VMware has announced 4 new certifications:
Read More »New Certifications - VCP6-Cloud, VCP5-DT, VCA-NV and VCIX-NV
ESXCLI is the most powerful command line tool on an ESXi host. You may need it for troubleshooting, configuration or for ESXi installations by using a kickstart file. I'm having this command line reference on my desktop since a couple of month and I am using it quite often. Maybe someone else is able to make use of it too. It's a collection of help pages from all esxcli commands.
Download: esxcli-550-command-reference.txt
Small, silent, transportable, and a very low power consumption. That's the Intel NUC. It's not only a great system for Homelabs, or Homeservers - It can also be used to build a portable Virtual SAN Cluster. I ordered 3 NUCs to build a VMware Virtual SAN-enabled Cluster.
Read More »VMware VSAN on Intel NUC - Mobile Cluster for $2000
If you have ESXi running on a flash media (USB flash drive or SD Card) you might want to create a ready-to-run backup of your host. This posts describes how you can create a backup of your ESXi hosts and create a media with an identical configuration where vicfg-backup is not a solution.
Read More »Clone ESXi Installations on SD Cards or USB Flash Drives
I recently had strange issues with Hewlett-Packard servers. ESXi hosts randomly have shown a couple of different symptoms:
Call "HostServiceSystem.Restart" for object "serviceSystem-[*]" on vCenter Server * failed.
Power On virtual machine *
A general system error occurred: The virtual machine could not start
VMK_NO_MEMORY
A general system error occurred: Command /bin/sh failed
/bin/sh cannot fork
sfcb-HTTPS-Daemon[*]: handleHttpRequest fork failed: Cannot allocate memory
crond[*]: can't vfork
cpu*:*)WARNING: Heap: *: Heap_Align(globalCartel-1, 136/136 bytes, 8 align) failed.
cpu*:*)WARNING: Heap: *: Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size. Cannot expand)
WARNING: Heap: *: Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size. Cannot expand.
I was asked if it is possible to create an USB Flash Drive that can install ESXi on a server automatically. ESXi has a Scripted Install feature which allows to put all installation parameters into a Kickstart file to run unattended Installations. This post explains how to create an USB Flash Drive that does unattended ESXi installations. You can plug it into a Server, power it on and ESXi will be installed automatically.
Read More »Unattended ESXi Installation from an USB Flash Drive
Intel NUCs are small, silent, transportable and have a very low power consumption, making it a great server for your homelab. Unfortunately ESXi does not work out of the box on these small nice systems. This post describes how you can create a customized ESXi Image for a 4th Intel NUC in about 5 minutes.
4th Generation Intel NUC Models:
VMware Workstation 11 does now support EFI boot configuration in the GUI which enables you to boot from an USB disk without workarounds. You do not have to edit vmx files or use workarounds like mounting USB drives as physical disk or booting with Plop Boot Manager.
For servers without CD drive or remote KVM you might want to use an USB Flash Drive to install ESXi to the hardware. This post explains how to create a bootable ESXi Installer USB Flash Drive in less than 2 minutes. The Flash Drive will work totally identical to an Installable CD.
VMware does only provide installable ISO files for updates (Bold entries of my ESXi Build List), not for patches. This post explains how you can quickly create an installable that contains all patches.
