Tag Archives: Esxi

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: , , , , ,

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: , , , ,

<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: , , , , , , ,