First Cut for ESXi3 5 update3 released

Downloaded latest ESXi version: 3.5 Update 3 | 2008/11/06 | Build: 123629. Not to mention that again VMware has done wonderful job in releasing their updates. This kind of work gives me enough reason to believe that removal of Diane Greene cannot downgrade VMware reputation.

I downloaded HP version as I was using HP DL 380 as my host.

When I mounted ISO using ILO and rebooted my server it did not gave me option to install GUI as earlier updates use to do ,instead of that it says “LOADING ISO” and once ISO is loaded it will give default option like this

1. ELA where you have to accept the license

2. It will search for previous install of ESX

3. It will give warning message like your disk will be formatted and stuff like that

But it will not do anything other than that. I was surprised how do I then configure my system. So here is the answer:

1. Remove the ILO mount and then reboot the system.

2. When the system comes back it will allow you to configure the system. Press F2 then it will provide you the option to specify

When you press F12 to reboot it gives you option if you want to shutdown or restart. I love this feature

When you leave the screen just like that for a while then it will turn black

While rebooting it will present a nice looking GUI

I LOVE VMWare

Getting rid of .vmem file with VMWare workstation 5

Well I am back from vacation, yeah it was for one month long. No I also worked for past two years without any vacation, what so fuss about it.
There were two virtual machine which are running on VMWare workstation 5.0 and were keep shutting down because of space crunch on physical win2003 box. There were not much which I can do to have more space. Finally I looked at the directory under virtual machine and found that there were 700MB big *.vmem file got created. After researching I found that this file can be deleted but in order to get safely rid of it we need to add some line in .vmx file and the line which has to be added would be

mainMem.useNameFile= False

Strange issue with “UPTIME” for the host

I  found the strange issue with server update. When I looked at the service console it has uptime for 4 days but VC shows up for 147 days. I am sure service console is correct but why VC showing wired thing.

Describing Memory field on VC2.5

With VC2.5 console we see lot of field about memory and we all start wondering what exactly those field suppose to mean. Kit Colbert has consolidated all those field and posted a nice PDF

Vstor2 Converter Virtual Storage Driver service failed to start due to the following error

One of the VM’s after the P2V was throwing error message


Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date: 10/11/2008
Time: 12:41:43 PM
User: N/A
Computer: xxxx
Description:
The Vstor2 Converter Virtual Storage Driver service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

It was really strange to find out why I am getting driver error when I had uninstalled all the drivers. After little bit of research I found that same physical machine was used for P2V using VMware converter and this version has some known issue
http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv3.html

Manual cleanup required of some Converter Agent files from remote source physical machineIn some cases, the automatic cleanup of Converter Agent files from the system on which it ran is incomplete. If there are vmware-ufad-p2v-XXXXX subdirectories remaining under %SystemRoot% on the remote source physical machine after completion of the import (either successful or failed), automatic cleanup was not totally successful, and might cause future import attempts to fail. To clean up manually (recommended), follow these steps:
1. Launch regedit and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
2. Remove the stcp2v30 key
3. Remove the vstor2-p2v30 key
4. Remove all vmware-ufad-p2v-XXXXX keys
5. Remove all courier-XXXXX keys
6. Reboot
Under %SystemRoot%\system32, remove all vmware-ufad-p2v-XXXXX subdirectories


So when did P2V for the same physical machine everything got virtualized with the same settings and that was causing the problem. After looking at the registry of virtual machine I found the key for “Vstor2” HKLM\SYSTEM\ConterSet001\Services . Delete the key and rebooted the VM and error went off.