ESXi

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> <esxi_disk_out>

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