use for training, etc. We manage the user's access centrally via AD with users and groups. We also have certain users assigned to certain hosts to keep things level between the two hosts. Our license doesn't allow for DRS, BTW.

I've just replaced our vCenter server in preparation for our vSphere 4.1 upgrade later this year, yes we are on vSphere 4.0 currently. So, I went ahead and used the "VMs and Templates" to create user folders, gave user access, and have placed all the user's VMs within those folders. (I've recently heard that using Hosts and Clusters was semantically incorrect.) Even though they have access to their folder, they can't create a VM since they can't access a host. Can a VMs and Templates folder be assigned to a host?

I didn't want to assign permissions to each user to be able to add to every host, as I didn't want others to mess with other's virtual machines. Previously all user had red-only access, but sinc the VMs and Templates folders are not assigned to any host, they can't get to their folder to create and manage their VMs.

So, am I going about this all wrong with VMs and Templates and should I just continue to use our previously setup Hosts and Clusters permission groups?

Any advice on semantics in this would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Johnathan

Hello

I am trying to collect some storage metrics using esxtop and am having issues with getting only the information I need and not collecting absolutely everything.

This is the method I am using

run esxtop - click u (for disk view), change the columns I need, Press L and change the Device field to 36 characters so the whole disk GUID is included

Once I am happy, I type W and save to a config file on the same datastore as where I will be pointing esxtop to save the output.  The config file is saved correctly.

I then run the following command: -

esxtop -b -c /vmfs/volumes/5257c861-024561b5-26c5-ac162dbd86d4/esxtop41rc -d 10 > /vmfs/volumes/5257c861-024561b5-26c5-ac162dbd86d4/hrsesxtop3.csv

Esxtop goes off and collects the stats but the csv file contains info on CPU, Memory etc and the disk device field doesn't show 36 characters so my disk stats are useless as I can't identify which store is which.  Excel also chops off most of the data in the CSV file as contains too many columns to display properly.

I haven't entered the -n switch as I want esxtop to run indefintely

Can anyone help?

I would also like to limit my view under the storage view to a single disk device number but when I type l (lowercase L) and enter the device number and press enter, nothing happens....

Thanks for reading

Kerms