I have installed the recently released Lenovo System X Custom Image for ESXi 6.5a on three separate physical servers and one nested ESXi image. When I enable the iSCSI software adapter and reboot, I see the following warning on each host
System logs on host ... are stored on non-persistent storage
The ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation advanced system setting is pointing to the 4 GB vfat partition that was created at installation time, but ScratchConfig.CurrentScratchLocation is pointing to /scratch which I believe is in a ramdisk.
I reviewed the log files in /scratch/log and found the following entry in syslog.log
2017-03-13T14:47:27Z jumpstart[66440]: using /vmfs/volumes/58c2ed55-f98c6822-a783-e41f1344b0f4 as /scratch
However, less than 1 second later, I find errors in other log files about non-persistent storage
syslog.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30Z jumpstart[65896]: executing start plugin: scratch-storage
vmkernel.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30.246Z cpu10:65942)Activating Jumpstart plugin scratch-storage.
vmkernel.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30.447Z cpu3:66558)ALERT: Logs are stored on non-persistent storage. Consult product documentation to configure a syslog server or a scratch partition.
vmkernel.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30.470Z cpu10:65942)Jumpstart plugin scratch-storage activated.
vmksummary.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30.447Z cpu3:66558)ALERT: Logs are stored on non-persistent storage. Consult product documentation to configure a syslog server or a scratch partition.
vmkwarning.log:2017-03-13T14:47:30.447Z cpu3:66558)ALERT: Logs are stored on non-persistent storage. Consult product documentation to configure a syslog server or a scratch partition.
vobd.log:2017-03-13T14:47:28.638Z: [GenericCorrelator] 43572261us: [vob.user.scratch.partition.unconfigured] No scratch partition has been configured. Recommended scratch partition size is 4095 MiB.
vobd.log:2017-03-13T14:47:28.638Z: [UserLevelCorrelator] 43572261us: [vob.user.scratch.partition.unconfigured] No scratch partition has been configured. Recommended scratch partition size is 4095 MiB.
vobd.log:2017-03-13T14:47:28.638Z: [UserLevelCorrelator] 43572494us: [esx.problem.scratch.partition.unconfigured] No scratch partition has been configured. Recommended scratch partition size is 4095 MiB.
I assume there is something wrong with the Lenovo vibs, but I don't know which one is causing the problem. VMware's 6.5a build works just fine.
Any suggestions?