Tag Archives: Esxi

Running Nested ESXi on VSAN

Was trying to deploy a nested ESXi on VSAN backed storage and kept running into this error during install.

This program has encountered an error:

Error (see log for more info):
Could not format a vmfs volume.
Command ‘/usr/sbin/vmkfstools -C vmfs5 -b 1m -S datastore1
/vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0:3′ exited with status 1048320

Turns out the problem is with a SCSI-2 reservation being generated as part of creating a default VMFS datastore. You can read more here.

The fix was this simple hack. = run this in each of your hosts and no system reboot is required.

esxcli system settings advanced set -o /VSAN/FakeSCSIReservations -i 1

Enjoy!

Posted in: Virtualization / Tagged: , ,

vSphere HTML Host Client (Updated!)

**Did the original post a while back but there are new updates as picked up from virtual-alan**

Updates

  • Add a new CD/DVD drive to a new or existing VM

  • Add a new network adapter to a new or existing VM

  • Add a new hard disk to a new or existing VM

  • Create a VM from a cluster

  • Migrate compute resource of a VM to a cluster and set vMotion priority

  • Change Agent VM settings for a Host

  • View Lockdown Mode in Security Profile settings of a host

  • View Certificate information for a host

  • Add a new cluster workflow (basic)

  • Remove a cluster

If you love the improvements in the web client, or may be you are a linux shop wanting to test or play with VMware ESXi and wished you could manage your ESXi host with a web client and not with the windows c# client then we may just have a solution for you!

This is my host now (no vCenter)

VMware ESXi - localhost.localdomain 2016-01-17 13-54-51

Meet ESXi Embedded host client! This tech preview VIB will do wonders for you! Once you install this VIB (Vmware install bundle) you will get your web client up and going. Now you can’t use this to manage your vCenter so watch out there.  This is still a tech preview so don’t deploy this in production is my advise although I won’t tell if you don’t! And if you are wondering – this vib was written in HTML and Javascript.

Some of the things you can do with this fling,

  • VM operations (Power on, off, reset, suspend, etc).
  • Creating a new VM, from scratch or from OVF/OVA (limited OVA support)
  • Configuring NTP on a host
  • Displaying summaries, events, tasks and notifications/alerts
  • Providing a console to VMs
  • Configuring host networking
  • Configuring host advanced settings
  • Configuring host services

So basically everything you can do with a c# windows client. This is awesome especially for *nix users!

Below is the process to install it in your host. Do this at your own risk 🙂

  1. Download the offline bundle from here.
  2. SCP this into your standalone ESXi into a /tmp directory
  3. SSH into your host and install the VIB with the below command.

    >esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/esxui_signed.vib –force

  4. Log out and go to httpps://hostip/ui

Below is how it looks to me.

VMware ESXi - localhost.localdomain 2016-01-17 13-59-20

My opinion is this is a good progress and this feature would be great. At the end there shouldn’t really be need for a vCenter to provide a rich web interface.

If you want to read more – click here.

 

Posted in: Virtualization / Tagged: , , ,

Nested ESXi Lab in VMware vCloud Air

The vCloud Air 200$ signup credits was nice because it helped me play with the On-demand virtual private cloud subscription. vCloud air is quite powerful and the UI is quite responsive. The waiting times increase when you use the vCloud Director UI because of the automation hooks in the back that need to get updated.

One thing I tried to do is deploy an ESXi ISO in my catalog and tried to deploy a nested hypervisor. This however failed because VT was not enabled in the virtual machine BIOS.

I tried my best to access the BIOS but I just couldn’t. So how do we get vCloud air to deploy a nested hypervisor and build a lab? Simple deploy a prebuilt appliance 🙂

I used my VMware Fusion and built a virtual machine (no OS) with VT enabled in the BIOS. I exported it as a OVA and imported that to my vCloud Air catalog. I then attached the ESXi ISO from my ISO catalog and viola! – nested ESXi hypervisor in vCloud Air.

For your convenience I have the OVA attached here. Just download and upload it to your vCloud Air catalog –> attach the ESXi OVA –> Power on and install and deploy nested VMs!

Posted in: Virtualization / Tagged: , , ,