Can’t Delete DataStore on New VMware ESXi Install even with embedded SDcard

March 22, 2010

Like many of you out there, when I am creating a VM, there are times I want a virtual hard drive larger than 256GB.  Unfortunately VMware defaults the DataStore block size to 1MB, which limits you to a virtual HDD of only that size.  In a previous post (here), I walked you through deleting and recreating the DataStore to get the larger block size needed for a VHDD of up to 2TB.  But what happens when you can’t delete the DataStore to recreate it.  This is the error I am talking about: ”Error during the configuration of the host: DestroyVmfsDatastore: can’t delete partition 3 on lun vmhba1:0:0″

It is no surprise when you install VMware, it installs some other information on the drives for the OS, but I was surprised to see files on the local hard drives when I was installing VMware on the embedded SDcard we typically specify with our servers.  Despite installing the actual OS on a separate flash drive, the install actually wrote some data to one of the drives on the server.

Compare DataStore1 which has VMware ESXi installed on it to DataStore 2 which has nothing but VM’s on it.  You can see there are a lot more partitions, which is why the DataStore won’t delete.  If VMware was installed on an embedded flash drive you would see less partitions on DataStore1, but still a lot more than on DataStore2.

The easiest way to avoid this is if you are installing to an embedded SD card is to not attach your hard drives or configure your virtual disks if you are using a RAID card until after the ESXi installation.  If the drives aren’t there, then the installation can’t write files to them.

If, however you have already installed VMware ESXi to the flash drive and don’t want to reinstall it again with the drives disconnected, the easiest way it from inside the RAID card utility at startup, just re-initialize the offending drive, which will delete all data that has been written to it and then you will be able to create the DataStore with the larger block size.

If you do not have the option of installing to an embedded flash drive, then my recommendation would be to create a 1GB virtual disk in your RAID card first, install VMware there, and then create the remaining disks in the RAID utility after.  Then, when you are creating the DataStore in VMware, you can specify the block size then.

I hope this helps take away some of the confusion on why you cant delete a DataStore on a clean install with no VM’s even created.

1 Comment | Corneredge News, Tech post, vmware | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Clinton

How to virtualize an old computer

October 16, 2009

As developers and systems engineers we use an immense amount of software tools and applications.  Transfering to using a new computer seems like it can take months before you have “all you need” for our daily tasks.

When I took delivery of my new laptop in January I struggled with this issue.  My old machine had been in place for 3 years and now I was faced with starting fresh.  64-bit Vista on my laptop also presented a challenge for old applications I used.  Not to mention that old PCanywhere, old VPN connections, etc…

SO, I decided to virtualize my old laptop.  I can litterally run that computer in VMware faster than I could before, and I don’t have to worry about old applications or old VPN configurations for customers, they all just work!

So how do you do it?  Simply install the free Vmware converter on the machine you want to virtualize and point it to your nearest VMWare workstaion or server.  I highly recommend this, it was a truely painless process.

Fore more information check out these sites:

VMware converter site

How to run VMWARE converter step by step

Leave a Comment » | CES Systems, vmware | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Russ

Data Store Size Limits in VMware ESX and ESXi

July 22, 2009

Well, you took the leap and are now virtualized.  You’re now doing more than ever, and data size is growing rapidly.  Time to add a new virtual hard drive to your machine, but wait…  I said 500 GB, why is it only 256 GB.  Well, you hit a limitation of the data store in VMware under your current default configuration.  Check to see what your data store block size is.  here’s where to find it:

Highlighted you will see the datastore block size.

Highlighted you will see the data store block size.

When data stores are created, their default block size is 1 MB, which gives you a maximum virtual hard drive size maximum of 256 GB.  So how do you get larger VHD’s?

Hopefully you are reading this and have a brand new ESX/ESXi setup, in which case you can just delete the data store and recreate it, choosing a different block size.  If you already have machines running on the data store, you have a project ahead of you, because deleting the data store will format all data on that drive, and you will have to start from scratch, or be creative before you make the change (there are some ideas of how to work around this below).

If you have the disk space to cover 2TB, then I would go with the maximum of 8MB block size to give you a maximum virtual HDD size of 2TB.  There is no noticeable I/O performance difference by using maximum size, so use the largest size to mazimize your storage.  Here is a quick reference of what block size you can choose and what the maximum VHD that will give you:

Block Size     Max VHD size

1MB                256GB
2MB               512GB
4MB               1TB
8MB               2TB

Already have servers running?  How do you fix it?

If you already have the data store in use, and can afford some downtime for a maintenance window, here is a workaround you could do, asuming you have more than one ESX(i) server at your disposal.  You can power the VM down and use the free VMware vCenter Converter (http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/) to move the virtual machine from one ESX(i) server to another.  Figure on about 1 minute per gig of hard drive size when moving it, with a GB network.  Once the VM is moved to its new location, power it an and make sure all is working well before you delete from disk the VM on the original ESX(i) server.  Once all the VMs are moved off the ESX server, you can go ahead and remove the data store and create a new one using the new block size.

If you hapen to have your VMs in a cluster with vMotion, this task is even easier, as you can change the location of the datastore through the migrate option.  If you dont have any other ESX servers, you could probably do it to VMware Servers, but at that point, you would probably be better just adding multiple drives to the VMs, it would be a lot less work.

Here is a nice reference guide from VMware with this and other importand configuration information: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_config_max.pdf

6 Comments | CES Systems, Clinton Hague, Corneredge Services, ESX Server, ESXi Server, vmware | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Clinton

SysinfoException… a cryptic Vmware ESX 3.5 Vmotion error translated

May 20, 2008

Corner Edge has just completed a MAJOR implementation of a Vmware ESX cluster. We have greatly improved our data center capabilities and offerings.

This time around I want to add another tidbit to the online body of knowledge.

I recently received the following error while configuring Vmotion on our Vmware ESX 3.5 server cluster:

Error during the configuration of the host: SysinfoException: Node (VSI_NODE_net_tcpip_plumb) ; Status(bad0005)= Already exists; Message= Unable to Set

Now what is THAT supposed to mean? Vmware has amazing technology, but that “amazing” thing hasn’t yet reached their error messages.

It turns out that if your iSCSI traffic is configured with a specific network (Example: 10.0.10.10), and you try to configure Vmotion ports within the same network space (Example: 10.0.10.20), the Virtual Center wizard fails with the error above.

“Best practices” dictate that iSCSI traffic and Vmotion traffic should be completely separate from each other. But even if they are physically separated, and you may want use the same network space… well, you can’t.

Solution: Make the network address space for iSCSI (Example: 10.0.10.x) and Vmotion (Example: 10.0.20.x) different.

Oh and a better error message could be:

Wow buddy, you may think you’re really smart using the same network for iSCSI and Vmotion, but might as well forget it. I refuse to work that way. Make them separate networks!

Cheers,
Elias

Leave a Comment » | CES Systems, ESX Server, Tech post, vmware | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Elias

Pressing F8 during Windows install on Vmware ESX 3.5

April 15, 2008

After scouring the Intertubes for an answer and not finding a solution, I feel this is a worthy tidbit of new technical information I should share with the rest of the world.

It’s a simple yet annoying problem.

While installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro on a Vmware ESX 3.5 host, I got to the usual “Licensing Agreement” page (you know the one with all the legalese). It asks for the F8 key to be pressed to “agree”.

To my surprise, pressing F8 just wouldn’t work! No combination of CTRL, ALT, shift, ascii-codes would work either, I was stuck on the agreement page!

I had seen this before with a Vmware Workstation installation.  Where, if I wanted to enter a VM’s BIOS settings I needed to use a PS/2 keyboard (in addition to my regular USB keyboard) in order to press “ESC” to enter the configuration page.  The only theory I had in mind was that maybe the USB devices weren’t loaded early enough to access the BIOS, while PS/2 support was. *shrug*

Well, back to ESX. I tried pressing F8 through both the VIC2.5 Console tab and through a separate Console window. No luck.

It turns out that the only solution to pressing F8 was to access the VIC2.5 through another workstation (using a PS/2 keyboard) and finally F8 was accepted. Weird.

Yes it’s simple yet annoying problem.

(For the record, my workstation has a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (ver 1.0))

Update 20080814: One reader’s comment really fixes this beautifully

hey4ndrw Says:
If you have the Microsoft Wireless Natural Multimedia ergonomic keyboard, and no amount of leaning on the F8 key to select “I Agree” works when reinstalling XP, try tapping once on the F Lock button (one key to the right of F12), then pressing F8. Worked for me.

12 Comments | CES Systems, ESX Server, Elias Pinto, Tech post, vmware | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Elias