cyborgworkshop.org » ESXi

Install VMWare ESXi 4 onto a USB thumbdrive in two commands

jason — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:34:13 +0000

Updated for ESXi 4
If you have a linux box and a 1 gig thumb drive, here is how to install VMWare ESXi onto that drive in 2 commands. Download the ESXi ISO and then mount it in linux like so

mount -t iso9660 -o loop VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-171294.x86_64.iso /mnt/esx

Now we’re going to write the installer file to the thumbdrive. I’m assuming the thumbdrive is /dev/sdb

tar xvzf /mnt/esx/image.tgz usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-171294-x86_64.dd.bz2 -O | bzip2 -d -c | dd of=/dev/sdb

This will take a little bit, but once it’s done you’re good to go. pop that drive into a USB boot capable board, configure your storage and away you go!

Rebooting a vmware server immediatly

jason — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:16:48 +0000

I enabled ssh on my ESXi server to help me troubleshoot what appears to be a hardware problem. Hardware problems can be a real pain to troubleshoot and since this one involved the USB storage that was encapsulating my ESXi install, sometimes rebooting when it was broken didn’t really work. It would just hang and I would have to power cycle the server. Turns out that was an issue with ESXi trying to be responsible and syncing the filesystems before it goes into reboot and, when the Hypervisor1 and Hypervisor2 fileystems aren’t available, this turns into a dead lock. Not to fear! simply ssh into the server and, without using tab completion, type this entire command into the console and hit enter.

reboot -f -n

That tells ESXi to reboot without doing a sync/flush to disk and without going through init. Essentially pulling the power cord. It’s drastic and it can cause no shortage of issues on your VMs filesystems, but when you are remote and can’t reach the cord this is a good option to have!

The Intel BLKD945GCLF2 Atom 330 motherboard

jason — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:21:46 +0000

I don’t usually write about specific products, but I have to drop a line about this new Atom 330 based board that I picked up from newegg. First off, it’s a dual core Atom CPU (with HT) that clocks in at 1.6ghz in 8 watts. Two SATA 2 ports and a single IDE attach the storage, 1 PCI slot, 1 DDR2 DIMM slot, onboard RTL gigabit LAN and Intel analog video with s-video out. Pretty much a 3 generation old PC. But here is the kicker, this little board runs EVERYTHING! Right now, I’m triple booting OSX (Kalyway with 0 tweaks, it just works) Mint Linux XFCE and VMWare ESXi (!). The ESXi did require me to smack in an intel based NIC, but the ICH7 chipset allows you to use the onboard sata storage as VMFS. The only real drag about this board is that it tops out at 2 gig of RAM, otherwise I would be ordering these things in bulk!

Getting ESXi running as cheap as possible.

jason — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:28:35 +0000

In a never ending goal to have enterprise level stuff in my humble home, I have put this short guide together on how to assemble the cheapest VMWare ESXi server possible. There are a few guidelines to keep in mind.

First, ESXi will run using SATA drives in AHCI mode connected directly to a motherboard that uses an Intel ICH7 or ICH9 chipset, but NOT an ICH8 or ICH10.

VMWare will use as much RAM as you can give it. RAM is more important then CPU.

Having said that, a multicore CPU is really helpful. ecspecially if you plan on using the software iSCSI initiator.

Use an Intel Pro 100 or Pro 1000 NIC. NIC support is pretty bare in ESXi, so just hop on newegg and spend 20 bucks on one.

We have two options, the first and cheapest is to use a motherboard based on the ICH7 or ICH9 chipset. ESXi will support SATA drives in AHCI mode connected to this chipset,so an ICH7/9 board, a few gig of RAM, a SATA drive and an Intel NIC will have you on your feet. If you have this kind of setup, all you’re going to need to do is boot off of the ESXi installer CD and you’ll be done a short time later.

The second option is a bit more involved, but will work on ICH8 and ICH10 motherboards. I personally run an ICH10 based board with a quad core and 8 gig of RAM using this method. This method also requires iSCSI storage to be available. I use Solaris and ZFS for my SAN. So, if you have an ICH8 or ICH10 motherboard, you need to create a USB bootable thumbdrive and install ESXi onto that. You can follow these simple instructions for linux or you can google for instructions for windows. Once you have your boot drive created, you will need to give your host an IP and use the management console to setup iscsi storage. Have fun!

Ubuntu unstable on ESXi

jason — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:18:12 +0000

I’m having some serious stability issues with all of my ubuntu VMs on ESXi. After a period of several days, they have all locked up with a message about the mtp driver having read errors, or something along those lines. The short summary is that it looks like the scsi disk (emulated by ESXi, actually an iscsi LUN) becomes unavailable and lots of sense key errors are generated. The VM goes to 100% CPU and I have to reboot the entire ESXi server to recover. In the meantime, my SAN, Fedora, Solaris and Windows VMs never skip a beat. I’ve rebuilt the VM several times with different version of ubuntu in the 8.x line and different patch revisions, but have finally gave up. I’m back on Fedora and we’ll see if it remains stable.