Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

ESX

Fixed: Intel quad-port nic and VST

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For those who encountered the same weird networking problems as I did, I was just browsing through the Knowledge Base articles for the patches released yesterday and found out that they fixed the driver for the Intel quad-port nic. When using VST half of the packets were dropped, for more info on the problem check these blogs: 1 , 2.

Fixed ESX Server support for Intel Zoar NICs on a VLAN trunking configuration. A flaw existed between the ESX Server networking subsystem and the igb driver.

New 3.5 Patches!

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VMware just uploaded a whole bunch of patches for ESX 3.5:

ESX350-200802301-BG : Update to the bnx2 Driver
ESX350-200802303-SG : Security Update to the util-linux Package
ESX350-200802304-SG : Security Update to the Perl Package
ESX350-200802305-SG : Security Update to the openssl Package
ESX350-200802306-BG : VMware ESX Server 3.5, Patch ESX350-200802306-BG: Daylight Saving Time Update
ESX350-200802401-BG : Updates to vmware-hostd
ESX350-200802403-BG : Improved Statistics Collection for Support Scripts, Fix for Patch Issue Seen After Upgrading from ESX Server 2.5.x to 3.5.0
ESX350-200802404-BG : Resolves DMA Issues on LSI 1078 and 106XE HBAs
ESX350-200802405-BG : Update to MegaRAID SCSI Driver to Fix Dell PowerEdge 6650 Boot Issue
ESX350-200802406-SG : Updated aacraid Driver
ESX350-200802408-SG : Security Updates to the Python Package
ESX350-200802409-BG : Fix for Reset Issue with CD-ROM Controller
ESX350-200802410-BG : Unexpected Reboot of Virtual Machines Configured to Automatically Start or Stop
ESX350-200802411-BG : Enhanced Validation Checks, and Fixes for Storage VMotion and Lab Manager
ESX350-200802412-BG : Updates to the VMkernel to Fix Networking and Hardware Issues
ESX350-200802413-BG : Sunfire X4200 Host Hangs Because of HBA Timeouts Due to DMA Problems
ESX350-200802414-BG : Discrete Sensors Report Wrong Information to Monitors
ESX350-200802415-SG : Security Update to Samba Packages

And there’s also an update for 3i available:

ESXe350-200802401-I-BG : Update to the bnx2 Driver

Good luck with patching those hosts, I will be testing these patches later this day so if I encounter any problems you will be the first to know

Powershell Toolkit beta coming up and VMworld lab PDF!

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Eric Sloof just pointed us out to the Blog on the VMware website about the upcoming Powershell Toolkit Beta. I have been playing around with this toolkit for a while but had a hard time figuring out how to actually make useful scripts. The PDF that was also released has some cool examples of useful scripts for instance these:

Change the number of virtual CPUs configured for “Email VM 1” from 1 to 2:
get-vm “Email VM 1 User N” | `
set-vm –numcpu 2

Read the last 10 lines of the hostd log file from ESX1:
(get-log –host (get-vmhost esx1) `
hostd).Entries[-10..-1]

Identify which VMs have network adapters that are not automatically connected:
get-vm | where { `
$_ | get-networkadapter | where { `
$_.ConnectionState.StartConnected -eq 0 `
} `
}

Cool stuff!

VMReference Card 1.1!

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Forbes just uploaded a brand new version of the VMReference Card. Download it, print it and keep it close!

Source: http://vmreference.com/

Here is version 1.1 in all its shining glory.

I’ve made several corrections (thanks everyone), added a few extra snippets and dusted it with a sprinkling of handy tips and tricks.

The biggest change is a small 3i section. I have been wanting to do this for a while, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it since its beta. There is quite lot of information around about 3i now, but I just wanted to add the sort of stuff people would actual use.