We have a long running ESXi instance (6.7.0 Update 2) that has been running a Win Server 2019 for over a year.  Upon a recent reboot, we are getting a red screen of death reading:

"Panic requested by another PCPU".

We have a mid-day snapshot from a few days back, and that will run fine.  But, once we reboot the VM, Windows will start to boot up (never get to the logon screen) and then freeze.  About a minute later the ESXI monitor will show this again.

I'm at a complete loss in how to diagnose and fix this issue.  The server is up and running right now (has been for hours), but a reboot will put us back in this state after about 5 minutes.

Any ideas?  I'll gladly supply any logs, etc.  Or, follow any links in collecting what is needed to further a solution.

Thank you for your time!

Hi,

Have setup a VM server and resources. Sufficent disk space etc...suddenly out the blue it pauses the VM saying need to free up space on the DS?!

The DS has 440GB disk space, the VM is only 400GB and has 36GB RAM allocated. When checking the DS says 37.1GB free...however the server keeps pausing not enough space?!

What is causing this as have enough space or how do i stop it from happening more importantly.

Thanks

I am trying to delete my dumpfile and unable to

I am SSH in the correct Host

[root@localhost:~] esxcli system coredump file list

Path                                                                                                                Active  Configured        Size

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

/vmfs/volumes/5b1009ba-306ed33a-6742-782bcb1d7dda/vmkdump/4C4C4544-0036-4810-8054-B1C04F443432-1658847232.dumpfile   false       false  1658847232

/vmfs/volumes/5b1009ba-306ed33a-6742-782bcb1d7dda/vmkdump/4C4C4544-0039-3010-8056-B6C04F4E5131-2463105024.dumpfile   false       false  2463105024

[root@localhost:~] esxcli system coredump file remove -F -f /vmfs/volumes/5b1009ba-306ed33a-6742-782bcb1d7dda/vmkdump/4C4C4544-0036-4810-8054-

B1C04F443432-1658847232.dumpfile

Unlink of file /vmfs/volumes/5b1009ba-306ed33a-6742-782bcb1d7dda/vmkdump/4C4C4544-0036-4810-8054-B1C04F443432-1658847232.dumpfile failed: Device or resource busy

I get a Device Busy,  what am i doing wrong?

Hi everyone,

I searched all over the web for two days, but I still haven't found anything that helped to solve my case.

I have ESXi 6.7 installed on a USB drive running on a DELL Poweredge R710. I know this particular version of ESXi is not supported by my machine, but except for the fact that loses configuration on every reboot I didn’t have any other issue.

Long story short:

The bootbank folder points to tmp

bootbank -> /tmp

while locker and scratch point to an actual data store

locker -> /vmfs/volumes/5f9cb458……..-……..a12/.locker

scratch -> /vmfs/volumes/5f9cb458-…………….a12/.locker

I did some troubleshooting by following those KBs: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2149444      https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/51907

Even by appending the ‘devListStabilityCount’ parameter in the ESXi boot options, with a delay of up to 300 seconds, the storage-path-claim service is still not delayed and always starts before the datastores are accessible (see logs below).

Without appending the ‘devListStabilityCount’ parameter, the delay between the below logs is always a minute of each other (always ‘…storage-path-claim’ first, then‘…The datastore is now accessible on this host.’

[root@localhost:~] grep storage-path-claim /var/log/sysboot.log

[2020-11-03 01:01:31.851747 - 2020-11-03 01:04:54.502981] sysboot: storage-path-claim

[root@localhost:~] grep 'mounted.*rw' var/run/log/vobd.log|tail -1

2020-11-03T01:05:55.167Z: [vmfsCorrelator] 284840394us: [esx.audit.vmfs.volume.mounted] File system [MainStorage, 5f9cb458-…………….. on volume 5f9cb458-7d8b9622-………… has been mounted in 'rw' mode. The datastore is now accessible on this host.

If it helps, this is what I get when I issue the below command.

[root@localhost:~] localcli --plugin-dir=/usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/int/ boot system restore --bootbanks

VmkCtl: Did not find a valid boot device, symlinking /bootbank to /tmp

Did anyone see this issue before and knows a solution for it?

I will much appreciate any kind of help and advice on how to tackle this.

Thanks in advance!

I currently have a bunch of fisks on the same SCSI(0) ID

like

Disk 0 SCSI(0:0)

Disk 1 SCSI(0:1)

DISK2 SCSI(0:2)

DISK3 SCSI(0:3)

etc....

noticing lot of write/read latency

Will it imprive performance if I move some disk off to its own SCSI ID?

SCSI(1:0)

SCSI (2:0)

etc....

how would i do that?

This is windows 2016 server and I want to keep same drive letters

Hello,

Wondering if anyone has compiled drivers for the new 2.5Gb realtek nic's that are out from last year.   I'd sure love to get this working in ESXi 6.7.  I know there is drivers for the older r8168, 8169.

Thanks.

Esxi 6.5 does not start black joke. I installed it on a usb key and I find the partitions present. how do i recover partitions or mount devie on storage?

I may have downloaded the wrong installation binary, but my VM went down yesterday from a licensing problem: "Your evaluation license for ESXi has expired.". I only want ESXi and no other features, but when I go to the licensing tab, the following is displayed. Do I need to reinstall a different version of ESXi? I've been to ESXi 7.0 licensing webpage, but I'm still missing something - I'm not sure what to do there. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks

Evaluation Mode

Key:

00000-00000-00000-00000-00000

Expiration date:

Never

Features:

Unlimited virtual SMP

H.264 for Remote Console Connections

vCenter agent for VMware host

vSphere API

Content Library

Storage APIs

vSphere vMotion

...

By mistake I have tried to change the esxi certificate, it gave me an error: the certificate cannot be installed.

Then the console has been blocked and now it does not respond by ip.

Hi Guys,

We have a server with something like 9 snapshots all toke 9 months ago with a lot of change.

Performance isn't there anymore and we have the message saying disk consolidation for that vm is needed.

SO with that known, I'd like to know what are the step to follow?

If we want to delete all snapshots and consolidate the disks :

1- Should we consolidate before and delete snapshots after?

OR

2- Should we delete all snapshots and consolidate after?

OR

3- Consolidation will delete all snapshots in the process?

I'm a bit confused.

Thanks all!

What level licence do I need to be able to add a network serial port to a VM, "telnet://192.168.1.1:4001" for example. It seemed to work in the evaluation but since I have applied my Essentials licence it does not work. Can't find documentation anywhere that clearly describes what features are included in each level of licencing.

Hi all,

My system:

Client version: 1.33.4

Client build number: 14110286

ESXi version: 6.0.0

ESXi build number: 15169789

Lenovo - RD550 (ThinkServer)

SN: S4F89540

Machine Type: 70CX

Model: 000EEA
RAID card: Lenovo ThinkServer RAID 720ix AnyRAID

BIOS    1.10.0

Deployment Manager    1.1.1

Linux Driver Bundle    1.1.1

System Manager    1.15.65376

Windows Driver Bundle    1.1.1

Problems:

1. Unable to retrieve information about health of physical disks in RAID arrays.

2. Receiving false positive information about degraded RAID arrays: there are no amber light on the panel, booting to RAID manager in BIOS reports all disks as healthy and all RAID arrays as optimal.

What I have tried:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2040405

esxcli storage core device list

naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 7628800

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8

   Vendor: Lenovo

   Model: 720ix

   Revision: 4.23

   SCSI Level: 5

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: degraded

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: false

   Is Removable: false

   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.0200000000600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8373230697820

   Is Shared Clusterwide: true

   Is Local SAS Device: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot USB Device: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 256

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: logical

   RAID Level: RAID5

   Number of Physical Drives: 5

   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.500062b200b6697d

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Enclosure Svc Dev (naa.500062b200b6697d)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 0

   Device Type: Enclosure Svc Dev

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/genscsi/naa.500062b200b6697d

   Vendor: Lenovo

   Model: 720ix

   Revision: 0305

   SCSI Level: 5

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: false

   Is Removable: false

   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.020d000000500062b200b6697d373230697820

   Is Shared Clusterwide: true

   Is Local SAS Device: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot USB Device: false

   Is Boot Device: false

   Device Max Queue Depth: 64

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: physical

   RAID Level: NA

   Number of Physical Drives: 1

   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.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b)

   Has Settable Display Name: true

   Size: 2573568

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b

   Vendor: Lenovo

   Model: 720ix

   Revision: 4.23

   SCSI Level: 5

   Is Pseudo: false

   Status: degraded

   Is RDM Capable: true

   Is Local: false

   Is Removable: false

   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.0200000000600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b373230697820

   Is Shared Clusterwide: true

   Is Local SAS Device: false

   Is SAS: true

   Is USB: false

   Is Boot USB Device: false

   Is Boot Device: true

   Device Max Queue Depth: 192

   No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32

   Drive Type: logical

   RAID Level: RAID5

   Number of Physical Drives: 4

   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

esxcfg-scsidevs -l

naa.500062b200b6697d

   Device Type: Enclosure Svc Dev

   Size: 0 MB

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Enclosure Svc Dev (naa.500062b200b6697d)

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Console Device: /vmfs/devices/genscsi/naa.500062b200b6697d

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/genscsi/naa.500062b200b6697d

   Vendor: Lenovo    Model: 720ix             Revis: 0305

   SCSI Level: 5  Is Pseudo: false Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: true  Is Removable: false

   Is Local: false Is SSD: false

   Other Names:

      vml.020d000000500062b200b6697d373230697820

   VAAI Status: unsupported

naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Size: 2573568 MB

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b)

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b

   Vendor: Lenovo    Model: 720ix             Revis: 4.23

   SCSI Level: 5  Is Pseudo: false Status: degraded

   Is RDM Capable: true  Is Removable: false

   Is Local: false Is SSD: false

   Other Names:

      vml.0200000000600062b200b669701c243bb24a9f4d7b373230697820

   VAAI Status: unsupported

naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Size: 7628800 MB

   Display Name: Lenovo Serial Attached SCSI Disk (naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8)

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8

   Vendor: Lenovo    Model: 720ix             Revis: 4.23

   SCSI Level: 5  Is Pseudo: false Status: degraded

   Is RDM Capable: true  Is Removable: false

   Is Local: false Is SSD: false

   Other Names:

      vml.0200000000600062b200b669701f5a9c8d135cc3d8373230697820

   VAAI Status: unsupported

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

I can see 2 virtual disks and a physical disk (hot spare). I can see RAID level and number of physical drives but no information about individual disks.

No S.M.A.R.T. info logged into syslog either:

cat /var/log/syslog.log | grep smartd | wc -l

0

Not only I'm unable to check individual disks but I continue seeing false positives (Status: degraded) as well as this:

There were no amber lights on any of the caddies. I shut the server down, reseated all disks, booted into BIOS and confirmed in RAID settings all disks were reporting healthy and both arrays optimal.

Please advise.

Regards,

Adam