ESXi

Revision as of 16:34, 21 September 2012

Enable SSH

1. At the console, press F2 and login
2. Select Troubleshooting Options
3. Select Enable SSH
4. Press ESC to logout

Hanging on ipmi_si_drv

1. Press Shift + O and append noipmiEnabled to the boot args
2. Once booted, connect with vSphere and add uncheck VMkernel.Boot.impiEnabled

Virtual Machine with PassThrough devices won't boot

• Enable SSH
• Login via SSH
• Locate the VM's store (/vmfs/volumes/...)
• There is probably a vmware.log file, cat it:

cat vmware.log | grep pciHole

• You'll probably find something like this:

2011-10-12T18:56:50.990Z| vcpu-0| \[msg.pciPassthru.mmioOutsidePCIHole\] PCIPassthru 008:00.0: Guest
tried to map 32 device pages (with base address of 0xb2520) to a range occupied by main memory. This
is outside of the PCI Hole. Add pciHole.start = "2853" to the configuration file and then power on
the VM.

• Add the following line to your VM's *.vmx file (don't forget to use the correct value!):

pciHole.start = "2853"

Use a VM from VMWare Player

If you get the "unsupported or invalid disk type 7" error while powering on a VM, do the following:

1. Locate and run: vmkfstools -i <vmware_player_disk_in> -d zeroedthick <esxi_disk_out>

VNC to a Virtual Machine's Console

Add the following to the .vmx file:

RemoteDisplay.vnc.enabled = TRUE
RemoteDisplay.vnc.port = 27015
RemoteDisplay.vnc.password = hello123

Don't forget to add a firewall rule!

Custom Firewall Rules

This example file would be stored at /etc/vmware/firewall/vnc.xml.

<!-- Custom Firewall Rule set for VNC -->
<ConfigRoot>
        <service>
                <id>VNC</id>
                <rule id='0000'>
                        <!-- VM: xxxx -->
                        <direction>inbound</direction>
                        <protocol>tcp</protocol>
                        <porttype>dst</porttype>
                        <port>5900</port>
                </rule>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
                <required>false</required>
        </service>
</ConfigRoot>

You can then reload the Firewall rules by running this command:

esxcli network firewall refresh

And list them:

esxcli network firewall ruleset list

Use SATA drive as an RDM

1. Login as root
2. Run fdisk -l and locate the disk you wish to use
3. Run ls /dev/disks/ -l and locate the symlink to that disk
4. Goto the correct directory to place the new vmdk
5. Run vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/<symlink> RDM.vmdk -a lsilogic
   1. Disk type
      • -r - create Virtual device
      • -z - create Physical (passthrough) device - careful with these
   2. Controller -a ...
      • buslogic - probrably not
      • lsilogic
      • ide