Levent YILDIZ - Virtualization

Installing ESX 3i 3.5.0 to HP Dx2300 microtower with SATA HDD

Levent YILDIZ — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:39:24 GMT

3 system engineers, 1 microtower, 1 esxi cd
Tonight we tried to setup vmware esx 3i 3.5 to a hp dx2300 microtower.
It was a painful night, first we searched for a hdd because original hdd should be saved as it was containing critical data for one of my project.
So me & Serkan called Arda and asked him to bring a sata hdd.
He came & we setup the hdd and burned out the iso & finally we were ready for the installation
Whoops we got the first error, memory was not enough.Logistics manager Arda :) took a ride to his place & brought 2gb ram.
Voila, installation was started, but suddenly we got an error message telling that esxi did not find any storage device to make the installation.
Anyway we googled a little but we could not find any resource.End of the night :)

So i decided to download & install esx 3.5 trial, but that attempt was kicked backed by the "competible nic not found" error :((
I was frustrated.

Late @ the same night while i was coding, i decided to re-google the problem.
Finally i got the solution.I had to change 4 chars in a py file in esxi.

If esxi could not find your sata drive, do the following

Press alt+f1 and drop to console
type root as the username and leave blank for the password
edit the /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/TargetFilter.py file by entering
vi /usr/lib/vmware/installer/Core/TargetFilter.py
find the def IDEFilter(lun) proc and change the "return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_IDE" line as "return interface.GetInterfaceType() == ScsiInterface.SCSI_IFACE_TYPE_ISCSI"
save and quit by :wq!
type install

The original help document can be found @
http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive/ESXi_install_to_IDE_drive.php

What a wonderful night.

Internet Software Studio

Levent YILDIZ — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:27:02 GMT

A Forecast...

Whenever SaaS and Soa completes their evolution, a new era will rise;
Internet Software Studio
A platform where developers will no longer need a software development studio,
A platform where development & compilation can be done online, where intermediate software users will able to develop their own software without digging into huge documentations...

Some day...

Fast SCP for Esx Servers

Levent YILDIZ — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:59:08 GMT

Great & wondeful tool for copying files to/from Esx servers to your windows environment.
http://www.veeam.com/veeam_fast_scp.asp

It also has "evaluate to root" option which allows u to access to yr vmfs volumes & copy powered off vm's to local drive.

VmWare Esx 3.5 Update 2 Date Bug

Levent YILDIZ — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:43:19 GMT

To those users who has dloaded & installed Update 2 for their Esx 3.5 servers;
Due to an undefined date bug, vmware Esx 3.5 Update 2 servers will not power up VM's by today.
You can find specific info @ here

To solve this problem u need to change the time on Esx servers by typing below commands from service console.

service ntpd stop
date -s 20080811
vmware start
service ntpd start

This is not a total solution by all means, but since there is still no released bugfix for this problem(VmWare says there will be in 36 hrs), these commands will help to power up yr vm's.

Power is important: power failure + vmware = invalid obsolete, solution; a little bit service commands

Levent YILDIZ — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:17:52 GMT

Now i stare at space, thinking why did not i buy a backup ups?

I have 2 esx 3.5 running on sunx4600m2's & an emc san, what i wonderful life i used to say to myself.But those nice admin days gone with the blackout.Few days ago building automation manager called me and told there will be an operation on ups and informed me, so tht i can shutdown all systems to reduce data loss in case of some problems.I did what i had to do and shutdown all systems including backbone & network switches.

Operation finished, i got systems up and everything was working fine, another beautiful admin day...
Next day morning my systems engineer called me telling tht all systems are down.End of days...

When we figured out the reason of the problem we found out tht 1 day after the ups operation, a power blackout occured and all systems were reset.

So the list occured;
1-check esx's logs, search for an error or warning.
2-check san
3-check vm's

1- Unfortunately we found a lot of scsi io error lines @ logs.
2- San were fine (god bless emc it has ups inside, even if u pull the plug off it shutsdown clearly)
3- That's a big problem.Some vm's appeared as VM1 (invalid) and VM2 (obsolete)

To solve out problem 1, we tried fsck .All went fine.
To solve out problem 3; the worst day of my life.

First i tried to remove the vm's from inventory and then readd them by browsing vmfs volumes.It did not work.So then i connected directly to esx host using viclient, and tried the same but it all didn't work.

"vmware-cmd -l" service command listed 3 running vm's but when i ping other servers i was able to reach them.
then i ran "cat /proc/vmware/vm/*/names" to list the running vm's on esx using a different method, i saw 7 vm's were up & running.
The vm's were working but i could not reach them from viclient.

At this stage, the only option was to connect to each running vm by RDP and shutdown them.Create new vm and add the old vm's hdd to the new vm's.
i still did not figure out how things blowed up, but now i know tht the first item on my checklist is to buy a backup ups for esx's and san.

Beautiful admin days...:)