ESXi 5.5 – Virtualization, DBaaS & Whatever Crosses My Mind

Heads Up! – ESXi 5.5 Update 3 can crash VMs after snapshot delete

magander — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 18:24:51 +0000

Updated 2015-10-06 VMware released a patch today that will fix this problem, KB available here ————————— Updated 2015-10-01 Today VMware leased a KB 2133118 for the below described issue. No resolution included but a workaround. ———————— Original post ———————– Today i came across this VMware Communities thread that explains different scenarios where vSphere ESXi 5.5 Update 3 …

vSphere 5.5 Update 3 released

magander — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 06:53:24 +0000

Yesterday, 2015-09-16, VMware released vSphere 5.5. Update 3 which includes new versions for: vCenter Server ESXi I have identified at least two problems i have seen that are now resolved in vCenter Server Defined permissions behave differently in vSphere Client and Web Client Moving VMs between the folders is disabled in the Web Client when permission …

ESXi mgmt network lost when adding ESXi to VDS

magander — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 19:16:56 +0000

So the other day a had a very unpleasant experience when adding a few new ESXi hosts, version 5.5 U2 including the latest patch, to an existing vCenter Server (5.5 U2e) vNetwork Distributed switch (VDS). I used the wizard in the vSphere web client and followed the recommendation but i guess i could have made …

vMotion – A general system error occurred

magander — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 12:57:30 +0000

Updated 20170127 Apparently this applies to vSphere 6.5 as well according to a comment below. Thanks Joe for letting us know ———————————————————————– The other day i had an issue with vMotion migrations in my vSphere environment running the following versions: vCenter Server 5.5.0 build 2183111 ESXi 5.5.0 build 2143827 The error i was seeing happened at …

Storage vMotion fails with error Already disconnected

magander — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 19:54:57 +0000

This blog post applies to vCenter Server version 5.5. U2d and ESXi server version 5.5 U2a. A few days back i got involved in a virtual machine migration (VM) issue. The VMs were suppose to be migrated from one vSphere cluster to another without any chance of mounting one of the vSphere clusters datastore(s) to the other …

HP HPSA driver 5.x.0.58-1 can cause ESXi 5.x PSOD

magander — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 08:25:13 +0000

A few days ago i received a call from one of my old customers who asked for advice regarding a VMware ESXi 5.5 Purple Screen Of Death (PSOD) situation. He had already created a VMware service request but wanted a chat while waiting for a reply. I quickly searched the HP support center web site …

Nutanix Cluster, Storage Pool and Container setup

magander — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:18:36 +0000

During my first month at Nutanix I have been doing quite a few Nutanix presentations for potential customers and consultants. I have received a lot of questions during the presentations but also questions via email including, but not limited to, e.g. setup, management, snapshot, disaster recovery, availability, Controller Virtual Machine (CVM), performance. Even though there is a lot …

ESXi 5.1 U1 Purple Screen of Death

magander — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:34:29 +0000

A few days ago i was contacted by a customer who was running vSphere 5.1 U1 which is about one year old. For various reasons they have not yet upgraded to a later version of vSphere 5.1 or to vSphere 5.5. However, there has been quite some time since i a have seen a purple screen …

ESXi host VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL configuration using PowerCLI

magander — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:51:58 +0000

I have already written a blog post about how you can configure the ESXi host setting disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault in vSphere version 5.1. You can find that blog post here. I have received a couple of questions about how to configure the setting, called VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL, in ESXi 5.5 so i decided to put together a blog post about it. …

Determine the VMFS disk space a thin provisioned virtual machine disk consumes

magander — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 09:03:39 +0000

I was asked by a customer the other day how to find out, using the ESXi command line, how much disk space a thin provisioned virtual machine disk consumes. Back in the ESX days you used the du command to query the virtual machine disk and in ESXi, version 5.5, you need to use the stat command. Fot this …

ESXi host advanced settings

magander — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 07:53:09 +0000

During every vSphere design and Health Check the vSphere advanced settings are being discussed and every once in a while i receive an email asking me what vSphere advanced settings i normally use and recommends. I know Duncan Epping wrote a blog post about when to use the vSphere advanced settings a while ago. In general i agree …

ESXi host disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault configuration using PowerCLI

magander — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:06:33 +0000

This section is updated since vSphere 5.5 was GA during VMworld 2013. From now on the configuration option has changed regarding two things: Name – It is now called VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL and not Disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault Configuration – It is now an advanced ESXi configuration parameter and not a text string in the ESXi host file /etc/vmware/settings Continue reading if …