Tag: ESXi

Unhandled Exception when logging into ESXi Host client

On By sam.aaronIn Daily, ESX, ESXi, VMwareLeave a comment

Unhandled Execption Error
Ran into this weird error after powering up the C.R.I.B. and logging into the ESXi Host to boot up VMs. This error popped up while using Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

Unhandled Exception (1)
Cause: Error: [$rootScope:inprog] http://errors.angularjs.org/1.3.2/$rootScope/inprog?p0=%24digest

The error presents itself with two buttons: Reload and Details. The picture displayed shows the details of the error that I got. You can hit reload, attempt to log back in, and rinse and repeat the process. Or you can select Details, where you can only ‘close’ the error and repeat the process.

A quick check with Professor Google finds this is an issue mentioned in the VMware Communities. Luckily, the entry had an answer attached. (Thanks, “rshell”). It’s not a fix, but it is an answer.

I can’t explain why the error occurs, but I can explain what causes it to pop up. This error occurs when you land on the logon page, enter credentials, and then hit on the keyboard instead of clicking on the button. If you click the login button, you have no errors and vSphere loads normally.

How to Mount a USB Drive as an ESXi Datastore

On By sam.aaronIn ESXi, Home Lab, HowTo, Projects, VMware7 Comments

Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive
Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive

Recently, I have upgraded my homelab – yet again. There will be an oncoming post about the hardware I chose and how it is set up. This time, my lab is mobile. I can take it with me on the road or leave it at home.
One of the features that I wanted to be able to capture and utilize was VMware Data Protection (vDP) to backup my Infrastructure and Important VMs. However, there was a small hurdle that I needed to overcome – storage – and how do I make it mobile. VDP requires – at minimum, a 2TB datastore for backup storage. Normally, you would utilize your storage array and carve out some space for the backups; I wanted to see if I could do something different – something radical. I wanted to use my USB3 USB drive.
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ESXi BIOS Power Settings Best Practice

On By sam.aaronIn Daily, ESX, ESXi, VMware1 Comment

Dell Poweredge R720 Server BIOS Power Settings
Dell Poweredge R720 Server BIOS Power Settings

There is a movement to change the best practice regarding the bios power settings on an ESXi host. In the past, you would set the power settings in the BIOS to max and be done with it. You did this because previous versions of vSphere did not work well with the various C-States of the processor (ie., When the workload on the host would drop, the CPU would drop to a lower power setting. When it would go to wake and draw the CPU back to full power, the host would crap all over itself.).

vSphere 5.5 introduced a new feature that allows VMware to better utilize the C-States of some of the newer processors. Thus allowing the CPUs to change power and speed states without affecting the performance or behavior of the Host. (YEAH!!)

I know we are happy about this, but not so fast…

This link describes the behavior and a couple of performance benefits from the change — however, it should also be noted, that this change is dependent on the type of workloads in your environment. If you have a heavy IO Intense workload or a time sensitive workload, you may still want to have that host on max power, high performance, etc.

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/01/bios-power-policies-affect-performance.html

Disable Flow Control

On By sam.aaronIn Daily, ESX, HowTo, VMwareLeave a comment

HP C7000 Blade Chassis
HP C7000 Blade Chassis
I was onsite this past weekend doing a vSphere 5.1 turnkey install. The turnkey consisted of a C7000 Blade Chassis, and two ESXi 5.1U3 hosts. With this new installation, the customer was adding to a new 10Gbe environment to his network. There were also a few settings that needed to be made, specifically, disabling Flow Control on the ESXi Hosts for Mgmt, Data, and vMotion.

The Flex10 Virtual Connect Modules in the chassis do not have a method of disabling flow control, each ESXi Host would auto-negotiate with Flow Control On for both transmit and receive. Personally, I’ve never had to worry about Flow Control within the environments that I’ve set up. But on this engagement, I was working side by side with a guy who lives, breathes, and retransmits network. Trust me, he knows his stuff. It was his recommendation to disable Flow Control. Realizing I had to figure this out quickly, I turned to the number one tool in my toolbag – Professor Google.

Flexing my “Google-Fu”, I found my answer right away: VMware’s KB Article 1013413. I opened an SSH session, and ran this command

# ethtool –pause tx off rx off

That’s Great! One problem. When I reboot, Flow Control is going to reenable because of the auto-negotiate. So how do I make this persistent/permanent? Another well versed Google search brought me to VMware KB Article 2043564. Once this change was applied, reboots did not reenable Flow Control. My network guy was happy, and hey – I learned something new.



So the next question then, is how do I add this change into a kickstart file. Hmm….. Stay tuned folks. I’ll see if there’s a way to do that.

vusb seen as an available network adapter?

On By sam.aaronIn Daily, ESXi, HowTo, VMwareLeave a comment

Recently, I had to install ESXi 4.1 on an IBM x3850 X5. Once the install was completed and I started configuring the host, I noticed something odd. I had a new vswitch and a network adapter that was defined as vusb0.

vusb0

WTF? At first, I thought I was imagining things. I opened the network adapters view, and sure enough there it was. I thought how could this be. Of course, I’ve never seen this before, so a little googling was in order. Lo and behold, I found this little jewel (VMware Forum Post: “Extra NICs showing up as vusb?”).
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