Hello All!

Was wondering if I could get your help on a matter that i'm not sure is causing issues on VM performance or if its something I should not be concerned about...

All our hosts are Dual Socket 10x Core ESXi 5.5 hosts.

The VM's in question do things like this:

Its using 4x Sockets, and only 1x Core per Socket.... I would have thought VMWare would not allow a allocation like this, instead at most spreading it to 2x Sockets, and 2x Cores per socket, or 1x Socket with 4x Cores.

Can someone let me know if this is a potential issue, as i'm not able to find much referencing this type of mis-configuration.

Thanks!

Hello.  Sometimes I think that the boss just doesn't think we have enough to do so he sends us off on a wild goose chase.  Maybe there is a logical reason for this request but I just don't know what it is.

So here we go.

We have been asked to find a way to reverse the default behavior of the mouse scroll wheel for users who request it in their desktop VMs.  Yes, they want to roll the wheel down on their mouse and have the document scroll up and vice versa.  (Maybe they are gamers and would find this useful during their lunch hour or something.)

On a physical Windows PC there is a registry key called flipflopwheel that can be changed to do this.  In a VM though, that key does not exist.  In fact there do not appear to be any Mouse Hardware ID related keys in the registry.  There is nothing in VMTools that I can see to alter this behavior either.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Hello Experts,

We have a 2 node SQL cluster using Microsoft cluster service. It has 3 RDMs (1 quarum, 2 data disks).

These VMs needs to be moved to new ESXi hosts and new storage.

Kindly help with the process of moving RDM, the storage are not connected to each other.

Help!!!

Hi,

I have installed Windows Server 2016 on the latest version of ESXI 6.5.0b but it's almost unusable.

The VM has 2 CPU and 2GB of RAM with VMware Tools 10.1.5 (5055683) and is used for Active Directory for my lab but it's really slow.

For example for open DNS I take almost 10 secs.

On ESXI I get High VM Memory Usage alarm but if I check on task manager on the guest vm ram usage is always around 40% and CPU is around 3 4% max and even if I put 4 gb the problem is still there.

Is this a know problem or there's something that I can do to slove this problem beside downgrade to Windows Server 2012 R2?

My Host ESXI specs are:

Asus X99WS-IPMI

I7-6800K

128GB RAM DDR4

1x SSD 250GB + 4xSSD 500GB on LSI 9260-4i on RAID 0

ESXI Booted from USB Stick

Thanks

Marko

Hi Folks

We have some Windows Server 2012 R2 VMs running in DMZ environment. An easy way to backup them is using the integrated Windows Server backup functionality. We recently updated our VMware Tools version from 10.0.9 to 10.1.5 and after this update we weren’t able to use successfully run a system state backup with the integrated Windows Server backup function because we got the following error message every time we tried to backup them:

Error in backup of C:\windows\\systemroot\ during enumerate: Error [0x8007007b] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

After short investigation we found a registry key under “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vsock” named “ImagePath” with the value “\SystemRoot\system32\drivers\vsock.sys” from type “REG_EXPAND_SZ”. This paths originally references to a device driver SYS file under “C:\windows\system32\drivers\vsock.sys” which is used for the vSocket Service API (prior known as VMCI as far as I know).

After we changed this value from “\SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\vsock.sys” to “system32\DRIVERS\vsock.sys” we were able to successfully backup our Servers without any error messages. We also tried to reinstall/repair the VMware Tools and also installed the latest stable 10.1.7 but the VMware Tools provides every time an incorrect path. 

Is someone else facing this issue or aware of it?

@VMware: Is there any change planned in a future VMware Tools releases?

Kind regards,

Ybbom

In ESXi 6.0, I had created some folders and some additional scripts.

However, after turning off and on the hypervisor physical server, all these files and folders are gone.

Is this correct? When restarted, are these folders and files deleted?

Starting to plan a project to switch my hosts over from 1GB to 10GB. Hosts are setup with 2 kernel ports in the same vSwitch for iSCSI traffic(a physical nic is active only on a single kernel port, ie vmnic7 is active in iSCSI, and 8 is active in the other). There is a seperate vSwitch for VMFT and vMotion traffic and setup in a similar fashion.  I am under the assumption that when I add the 10GB cards to the hosts and power back up, I just add to the proper kernel ports and vSwitches as needed and I should see the SAN's LUNs.

here is a pic of a hosts iSCSI config.

Also, I know its probably not ideal to have the hosts on different speed connections, and should get all hosts switched over as quickly as possible. What are some possible problems if they are not the same for say, a month or so? I don't want to do more than one host in my weekend downtime window so with 4 hosts, this could take me a month to complete.

Hi All,

This may seem a stupid question but I don't know the answer.

My site has has 2 vlans and we have guests on both. Each host has 6 vmnics in total, 3 are connected to one vlan and 3 to the other.

Then we have VM port groups for each vlan with the guests connected to the relevant corresponding network.

Would I be able to create a virtual machine port group that I just call "VM Network" that has all 6 vmnics assigned irrespective of vlan and then have all the guests on each vlan in that one VM port group?

Thanks,

Sean

Hopefully someone can help me with a fairly frustrating situation. I have done quite a few searches and read a number of articles here and elsewhere - but the situation doesn't seem to match precisely.

The problem arose with an "inelegant" reboot of my ESXi server. This is one of a few free installations using ScaleIO to map LUNs for the datastores. I was encountering what appeared to be a hung server, tried to perform a controlled reboot (which did not seem to take) followed by a power cycle of the server. When it came back up, the VM running on a local datastore came back fine, but the datastores on the ScaleIO LUNs were not showing up. Everything seems to be saying there is no filesystem - but this doesn't make sense for every LUN in question, and when I look at the disks with dd it seems to show data I would expect.

What I see:

* The LUNs themselves are discovered along with the partitions on them. When I look at the devices in the GUI or cli, I see them no problem.

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] ls /vmfs/devices/disks/eui*

/vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d2731f35a0d00000005

/vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000

/vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000:1

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] esxcli storage core device list | grep eui.

eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000

   Display Name: EMC Fibre Channel Disk (eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000)

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000

eui.0f60934767ed6d2731f35a0d00000005

   Display Name: EMC Fibre Channel Disk (eui.0f60934767ed6d2731f35a0d00000005)

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d2731f35a0d00000005

* partedUtil and coma shows the GPT partitions still there.

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0

a632d00000000

gpt

35507 255 63 570425344

1 128 570425304 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] voma -m ptbl -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60

934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000

Running Partition table checker version 0.1 in check mode   

Phase 1: Checking device for valid primary GPT              

   Detected valid GPT signatures                            

   Number    Start          End                Type         

   1         128            570425304          vmfs         

Found a valid partition table on the device

Total Errors Found:           0

* esxcli shows no filesystems on those LUNs

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] esxcli storage filesystem list

Mount Point                                        Volume Name  UUID                                 Mounted  Type            Size          Free

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

/vmfs/volumes/598ccaea-8afb9c77-80a4-001517d9a462  datastore1   598ccaea-8afb9c77-80a4-001517d9a462     true  VMFS-6  241055039488  239537750016

/vmfs/volumes/dcaf3470-159653b7-59a1-55193a835180               dcaf3470-159653b7-59a1-55193a835180     true  vfat       261853184     110673920

/vmfs/volumes/2044b777-2642e6ce-6fc4-7407f0f24801               2044b777-2642e6ce-6fc4-7407f0f24801     true  vfat       261853184     110866432

/vmfs/volumes/598ccaf4-06170a72-d2b8-001517d9a462               598ccaf4-06170a72-d2b8-001517d9a462     true  vfat      4293591040    4285333504

/vmfs/volumes/598ccadb-9d7c923c-6aa1-001517d9a462               598ccadb-9d7c923c-6aa1-001517d9a462     true  vfat       299712512      83927040

* esxcfg-volume shows no snapshots

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] esxcfg-volume -l

[root@vm-host101:/var/log]

* voma similarly shows an issue with the file system

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60

934767ed6d273d0a632d00000000:1

Checking if device is actively used by other hosts          

Running VMFS Checker version 2.1 in check mode              

Initializing LVM metadata, Basic Checks will be done        

Initializing LVM metadata..-                                

LVM magic not found at expected Offset,

It might take long time to search in rest of the disk.

VMware ESX Question:

Do you want to continue (Y/N)?

0) _Yes

1) _No

Select a number from 0-1: 0

         ERROR: LVM Major or Minor version Mismatch, Not supported

         ERROR: Failed to Initialize LVM Metadata           

   VOMA failed to check device : Not Supported              

Total Errors Found:           0

   Kindly Consult VMware Support for further assistance

* dd shows data exists and even shows the datastore label I would expect.

[root@vm-host101:/var/log] dd if=/vmfs/devices/disks/eui.0f60934767ed6d273d0a632

d00000000:1  | od -c | head

0000000  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

*

114000000   ^ 0N1 0E3   / 030  \0  \0  \0   Q   e   S 0J5   X   1  \0 0O1

114000020 0D4     0K4 0J0   P 0C1 0H1   i 0O1 026  \0  \0  \0   V   M   -

114000040   W   i   n   d   o   w   s   -   7   -   x   6   4   -   P   r

114000060   o  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

114000100  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0

*

114000220  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0 002  \0

114000240  \0  \0  \0 020  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0   e   S 0J5   X 001  \0  \0

I had once seen what I would have thought to be a similar issue, which I rectified by mapping the LUN to a different server. But in this case this hasn't worked. I even built a new server and added it to the ScaleIO network and I still cannot see the filesystem.

In a "typical" Unix environment I would expect I could do an fsck, but I'm not seeing such an opportunity here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello Team.

Please see my infra

6 Esxi Server :-  3x Management Servers in MGMT Cluster and 3X edge and payload servers.

VC as appliance on  MGMT cluster (V6.5 UI).

2X vSan cluster for  MGMT and shared edge and payload.

NSX

VIO multi vm deployment.

can someone tell me how we can backup all of these components.

Hi,

I have created a new cluster with 3 hosts (A,B,C) and enable HA/DRS on that cluster. I managed to build the autolab with 3 ESXi hosts part of Vsphere 5.5.

Now I am facing issue i.e. out of 3 hosts... 2 hosts are showing that "The Vsphere HA agent on this host cannot reach some of the management network addresses." whereas the 3rd ESXi host is fine. 

I tried to reconfigure the HA but still it's getting the same issue and when I set 1 ESXi host to maintenance mode then the HA works fine with 2 hosts but not with all 3 hosts in the cluster.

Below are some more details:

The vMotion migrations failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the vMotion network. Check the vMotion network settings and physical network configuration. vMotion migration [-1408186613:1502279704441717] failed to create a connection with remote host <172.16.199.12>: The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network Migration [-1408186613:1502279704441717] failed to connect to remote host <172.16.199.12> from host <172.16.199.11>: Host is down The vMotion failed because the destination host did not receive data from the source host on the vMotion network. Please check your vMotion network settings and physical network configuration and ensure they are correct.

Anybody seen this issue before and knows how to resolve it?

Any help will be appriceated.

Since VMware allows use of RDM disks to setup a Windows cluster using VMs, which can be used to install SQL cluster, we decide to go this route.

However, now after installing the Windows cluster, I am finding out that you cannot do snapshot of these VMs due to shared disks (physical RDM, as recommended). This also means you cannot do Veeam or other backups.

We, of course, can do OS and SQL server backups, but restore from them will be quite time-consuming in a disaster. SAN level backup will require purchase of separate expensive software for just 2 VMs.

To me this is a very serious limitation of using VMs to create a Windows/SQL cluster. If I go with a single VM SQL server, I will still avoid single-point hardware failure due to VMware HA. Only disadvantage will be some down-time when server needs to reboot, for Windows updates, etc. This is a very minor inconvenience, compared to not having any VM-level backups. (There is hardly any difference in performance of RDM vs VMFS.)

  Am I missing something? Is my conclusion wrong? Please share your experience and/or viewpoints. Thanks.

Jay Kulsh

Hello,

My problem goes like this, i've installed ESXi 6.0.0 to a server, created my virtual servers and everything is working fine.

I wanted to login to esxi today via vsphere client but gotten an error stating invalid username / password.

I went and logged to the server via ipmi / ilo and was able to login just fine, when i restart management agents for a short period of time, i can login with vsphere client again.

But after a while, vsphere cliend, vcenter or ssh starts to reject my password again. And the only way to fix the issue (temporarily) seems to be restarting the management agents.

Has anyone experienced this?

I cannot reinstall the server because my customers are already using their virtual servers so i must come up with a solution, loggin' to ipmi and restarting management agents every single time i need to check or do something is wasting a lot of time.

Thanks in advance

This is assuming one uses the HP custom ESXi build.

Thank you...

Hi,

I have a HP DL380 G9 server. Last week I updated the OS, it turns out that only one uplink network interface can be appointed to a vSwitch.

The previous image is  HPE Custom Image for VMware ESXi  version 6.5 (release date 2017-07-11), and the updated one is HPE Custom Image for VMware ESXi version 6.5.0 U1(release date 2017-07-27). The previous image does work( I had each vSwitch configured with two uplink interfaces).

Any suggestions?

Thank U!

I am new with Power cli.. created below script to delete VM snapshot for particular VMs mentioned in a CSV file.

$date = get-date -format "yyyyMMdd_HHmmss"

Import-Csv C:\Output\PatchingVMsList.csv | %{Get-VM $_.Name} | Get-Snapshot -Name BeforePatching  | Remove-Snapshot -Confirm:$false -RunAsync

| Export-CSV C:\output\SnapshotRemoval-$date.csv -NoTypeInformation

But the script will show only task name and status. I need to generate a report with below details:

VM Name

Snapshot Name

Deletion start time

Deletion end time

User Id use to delete the snap

Anyone help me on this?

Hi there,

I have a problem, no storage devices are listed in both vcenter and vsphere when I try increasing the

size of a datastore, any pointers towards resolving this please, am running Esxi 6.0, 3620759

Purpose of this post is simple and obvious...  bring back development to thick client.  THANKS!

Hello All,

I'd like some input from other VMware admins with regards to logging level for VPXA and HOSTD logs. It appears the default logging level for these are set to "verbose" however I've read in VMware KB articles that it is not recommended to leave logging at verbose level for production systems as it may cause performance problems. I opened a ticket with support about this and was told there is no recommendation either way, the default is OK but if I'd like to change the level it is OK as well.

So now looking to see how others have this configured. What is the general consensus regarding logging level for VPXA and HOSTD? Has anyone encountered problems by leaving this set to verbose?

Any input is appreciated!

After adding a raw device (based on an SSD disk) as an "existing hard drive" to a VM, I am getting an Unhandled Exception whenever I am trying to edit the VM's setting:

Cause: TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating '$scope.hardwareStackView.hardDiskBlock[_length]')
Version: 1.8.0
Build: 4516221
ESXi: 6.5.0
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/603.3.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.1.2 Safari/603.3.8
 
Exception stack:
 
https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:315:984
https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:265:9466
$digest@https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:265:15052
https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:265:16584
e@https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:264:5651
https://esxi/ui/scripts/main.js:264:7653

Hitting escape a couple of times, the UI seems to be unhappy with the size and the number of shares specified for the disk. Those fields, while grayed out, are highlighted with a red frame. I am not able to use the UI to make any changes to the settings.

I have added raw devices to other VMs without problems (haven't tried with this vmdk though) and the affected VM is able to use the disk just fine.

Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated!