During a VMware healthcheck at one of my customers I ran across the following error in /var/log/vmkwarning: “Memory is incorrectly balanced between the NUMA nodes of this system which will lead to poor performance. See /proc/vmware/NUMA/hardware for details on your current memory configuration.”
Port range and esxcfg-firewall
An often made mistake when trying to open up or close a port range with the ESX(3.0.2 and 3.5) firewall is using the dash(-) as a divider. Using the dash unfortunately does not always result in an error. To open up or close a port range you should use a collon(:) as a divider:
esxcfg-firewall –openport 6000:6010,tcp,in,test
Virtual Iron 4.2 released
Virtual Iron 4.2 has officially been released. Virtual Iron uses the Xen Hypervisor and positioned their product “Virtual Iron Enterprise Edition” as a competitor of VMware ESX. This new release includes a couple of long awaited features:
VMware ESX 3i installable general availability
VMware just officially released VMware ESX 3i, you can download the installable iso here. For now it’s only supported on Dell Poweredge 2950(Full) and HP DL380G5(Experimental) servers. Check out the installable, I booted it within VMware Workstation and right until I tried to boot a VM it worked fine, than it crashed. [Read more…] about VMware ESX 3i installable general availability
Starting a VM after applying 15 November and up patches on 3.0.2
When patching ESX Hosts with iSCSI attached SAN’s it’s possible you encounter the following event when starting a VM:
“A general system error occured: The system returned an error. Communication with the virtual machine may have been interrupted.”
This is caused by the fact that the “Software iSCSI Client” isn’t enabled on the ESX firewall. November the 15th VMware released a couple of patches which addressed a bug. This bug made it possible to connect via the iSCSI software initiator without enabling the service on the ESX firewall. To open up the port open a console session to the ESX host and type “esxcfg-firewall -e swISCSIClient” or enable it via VirtualCenter “Configuration -> Security Profile -> Properties -> Check Software iSCSI Client”.