In this post I investigate what happens when a VMware vSphere ESXi host loses its boot device. This device is meant to be a persistent device. For non-persistent devices like USB- and SD-card, behavior is quite clear: whole ESXi OS runs in memory, no mass-write operations should be directed to the device. When it breaks, ESXi isn’t missing it and keeps running.
Intel CIM error after update/upgrade ESXi host
It is not uncommon to get errors after a host update/upgrade you didn’t see before on the host. The following error could be seen as an example of errors with the same cause. The error I did an upgrade of a 6.5 host (installed with HPE ESXi image almost 2 years ago) to the latest HPE ESXi image of 6.7 U3. After final boot the […]
PSP rule for active/standby controller arrays (like Nimble Storage)
First, what does active/standby mean. For this blog post, it means the array hast at least 2 controllers, one presents ALL LUNs to the hosts, the second controller presents NO active LUNs path to the hosts. Just in case of a manual or automatic failover, the second controller takes-over ALL LUN-presentations – and active paths. Examples of such arrays are: [very old one] HP MSA 1000 HPE Nimble […]
vCenter warning during guest quiescing for snapshots
In an environment I saw this error when backup creates VMware snapshots of three VMs: Warning message on VM on host in datacenter. The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing. The error code was: 5. The error message was: ‘VssSyncStart’ operation failed. IDispatch error #8723 (0x80042413) Facts about the environment: Versions: ESXi version: 6.7.0, 13981272. Guest: Windows Server 2019. VMware tools: 10346 (10.3.10). […]
Ramdisk full errors
These days I had a problem with full ESXi ramdisk. Running vdf -h shows tmp as 100% used. Furthermore there are a lot of errors in vmkernel.log like: VisorFSRam: 233: Cannot extend visorfs file /var/lib/vmware/hostd/journal/ because its ramdisk (root) is full. There are some other problems these hosts suffer from time to time: vSphere HA issus like master of cluster cannot be found/elected. Connection problems with […]
simple linux Script to shut down VMs and ESXi host
Here is a very simple linux bash script to shut down all VMs of a ESXi host and the host itself, for example when a power failure occurs, this script can be used in UPS software. Some time ago a posted how to use such script in an HPE UPS environment. You can find the post here.
4 ways to configure adv. settings in CLI
There are a few CLI methods to configure advanced settings in ESXi Hosts. It depends on where you are (vMA/Linux, Windows Client, Console) and what you want to do (configure all hosts or just a specific host, …) which option fits best. Here I describe the options: native PowerCLI, esxcli (console), esxcli (get-esxcli), esxcli (get-esxcli -v2) to: List All settings All settings in a specific […]
How PDL (Permanent Device Loss) looks like
Some time ago differentiation between PDL (Permanent Device Loss) and APD (All Path Down) was introduced to vSphere. In a PDL situation, the hosts does not expect the device to return. PDL happens for example, when an administrator un-presents a LUN from a host. APD on the other hand is completely unplanned. By default the host tries to get the device back. Starting with vSphere […]
Create PSP rule for HPE 3PAR
There are a few best practices when implementing a 3PAR into a vSphere environment. One of these is the creation of a custom PSP-rule. With this set, all 3PAR volumes are automatically configured according to best practices when they get mounted. In this post I will show ways to create this rule. [Update] Because HPE Primera uses same vendor and model description as 3PAR, the […]
configure esxi shutdown in case of power loss (HP UPS)
These steps are necessary to implement a graceful shutdown of an vSphere environment. For this scenario you need supportet HP UPSs for HP Power Protector.
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