Category Archives: Vmware

Recover ESXi 7.x Bootbank

November 15, 2022 1:06 PM / Leave a Comment /

During the the installation of a VMware VIB file I lost connectivity to my usb stick containing the installation of esxi. Facing the following errors:

ESXi Log

Could not install image profile: Failed to copy files from /tmp/stagebootbank to /altbootbank: [Errno 5] Input/output error

Device or filesystem with identifier mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0 has entered the All Paths Down Timeout state after being in the All Paths Down state for 140 seconds. I/Os will now be fast failed.

Lost connectivity to storage device mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0. Path vmhba32:C0:T0:L0 is down. Affected datastores: BOOTBANK1″, “BOOTBANK2”, “LOCKER-624c4a59-8a3bf37a-8986-e435c87de92a.

After a reboot I saw the error message “BANK5: not a VMware boot bank” however BOOTBANK2 was intact so ESXi was booting with last working state from BOOTBANK2 (BANK6 in my case). Checking with “ls /altbootbank” I saw that alot of files where missing. I started to check if the filesystem was damaged with:

Check ESXi bootbank device

vmkfstools -P /altbootbank

Check and repair filesystem

dosfsck -r -w /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0:5

While mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0:5 is the output of the previous command and :5 is the partition number. So :5 is BANK5 and :6 is BANK6.

Afterwards you can completely copy over the contents of /bootbank to /altbootbank with “cp”. You need to edit boot.cfg and modify “updated” to a number lower (-1). While the next VIB or update/patch you install on esxi will completely maintain the bootbanks again.

Posted in: ESXi, Hardware, vCenter, VMWare / Tagged: , , , , ,

Synology iSCSI/LUN SSD Cache with DSM 7.0

September 28, 2021 2:31 PM / Leave a Comment /

UPDATE: Seems to be gone with ‘Flashcache Version : flashcache-1.0-2021-10-18-20:42’ on 7.0.1. 🙁

With DSM 7.0 Synology removed the feature of accelerating Block-Level LUNs. This is an interesting feature for iSCSI LUNs used for Hypervisors like VMware ESX.

Synology DSM 7.0 Release Notes:

- Creating SSD caches on block-level LUNs is no longer supported. Existing SSD caches for block LUNs will function normally after the update.

However this is valid but you can re-enable acceleration for Block-Level iSCSI LUNs.

Logon to your Synology NAS via SSH and get the root shell via “sudo -i”. Execute the following command to re-enable the cache.

/var/packages/ScsiTarget/target/bin/synoiscsihook --flashcache_enable

This works as long as you’re not rebooting. You can create a task within DSM with trigger at “Boot-Up” to execute this command line to enable the Cache again.

Posted in: ESXi, Synology, VMWare / Tagged: ,

open-vm-tools: Unknown ioctl 1976

November 25, 2020 6:12 PM / 3 Comments /

Recently I setup my Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB ESXi Cluster. After compling and installing the open-vm-tools for Arm64/AArch64 I got alot of messages regarding “Unknown ioctl 1976”. This happens due to missing “VMCI_SOCKETS” module load during startup. You can simply fix this by adding the following lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

blacklist vsock_loopback
blacklist vmw_vsock_virtio_transport_common
install vsock_loopback /usr/bin/true
install vmw_vsock_virtio_transport_common /usr/bin/true

Posted in: ESXi, VMWare / Tagged: , , , ,

Synology Virtual Machine Manager increase vDisk Limit

November 25, 2020 4:11 PM / 2 Comments /

Recently I tried to run a VMware vCenter Appliance (vCSA) on my Synology. Trying to import the provided OVA File results in an unplausible error, so I tried to convert it with the OVFTool thats provided by VMware on the installation disk. I converted or extracted the vmdk diskimages via OVFTool, its basically achieveable by calling ovftool.exe <ova> file.

After that I imported all vmdk images to my Virtual Machine Manager via Images -> Disk Images and started “importing” a virtual machine with the uploaded diskimages. Sadly Synology limits the maximum vDisks for new and imported virtual machines to 8. This is not a hard limit as Virtual Machine Manager is run by qemu and qemu limit is 256 disks.

So how about trying to add the disks after the virtual machine creation via command line? I was messing around with this but the vdisks are added via virtio-scsi and I found this hard to add the disks manually.

So lets see if we can achieve this a different way. I analysed the JavaScript used by Virtual Machine Manager. This can be found here “/volume1/@appstore/Virtualization/ui/virtualization.js”. There is even a check in it, that prompts you with an error if a machine has more than 8 vDisks. So how can we increase the maximum virtual machine attachable disks?

Open “/volume1/@appstore/Virtualization/ui/virtualization.js” and edit the value of “this.maxVdiskNum=8” from 8 to 16. Save the file, gzip it again via gzip -k virtualization.js and restart Virtual Machine Manager or your whole NAS.

However for a vCenter it takes sometime to setup the machine. Keep the first two disks with VirtIO and all other disks on SATA Setting.

Good Luck.

Posted in: Synology, vCenter, VMWare / Tagged: , , , ,

<20 Watt Home Server for Hyper-V and ESXi

June 1, 2014 3:58 PM / Leave a Comment /

I’ve rented a lot of linux vps around the world for testing and hosting teamspeak and other stuff. Not every application runs on linux so I decided to build a small home server with a low power consumption.

I stumbled over the list of components in the hardwareluxx forums and build my system based on that components. ( Link )

Here is my list:

  • Intel Pentium G3420
  • ASRock Z87E-ITX
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport Kit 8GB ( DDR3-1600, CL9-9-9-24 )
  • EKL Alpenföhn Silvretta
  • be quiet! Pure Power L8 300W ATX 2.4
  • SanDisk SSD 128GB
  • Kingston SSDNow mS200 SSD 30 GB
  • Cooler Master Elite 130

First of all I removed the Mini PCIe Wifi card from the mainboard as its not needed and plugged in the mSATA at the bottom of it. The small SSD can be used for the OS (Server 2012 R2) or as Host Cache for ESXi.
After putting all components together I enabled all bios settings allowing power savings and switched of the soundcard etc. I also tried to undervolt the CPU with the VCore Offset and got it down to -0,235mV.

Here are the results (power measurement):

ESXi 5.5 U1 Windows Server 2012 R2
Idle 18.2 Watts 11.1 Watts
Load 39.6 Watts 35.8 Watts

Make sure all drivers are installed and no usb devices are plugged in. The usb devices may prevent reaching a package c-state of more than 80.

The network drivers are a little tricky. For ESXi 5.5 follow this guide  ESXi 6.0 includes drivers for Intel I217V and for Server 2012 follow this guide.

Good luck and post your results.

Posted in: ESXi, Hyper-V, Microsoft, VMWare / Tagged: , , , , , , ,

ESXi Paravirtual Drivers (PVSCSI) ISO Image

February 28, 2014 10:45 AM / Leave a Comment /

As I’m to lazy to add a floppy drive to my VMs for adding the pvscsi drivers, I created an ISO from pvscsi-Windows2008.flp.

Simply dismount the windows install disk, mount pvscsi-Windows2008.iso, select the drivers and remount the windows install disk.

Download from here: pvscsi-Windows2008.iso

Posted in: ESXi, VMWare / Tagged: , , , , , ,

Display ESXi health status of Dell Perc 5/i

January 5, 2014 3:31 AM / 2 Comments /

So how to display health status of a Dell Perc 5/i (LSI 8404E) in ESXi incuding battery and raid status?

Nothing easier than that. Most admins know the Dell Perc 5/i is a LSI 8404E with firmware and bootloader from dell.

Download the latest LSI MegaRAID SMIS Provider for VMWare from here: http://www.lsi.com/search/pages/Results.aspx?k=VMWare%20SMIS&v1=-write

Upload the VIB File to your ESXi and install via commandline.

esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/vmware-esx-provider-lsiprovider.vib –no-sig-check

Result should be:

Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: LSI_bootbank_lsiprovider_500.04.V0.38-0005
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:

Simply reboot your ESXi and now you can view the health status on your server.

ESXI5i

UPDATE: LSI was aquired by Avago and Avago was aquired by Broadcom.

You may find the correct download here: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/dt_esxi50_lsi_2108_v534/dHRAYnRqZWRiZHAlZA==

Posted in: ESXi, VMWare / Tagged: , , , ,