Troubleshooting

ESXi 5 Network Troubleshooting Commands

by Florian Grehl
February 10, 2015April 30, 2016
4 Comments

Check if a remote host is online and reachable.

~ # ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=13.701 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=10.176 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=9.055 ms

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 9.055/10.977/13.701 ms

Ping from a specific VMkernel adapter.

~ # ping -I vmk1 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=9.991 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=9.270 ms

Howto Shrink a Thin Provisioned Virtual Disk (VMDK)

by Florian Grehl
November 24, 2014
26 Comments

Thin provisioned disks are a great feature to save capacity as you virtual machines filesystem will never use the full capacity. I do not know a single system where you do not have at least 10GB of free space for OS disks. I am not considering databases, applications or fileservers which will grow constantly. Having thin provisioned disk is usually no longer a performance problem so it is a valid design choice even in production.

A common issue with thin disks is that the size will grow when required, but never shrink. When you require the capacity only once you might want to get it back from the virtual machine. This post describes how to reclaim unused space from the virtual machine.

Identify Disk Usage of a Thin Provisioned Virtual Disk

by Florian Grehl
November 23, 2014
3 Comments

This post demonstrates various ways to identify the disk usage of a thin provisioned virtual disk.

I have a virtual machine with a 10 GB thin provisioned disk. You can verify the disk type from the virtual machine settings page.

thin-provisioned-disk

Enabling verbose logging on QLogic and Emulex HBAs in ESXi 5.5

by Florian Grehl
February 19, 2014December 29, 2014

KB1005576 explains how to enable or disable verbose logging on QLogic and Emulex Host Bus Adapters. With ESXi 5.5 and its Native Device Driver Architecture the option has been slightly changed, but is still available. This post explains how to enable verbose logging on QLogic and Emulex HBAs in ESXi 5.5.

The new native drivers and their predecessor are:

Emulex FC: lpfc (replaces lpfc820)
QLogic FC: qlnativefc (replaces qla2xxx)

vSphere Mobile Watchlist - VM Administration for Andorid and iOS

by Florian Grehl
February 10, 2014December 22, 2014
2 Comments

VMware has just published a new App for Andorid and iOS: vSphere Mobile Watchlist. The App which has been announced at the last VMware Partner Exchange 2014 allows to monitor your virtual machines in your vSphere infrastructure remotely on your phone. I've tested the app on my HTC One to see how powerful it is.

Howto Check Network Port Availability from vMA

by Florian Grehl
November 6, 2013

VMwares vSphere Management Assistant does not have much tools available. When you vMA is behind a firewall you might want to check if ports are reachable for troubleshooting purposes. As the vMA does not come with telnet or netcat you can use the built in bash feature: