Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

ESX

New version of ESX 3.5 and patches for 3.0.x

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VMware just released a new version of the ESX 3.5 ISO according to their download site. The release notes haven’t been update yet so unfortunately I can’t tell you what’s included, but my guess would be the patches released on the 17th of January.

Latest Released Version: 3.5.0 | 02/20/08 | 64607 | 565 MB

There are no new patches available for 3.5 at the moment, but they did patch 3.0.x and the following is fixed in these patches(8 patches for 3.0.2, over 140MB):

  • Security Update to the Samba Package
  • Security Updates to the Python Package
  • Fix for aacraid SCSI Driver Security Issue
  • Virtual Machines on the ESX Server host do not power ON automatically
  • ESX Server host might stop responding when a CD-ROM drive is accessed
  • iSCSI LUNs in the pass-through mode might cause the ESX Server host to stop responding
  • Fixes for Remote-Console Black-out, OpenSolaris Boot Delay, Duplicate Packet Issue; Support for Virtual Machines to Share Generic SCSI Devices
  • Fixes for VMware Tools Installer

By the way I signed in on the patch/updates email and haven’t received anything yet… Did any of you guys receive anything?

HA advanced options

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PeterB posted a topic about all known HA advanced options on the Dutch VMUG. If anyone has more options please post ’em and let’s try to make this list as long as possible:

  • das.failuredetectiontime – Amount of milliseconds, timeout time for isolation response action
  • das.isolationaddress[0-9] – IP address the ESX hosts uses validating if it is isolated from the network or not. It will use the default gateway by default. With this setting additional addresses can be configured for use.
  • das.poweroffonisolation – Values are False or True, this is for setting the isolation response. Default a VM will be powered off.
  • das.vmMemoryMinMB – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.vmCpuMinMHz – Higher values will reserve more space for failovers.
  • das.defaultfailoverhost – Value is a hostname, this host will be the primary failover host.

ESX 3.5 and weird DRS/HA behaviour…

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During the last couple of ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 implementations I encountered some weird DRS/HA behavior:

  1. During the reboot of a VM ESX decided to vmotion the VM, as you can imagine this took a lot longer than normal due to the memory being excessively active.
  2. When the DRS Affinity Rules in a two cluster node is set to “seperate” two specific virtual machines VMware has a hard time relocating a VM when a host goes into “maintenance mode”. I can imagine why this happens but it’s definitely not something that’s suppose to happen in my opinion. It’s a Admin initiated manual action it should overrule all affinity settings.

So let me hear which weird behavior you noticed with ESX 3.5 / VC 2.5….

ESX 3i backdoor

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According to this new KB article there’s a backdoor for ESX3i:

  1. Log in to your ESX Server 3i at the console.
  2. Press Alt+F1 to switch to the console window.
  3. Enter unsupported to start the Tech Support Mode login process. Note that no text will appear on the console window.
  4. Enter the password for the root user. Tech Support Mode is now active.
  5. Complete tasks in Tech Support Mode.
  6. Enter the command exit to exit Tech Support Mode.
  7. Press Alt+F2 to return the server to DCUI mode.

For more info check the KB article. I will be checking out this feature over the next couple of days to see what’s possible in this mode.

Selective VCB fullvm images

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During the VMware course DSA I discovered that it is in fact possible to dump specific vmdk’s with the use of the default VCB tools. While I was finding out a way to script this I was notified in one of my blogs by JTurver(Justin Turver) that he already wrote a script that could do what I was looking for. It’s a great script for dumping all system disks and leaving the disk that are filled with data alone. You can use a text file as input for the vbs script. Check out his blog on the VMware website! Great work and thanks for pointing me out!