There is no easy way to do it, it seems.

So I wanted to say that I couldn't afford to do an upgrade on my server and my service provider wanted $30 for IPMI access. I have searched countless forums on how in the world to fix this problem. I set Passthrough on and all my datastores vanished and said I need to add a datastore. I couldn't remove Passthrough because since the file system is mounted in read only for some reason you can't ssh in to the server and edit esxi.conf to fix the problem. This is my first tutorial on how to do this, so don't bash my head that it's sloppy.

1. Boot with a debian or ubuntu live cd

List your drives / partitioned: Open a terminal window

2. type parted -l

Mine was sda5

3. mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

4. ls /mnt/

5. cp /mnt/state.tgz ~/

6. cd ~

7. tar xvf state.tgz

8. tar xvf local.tgz

So you get a etc folder now. Go to /etc/vmware

9. nano esxi.conf

10. Replace everything that says passthru with vmkernel

11. Save the file

Now lets copy the file back to the mount point, but first we have to recreate the archive.

12. tar czf local.tgz etc/

13. tar czf state.tgz local.tgz

14. cp state.tgz /mnt/

Done. Reboot and everything should work as it did originally.

This was tested in ESXi 6.0 and 5.5.

Hope this will help others that are trapped in a similar situation. Of course you can reinstall but a lot of people wanted to know how to do it. This which is basically 14 steps can probably be shortened. I hope that my first contribution on this forum is not overlooked.

Hi everyone,

Recently i have hosted an Esxi sever in my Organisation  which is accessible over  private IP successfully.

But now My company wants to access that server on Public IP ,so for that i had Done Some NAT settings on router .But the problem is that the public IP is accessible  from Putty software but that same IP is not opening on Browser.

Please suggest if you have any solution for this Problem.

As you can see in the picture below, the time and date on the ESX node is correct (for my time zone) but that differs from what I see in the output of the "date" command when I ssh to that node.

What should I do? Is NTP service really running?

[root@localhost:~] date

Sat May 30 12:26:04 UTC 2020

[root@localhost:~] date

Sat May 30 12:26:18 UTC 2020

[root@localhost:~] date

Sat May 30 12:27:38 UTC 2020

I read about pvrdma in vmware docs and ofa presentations, that vmware esxi support only pvrdma between two VMs, and not with native rdma hardware, i mean, that host with linux installed on real server would not send data to vm with pvrdma device. Is it so now?

And what about infiniband, not only RoCE, is it planed? An what about perspectives?

Is it possible to subscribe (or become aware in any way) to hot-plug/unplug events in the ESXi kernel, e.g., when a disk is added/removed?  This is not needed at the Guest OS level, but within ESXi.

I have to ESXi hosts that sit on the same management network, let's call is 192.168.10.0/0, where ESXi 1 is 192.168.10.101 and ESXi 2 is 192.168.10.102.

Each ESXi host is configured to have a private internal network that sits behind it 10.0.10.0/24, so that all the VMs can talk to each other. However, I now need to bridge the internal network on both ESXi hosts together. I want the two internal networks talking to each other, but I do NOT want either internal network to be visible by my main network. I have a pfSense VM running on each ESXi host, so I can utilize pfSense for routing capabilities, if needed.

Is it possible to do this? Perhaps I can trunk the internal networks together somehow?

Hi,

I have an esxi host running version 6.0. I logged directly into the host as root through the web client, added a new local user from the Security & Users tab, and assigned that user the Read-Only role from the permissions section. When I attempt to log in to the web client as the new user, it spins for a few seconds and says that the connection timed out. If I try through the desktop client, it hangs on loading inventory for a few minutes and gives a similar timeout message. If I log in as root from the exact same computer, it works. Am I missing something?

thanks,

rahulsaha.

I have installed the i40en driver as listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide. The driver is still not working. The device does show up in the list of devices for pass through. So I know it is being recognized. I have checked the Device ID (37d0) and Sub Device ID (0004). Which line up with device Intel(R) Ethernet Network Adapter X722-4 on the compatibility guide. My device shows up as Intel(R) Ethernet Connection X722 for 10GbE SFP+ under hardware devices in vSphere. Any help to get this device working would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

I'm getting weird behavior on ESXI host (tried version 7.0, 6.7U3, 6.5) on HP P420 RAID controller. I am trying to setup an lab for VSAN, with mutiple hosts (all HP DL360 gen8) and Crucial consumer SSD disks (1x MX500 for cache tier and 3x BX500 for storage).

If I plug in 3x MX500 SSD to one host all disk are recognized, but if I plug in all BX500 or combination (1x MX500 and 2 or more BX500) only 1 BX500 drive is recognized by ESXI.

I am sure that RAID has all SSD in HBA mode and are recognized by it. This is the output form ssacli (ssacli ctrl all show config):

 

 

Smart Array P420 in Slot 2                (sn: ______________)

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Internal Drive Cage at Port 1I, Box 1, OK

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Internal Drive Cage at Port 2I, Box 1, OK

 

 

 

 

   Port Name: 1I

 

 

   Port Name: 2I

 

 

 

 

   HBA Drives

 

 

      physicaldrive 1I:1:1 (port 1I:box 1:bay 1, SATA SSD, 240 GB, OK)

      physicaldrive 1I:1:2 (port 1I:box 1:bay 2, SATA SSD, 240 GB, OK)

      physicaldrive 1I:1:3 (port 1I:box 1:bay 3, SATA SSD, 240 GB, OK)

      physicaldrive 2I:1:7 (port 2I:box 1:bay 7, SATA SSD, 240 GB, OK)

      physicaldrive 2I:1:8 (port 2I:box 1:bay 8, SATA SSD, 525 GB, OK)          

But when I try to see if the SSD disks are presented to esxi only 1 is presented (from BX500 group). This is the output from esxcli (esxcli storage core device list):

mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0

   Display Name: Local USB Direct-Access (mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0)

   Has Settable Display Name: false

   Size: 14928

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0

   Vendor: Generic

   Model: Ultra Fast Media

   Revision: 0210

   SCSI Level: 2

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: false

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: true

   Is SSD: false

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: unknown

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unsupported

   Other UIDs: vml.0100000000303030303032363630413031556c74726120

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is SAS: false

   Is USB: true

   Is Boot Device: true

   Device Max Queue Depth: 1

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 1

   Drive Type: unknown

   RAID Level: unknown

   Number of Physical Drives: unknown

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

 

 

naa.500a075113e7aed1

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (naa.500a075113e7aed1)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 500786

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.500a075113e7aed1

   Vendor: ATA

   Model: Crucial_CT525MX3

   Revision: R021

   SCSI Level: 6

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: true

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: yes

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unsupported

   Other UIDs: vml.0200000000500a075113e7aed1437275636961

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 14

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 14

   Drive Type: unknown

   RAID Level: unknown

   Number of Physical Drives: unknown

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

 

 

mpx.vmhba1:C2:T3:L0

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (mpx.vmhba1:C2:T3:L0)

   Has Settable Display Name: false

   Size: 228936

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba1:C2:T3:L0

   Vendor: ATA

   Model: CT240BX500SSD1

   Revision: R013

   SCSI Level: 6

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: true

   Is Removable: false

   Is SSD: true

   Is VVOL PE: false

   Is Offline: false

   Is Perennially Reserved: false

   Queue Full Sample Size: 0

   Queue Full Threshold: 0

   Thin Provisioning Status: yes

   Attached Filters:

   VAAI Status: unsupported

   Other UIDs: vml.02000000002000000000000000435432343042

   Is Shared Clusterwide: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 14

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 14

   Drive Type: unknown

   RAID Level: unknown

   Number of Physical Drives: unknown

   Protection Enabled: false

   PI Activated: false

   PI Type: 0

   PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION

   Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   DIX Enabled: false

   DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT

   Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false

Did anybody else had similar problems or has any ideas how to present all the BX500 ssd disks to ESXI in HBA mode (not RAID 0).

Any help or direction to investigate further will be much appreciated.

hi there,

Where can I look for overall health of my ESXi server?  I have a few vms that are running quite sluggish and I'm curious if I possibly have some failing underlying hardware component?

Curious if i can run any type of health checks against the hardware?

thanks

Greg

I was doing some research last night about building a small form factor Esxi lab and I came across the following information from this location:

ESXi Hardware Requirements

It said:

ESXi6.7 Installation on M.2 and other Non-USB Low-end Flash Media

Unlike USB flash devices, the ESXi installer creates a VMFS datastore on M.2 and other non-USB low-end flash media. If you deploy a virtual machine or migrate a virtual machine to this boot device datastore, the boot device can be worn out quickly depending on the endurance of the flash device and the characteristics of the workload. Even read-only workloads can cause problems on low-end flash devices.

I was going to put a 500gb or 1tb evo 970 nvme as the boot and storage device. 

Does this mean that I should't do that?

Does this just mean the "boot device"?

How about if I use a small SSD to boot and then use a nvme for storage?  I'm confused about this.  I really want to use a fast nvme but don't want to destroy the device doing so.

Thanks,

Roveer.

How to check and disable esxi used id interactive login disabled or enabled.

Hi,

I have just tried to use in virtual machine EFI Firmware instead of BIOS as usually because need to use 8TB virtual disk with GPT. EFI works fine with CentOS, everything great except one thing: in EFI Setup there is no option to disable:

-Floppy drive and controller

-Serial Port (COM)

-Parallel Port (LPT)

-IDE channels

I always disable this useless pile of legacy hardware in BIOS Setup but no option in EFI. Why VMWare continues to offer this in EFI without possibility to disable it? If we cannot disable this in EFI please drop this legacy. Nobody uses this with EFI. This hardawre is history which should stay in BIOS only for legacy systems as it is now. In EFI and BIOS those legacy devices should be disabled by default as 99,9% users do not need them.

Does anybody know a way to disable these legacy devices in EFI Setup? Maybe there is option I do not see. Or there is any other possibility than F2 menu?

greetings,

Zbigniew

I am planning to move my old NAS data over to a virtualized FreeNAS server running on ESXi.
I do not have an HBA yet and was going to use the ever popular 9210-8i but saw its no longer supported in ESXi 7.0 but also am seeing that it doesn't matter f its being used for passthrough.
I will be using my boards integrated SATA controller for the drives housing my VMs and it is working fine but I don't want to buy a card that is going to give me trouble.
If it's wiser to get something else, I am open to suggestions. My needs are modest, just planning to run a 5-6 SATA drive array at the moment.

Thanks in Advance

ESXi 6.7 won't boot from WIndows ISOs but WILL boot from Linux ISOs (Ubuntu & CentOS).

I have tried Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 ISOs - neither will boot but if I burn it to a USB drive it will boot from that and I can install.

Any thoughts as to why Linux ISOs work but Windows don't? One thing I've noticed is that the "Connect" box for the CD/DVD drive unchecks itself each time I boot, but the "connect at power on" stays checked. Even when I recheck the connect box it fails to boot. But if I burn the to USB it works. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Good Morning all,

I have recently been tasked to get a lab esxi setup running.

I have a HP Proliant DL180 G6 server to my disposal.  I have registered on the vmware site and gotten the free license for ver 7.

The issue that I have is that none of the normal downloads (ver 7 and 6.7) are compatible with my hardware.  I have also tried to install ver 4 to no avail.

I have now installed the HP images (ver 6) successfully but it did not offer me a free license?  and I am not sure if the normal ver 6 free license key will work with the ver 6 HP custom ESXI.

Thanks
Kobus

Hi all

Im planning to build my vmware esxi 6.5 home lab using either ((that will help me for VCP DCV 6.5 and my CCIE LAb))

1) IBM X3650 M3  2x Quad core Xeon X5570 or  2X  HEX core Xeon X5670 system

OR

2) HP Proliant DL380 G6  2 x Quad core Xeon X5550

but CPU compatible list says these both CPU support ESXi 6.5 .

but when i search for IBM X3650 system and HP system , vmware compatibility list says it does not support ESXi 6.5.

im Little confused with this mismatch , please help to clarify this confusion.

Hi,

How to extend the size of local datastore on esxi 6.5 hosts. Currently the size of the local datastore is 10 GB and we want to make it to 15 GB.

Is it possible and does it require reboot?

Hi!

In my company we have 3 ESXi hosts running with a vCenter 6.7 that were configured some time ago. We found out that the configuration is not as "best practise" with the iSCSI connection (separate management and storage traffic). Therefore we wanted to get this right.

To test the new best practise version we only changed the config on one host. The old config was using one vmnic, one vmk and one vSwitch for management and iSCSI storage traffic.

Now we have the following configuration:

vmnic0 -> vmk0 (10.176.20.22, Services: Management) -> vSwitch0
vmnic1 -> vmk1 (10.176.21.122, Services: none checked!) -> vSwitch1

vCenter IP 10.176.21.9

So two physical uplinks with different vmk's and also different vSwitches. The network of vmk0 and vmk1 are also different ones (vmk0 - 10.176.20.0/24, vmk1 - 10.176.21.0/24). vmk1 is bond to a newly created port group, called iSCSI-0.

I already configured the Software iSCSI Adapter to use this new vmk and it is working fine. The problem we now have is that the ESXi host is stated as "disconnected" in vCenter. When I try to connect it, it fails. I can ping the host from the vCenter without issues. I tried to connect the host with hostname and also IP.

But now comes the odd part: when I try to add the host in vCenter with the IP address of the new vmk1 it gets found instantly.
When I try to add just any wrong address I get an instant error message (cannot contact host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx). So it seems like the host is reachable from vCenter and as I said I can ping it from there.

I already restarted the management network on the host, restarted the host itself, checked the vCenter licensing just in case.

I really appreciate any ideas how to get rid of this problem. I am stuck at the moment. It seems that vmk1 gets recognized as the management interface instead of vmk0, though I only set the management service checkbox on vmk0.

Some details from the current configuration:

[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get

Name  IPv4 Address   IPv4 Netmask   IPv4 Broadcast  Address Type  Gateway      DHCP DNS

----  -------------  -------------  --------------  ------------  -----------  --------

vmk1  10.176.21.122  255.255.255.0  10.176.21.255   STATIC        0.0.0.0         false

vmk0  10.176.20.22   255.255.255.0  10.176.20.255   STATIC        10.176.20.1     false

[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip route ipv4 list

Network      Netmask        Gateway      Interface  Source

-----------  -------------  -----------  ---------  ------

default      0.0.0.0        10.176.20.1  vmk0       MANUAL

10.176.20.0  255.255.255.0  0.0.0.0      vmk0       MANUAL

10.176.21.0  255.255.255.0  0.0.0.0      vmk1       MANUAL

[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network vswitch standard list

vSwitch0

   Name: vSwitch0

   Class: cswitch

   Num Ports: 7936

   Used Ports: 17

   Configured Ports: 128

   MTU: 1500

   CDP Status: listen

   Beacon Enabled: false

   Beacon Interval: 1

   Beacon Threshold: 3

   Beacon Required By:

   Uplinks: vmnic0

   Portgroups: VM Network, LAN_SRV, Management Network

 

vSwitch1

   Name: vSwitch1

   Class: cswitch

   Num Ports: 7936

   Used Ports: 4

   Configured Ports: 1024

   MTU: 1500

   CDP Status: listen

   Beacon Enabled: false

   Beacon Interval: 1

   Beacon Threshold: 3

   Beacon Required By:

   Uplinks: vmnic1

   Portgroups: iSCSI-0

[root@esxi-2:~] esxcli network ip interface list

vmk1

   Name: vmk1

   MAC Address: 00:50:56:6f:91:62

   Enabled: true

   Portset: vSwitch1

   Portgroup: iSCSI-0

   Netstack Instance: defaultTcpipStack

   VDS Name: N/A

   VDS UUID: N/A

   VDS Port: N/A

   VDS Connection: -1

   Opaque Network ID: N/A

   Opaque Network Type: N/A

   External ID: N/A

   MTU: 1500

   TSO MSS: 65535

   RXDispQueue Size: 1

   Port ID: 50331652

 

vmk0

   Name: vmk0

   MAC Address: ac:1f:6b:45:47:c8

   Enabled: true

   Portset: vSwitch0

   Portgroup: Management Network

   Netstack Instance: defaultTcpipStack

   VDS Name: N/A

   VDS UUID: N/A

   VDS Port: N/A

   VDS Connection: -1

   Opaque Network ID: N/A

   Opaque Network Type: N/A

   External ID: N/A

   MTU: 1500

   TSO MSS: 65535

   RXDispQueue Size: 1

   Port ID: 33554437

Thank you!

Marius

Hello.

Im trying to create a new datastore for esxi 7 because I want to boot the physical installation of Windows 10 that I have on the Samsung EVO ssd disk,but it seems that a bug of the web interface of esxi 7 prevents me from doing it. I'm following this guide :

https://gist.github.com/Hengjie/1520114890bebe8f805d337af4b3a064

so this is what I did :

root@localhost:/dev/disks] vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____Samsung_SSD_860_EVO_500GB_______________S3Z2NB0KB99028V_____ "/vmfs/volumes/evo.vmdk"

Failed to create virtual disk: Operation not permitted (65545).

I can't create any new folder inside the path /vmfs/volumes/. Maybe because it can be done only using the web browser ?

I have also tried to do :

[root@localhost:/dev/disks] vmkfstools -z t10.ATA_____Samsung_SSD_860_EVO_500GB_______________S3Z2NB0KB99028V_____ "/vmfs/volumes/disks/evo.vmdk"

Failed to create virtual disk: The specified device is not a valid physical disk device (20).

at some point,he points me to this comment,that should be the solution for the error :

bryanfritz commented on 11 Feb 2019

@kininwong Same thing happened to me. And i'm using ESXi 6.5

I found the issue with this was that you have to have a directory in an EXISTING Datastore. The file created is just the pointer to the RDM and needs to be located on an existing datastore. Open up ESXi and open up a esixting datastore, click on the file browser and create a folder in the datastore. Point your vmkfstools command to the directory you just created and the Pointer Files will be created there even though the RDM are not actually residing there.

I tried to do what he suggests,but when I click on the "Datastore browser" it shows a message which says :

Cause: Possibly unhandled rejection: {}

Version: 1.34.0 Build: 15603211

ESXi: 7.0.0 Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:76.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/76.0

Exception stack:

updateActionBar@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:365:22317

loadDatastoreBrowser/<@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:366:1514

k/<@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:326:23176

$digest@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:326:28780

$evalAsync/<@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:326:30503

e@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:325:10071

tg/h.defer/c<@https://192.168.1.6/ui/scripts/main.js:325:11522

We suggest to submit a bug report....

so,I can't open the file browser and I can't create a new folder in the datastore. I get this error using Chrome but also Firefox. is there a workaround for this ?