ESX Troubleshooting – The PSOD (Purple Screen of Death)…

Unlike the BSOD of Windows fame, there is actually hope with a PSOD on ESX.  As I learned at VMWorld 2008, this indicates a specific hardware problem in the majority of cases.  Examining the screen dump can actually point you in the right direction to resolving this.
As I was building my junk server cluster (in [...]

ESX 4.0….

VMware ESX 4.0 is in limited, restricted beta testing right now (beta 2?).  I found some links discussing some of the features expected, although this is always subject to change.  YMMV.

What to expect at VMworld: ESX 4.0 beta, Intel six-core CPUs, and maybe Cisco virtual switches
VMworld 2008 – Great news on ESX 4.0

Possibilities Within ESX…

As I learn more about VMware ESX, I am starting to see the flexibility and possibilities available.  You have five major sets of pieces to play with – vswifs, vmknics, portgroups, vswitches, and vmnics.

You can tag or untag your portgroups, and can assign multiple portgroups to a vmnic.
You can have multiple vswifs on multiple vswitches.
You [...]

NFS Fixed…

Didn’t have a default gateway defined for the two problem servers’ vmkernels.  Once I did that, they mounted the NFS share just fine.  Oddly, it worked mounting from within ESX at the command line…
I see beers in my future…..

Need to Fix NFS…

It occurs to me that I had better fix that NFS issue I am having.  Why?  Well, if I have five servers clustered, and three can mount the NFS datastore with VMs on it, could there be a chance of DRS moving a VM to a server not talking to the VM’s NFS orgin?  I [...]

More Work, More ESX…

Figured out my issue from yesterday – the Service Console NICs were on the wrong port group.  They had the right IPs but were assigned to a portgroup with a different subnet mask, so they were never talking to their gateway.  Fixed.  I knew I was being a chowderhead.
Another thing I learned about ESX and [...]

Work…

Today I worked.  No breaks, almost no emails (like, seven maybe), no phone calls, no meetings, no chit-chat watercooler stuff, barely had lunch (a sandwich from home) – while I worked.  From 8:30 AM straight through to 6:30 PM, and I am tired.  I got a LOT done.

I located two possible rack shelves to use, [...]