Questions tagged [vmware-esx]

VMware ESX is an enterprise-level computer virtualization product offered by VMware, Inc.

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How to run VMWare ESX or ESXi in a virtual machine?

Can VMWare ESX or ESXi be installed and used inside a virtual machine? It can be installed inside VMWare Workstation or Server, but then it doesn't work; the main symptoms are: It runs REALLY slowly....
Massimo's user avatar
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27 votes
9 answers
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What kind of storage do people actually use for VMware ESX servers?

VMware and many network evangelists try to tell you that sophisticated (=expensive) fiber SANs are the "only" storage option for VMware ESX and ESXi servers. Well, yes, of course. Using a SAN is fast, ...
Dirk Paessler's user avatar
25 votes
10 answers
58k views

Running 100 virtual machines on a single VMWare host server

I've been using VMWare for many years, running dozens of production servers with very few issues. But I never tried hosting more than 20 VMs on a single physical host. Here is the idea: A stripped ...
user avatar
23 votes
8 answers
276k views

How to extend a Linux PV partition online after virtual disk growth

VMware allows to extend the size of a virtual disk online - when the VM is running. The next expected steps for Linux system are: extend the partition: delete and create a larger one with fdisk ...
Yves Martin's user avatar
21 votes
6 answers
24k views

Should Linux VM's in VMware/ESX have a swap partition?

On a VMware ESX setup what is the difference of these options?: a Linux VM with 1GB RAM and 1GB swap partition and the VM uses 1.5 GB ram a Linux VM with 1GB RAM and no swap partition and the VM ...
Sandra's user avatar
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21 votes
6 answers
45k views

High Load Average with modest CPU Utilization and almost no IO

The usual explanation for high load average with little cpu use under linux is too much IO (or more properly uninterruptable sleep). I have a service running on a cluster of 2-core VMs that exhibit ...
dbenhur's user avatar
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20 votes
9 answers
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Is it possible/advisable to run VMware Server ESX/ESXi on a laptop?

The idea of having a small footprint hypervisor as the primary OS on a laptop or desktop where every "real" OS is a guest appeals to me. Now I realize this software is more typically used on blades ...
cletus's user avatar
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14 votes
2 answers
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What happens to children when deleting a snapshot in vmware?

I'm new to virtualization and want to make sure I understand what will happen when I delete a snapshot Say I have a tree like this Base SnapshotA SnapshotB SnapshotC Two questions: If I delete ...
user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
19k views

Why don't people just use rsync to back up vmware guests?

If I am running a modern vmware ESXi system, I can drop in a statically linked rsync binary and rsync files to any destination over SSH. I'm trying to understand why most (all ?) backup of vmware ...
user227963's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
15k views

Snapshot/rollback for libvirt+KVM?

I've recently begun using KVM for my development/test environment on a Linux host system with 8G memory. Prior, I was using VMware Fusion for my virtual environment, but my Macbook only has 2G memory. ...
jtimberman's user avatar
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13 votes
3 answers
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Why not use vmware tools for time synchronisation?

We have two VMWare environments running a bunch of (mainly) Redhat 5.9 and 6.4 guests. We are having issues with time drift (minutes ahead per week). We use ntp, syncing to the local domain controller....
Josh Smeaton's user avatar
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11 votes
10 answers
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Vmware host time drift

How does one ensure that linux hosts, running on vmware infrastruction 3 or vmware 3 esxi remain in sync with the ntp server. I have found that a linux guest running under esx or esxi has a tendency ...
biosFF's user avatar
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11 votes
3 answers
27k views

How to backup VMWare ESXi using free tools?

What do I need to do to establish backup of ESXi 3.5 or 4 server? It is my understanding that the server runs Linux, so as far as I understand the backup sequence should be: create a snapshot of VM ...
galets's user avatar
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11 votes
3 answers
8k views

Has anyone achieved true differential sync with rsync in ESXi?

Berate me later on the fact that I'm using the service console to do anything in ESXi... I've got a working rsync binary (v3.0.4) that I can use in ESXi 4.1U1. I tend to use rsync over cp when ...
JuliusPIV's user avatar
  • 135
11 votes
6 answers
1k views

How to utilize spare workstation drive space for server storage/backup

So, given the fact that you can only get hard drives of about 160GB now for the cheapest price, I find i have a ton of extra drive space on workstations spread throughout my office. I'd like to ...
Erik Funkenbusch's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
9k views

What happens when a disk fails in LVM?

I am configuring a linux server on an ESX 4.1 host. This server needs to have several TBs of data stored on it. We are currently debating whether or not to use LVM. Our current reasoning is that is is ...
Stew's user avatar
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10 votes
6 answers
19k views

Why is the vSphere console view so slow?

Why is the Console view on the vSphere client so slow? It's a real shame because it's a shame to have to establish an RDP session every time you work on one of the VMs because of the speed of the ...
GurdeepS's user avatar
  • 1,656
10 votes
1 answer
3k views

How can I setup vSphere so that VLAN tags are not stripped at the vSwitch?

I am trying to test a VLAN-related networking issue, so I thought that firing up a couple virtual machines would be the easiest and cleanest method to test the problem. On the vSphere server I ...
Peter Grace's user avatar
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9 votes
6 answers
54k views

Can you use a USB dongle inside a VMWare ESX Virual Machine?

I need to know if a USB dongle that is required as a license key for a piece of software will accessible from the physical host machine. This will be a small vSphere 4 installation targeting the ...
Keith Sirmons's user avatar
9 votes
6 answers
5k views

Choosing between VMWare ESX and ESXi [closed]

We currently run one instance of VMWare ESX server, but want to start virtualizing more physical hardware with VMWare, while keeping the cost of VMWare licensing as low as possible. Is ESXi a good ...
Lamar's user avatar
  • 189
9 votes
1 answer
1k views

Ballooning occuring on SQL server

From what I understand ballooning should occur only when the host begins to run out of physical memory, somewhere above 90% usage. I have an SQL server running in a three node cluster (64 GB RAM in ...
user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
32k views

How much memory does ESXi require for itself?

I know that Microsoft suggests that you leave 1GB of memory for the parent partition on a Hyper-V server. Does VMware have a similar suggestion?
Corey's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
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Is there a standard way to benchmark a Windows VM performance from within the guest OS?

We are seeing our software behaving unusually at one of customers where it is being run inside a Windows 2008 virtual machine. The host is VMWare ESX Server. The biggest issue I have seen is our ...
akirekadu's user avatar
  • 191
8 votes
6 answers
4k views

hardware recommendations for a DIY storage system based on ZFS [closed]

Looking to make use of old server lying idle as a proof-of-concept ...here are specs Dell PE 2900: Xeon 5110 - 2P, 12 GB RAM, 8x 300 GB 15K drives, Perc 5i+256 MB cache what additional h/w would be ...
JMS77's user avatar
  • 1,275
8 votes
5 answers
18k views

Where's my memory?! Nginx + PHP-FPM front end webserver slows to a crawl

I'm not sure if I have a problem with a memory leak (as my hosting company suggests), or if we both need to read http://linuxatemyram.com. Maybe you clever people can help us out? This is a front-end ...
incredimike's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
42k views

VMware - persistent "Host memory status" alarm in vSphere

I have a particular VMWare ESX 4.1 host that has a very persistent "Host memory status" alarm. This is running on an HP ProLiant DL360 G7 server. The HP ILO and System Management agents don't know ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
8 votes
3 answers
28k views

copy vmware vmdk files while vm is running

I need to copy some VMs from one datastore to another. I'm running ESX 3.5 U3, VMs are mostly Windows-based. I don't care about data integrity since it's only to test NetApps deduplication on the ...
zero_r's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
22k views

How does Linux determine the SCSI address of a disk?

Greetings, I'm working with RHEL 5.5 guest VMs under VMware ESX 4. When I configure the virtual disks in the VM hardware settings, each disk has a SCSI address in the format "N:M". For example, "1:3" ...
Chris Sears's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
7k views

High Availability Solution for VM on local Storage

Hi I have the following setup for using vSphere with HA: My problem with this is the finding some kind of reasonable HA for the database server. The IOP requirements of the database server are very ...
bumble_bee_tuna's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
2k views

Adding new virtual disks to a RHEL host in ESX "live"

I'm sure I've just missed which tutorial/manual page covers this, but how do you add get the guest OS to recognize that you've added new drives to it without a reboot? I have a RHEL5 guest running on ...
warren's user avatar
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8 votes
7 answers
4k views

Getting metadata from within VMWare Guest OS

Is there a way to get metadata (i.e. VM Name, Annotations, etc.) from within the Guest OS? I'm using a Ubuntu JeOS template and want to run a script on startup which configures new VMs according to ...
Robert Wilson's user avatar
8 votes
7 answers
4k views

Any opensource equivalent of virtual center?

We got 10 ESXi hosts running. We don't have budget for Virtual center licenses. Is there some free tool that just gives us consolidated view of all VMs with poweroff and poweron options for each VM.We ...
RainDoctor's user avatar
  • 4,504
7 votes
7 answers
795 views

High availability virtual machines

I've been reading a lot about high availability virtualization, either via Hyper-V or VMWare. In that context, essentially high availability means that the VM is hosted by a cluster of physical ...
Jeremy's user avatar
  • 923
7 votes
6 answers
8k views

Is it possible to manage ESX servers from Linux?

VMware vSphere Client can not run in wine. Neither in Mono. What tools are you using to create, start/stop new VMs, connect on the console without VMware vSphere Client?
Mircea Vutcovici's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
15k views

Virtual Audio Cable not working on Windows Server 2008 R2

I have Virtual Audio Cable successfully installed on my Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 x64 virtual machine. It seem like driver works (new audio device in Device Manager group and VAC control panel works ...
Pavel Shchegolevatykh's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
656 views

VMWare vSphere and the move from ESX to ESXi

I was working on a standalone ESX 3.5 system last night in order to upgrade to vSphere 4.1u1. I realized that the full ESX download had been deemphasized on the VMWare website. While I've known that ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
7 votes
3 answers
8k views

VMWare various disk type advantages/disadvantages

As we all know, we can create various disk types in VMWare: 0 : single growable virtual disk 1 : growable virtual disk split in 2GB files 2 : preallocated virtual disk 3 : preallocated virtual disk ...
Robert Koritnik's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
151 views

experience with using SS on Windows 2016 MSCS VMware Virtual machines

After reading multiple documentations around setting up a MS 2016 Fail-over Cluster with Storage Spaces on VMware ESX it seems that this configuration is not supported but it only says server 2012 and ...
Laywah's user avatar
  • 109
7 votes
1 answer
307 views

Scaling out within a VMware host - add vCPUs or VMs?

We have an ASP.NET MVC site hosted on two VMware ESX hosts. Each host has two sockets with quad core CPUs (8 logical cores per host). We have two VMs on each host. Initially, only one vCPU was ...
Aidan Ryan's user avatar
  • 1,283
7 votes
4 answers
693 views

ESX3.5 Cluster & MD3000i -- Both servers see iSCSI Targets, Only one server can use partition

Alright. First and foremost, Warning. This is a bigger-then-normal question. I like to be thorough and try to eliminate all possible "easymode" answers, as well as give everyone a feel of what i've ...
grufftech's user avatar
  • 6,860
6 votes
4 answers
6k views

howto plan RAID for ESX

eight 300GB SAS drives are available. Can ESX be put on one disk as RAID-0 and others as RAID-5 ? so that in the event of disk failure data (VMs) are safe. if os disk RAID-0 fails could that be ...
JMS77's user avatar
  • 1,275
6 votes
6 answers
17k views

How would you apply a BIOS update for a Dell M610 blade with VMware ESXi installed?

We've got a Dell M610 blade with VMware ESXi 4 installed and we need to update it's BIOS to the latest version. Unfortunately, Dell only makes available a Windows (.exe) and Linux (.bin) versions of ...
Guamaniac's user avatar
  • 458
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

Is paravirtualization evil?

I have an VMWare ESX Server v3.5 with a few virtualized Debian Lenny VMs (kernel 2.6.22 with vmi) running Apache Tomcat 5.5. I enabled paravirtualization, and Disk IO increased from about 240MB/s to ...
Daniel's user avatar
  • 844
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

ESX 5.5 Maximum File Size

We have a ~24TB Datastore (a single LUN mapped via a DAS) which has a VMFS5 Datastore. My understanding was with ESX 5.5 and VMFS5 you can have file sizes up to 62TB (as per this article: http://kb....
PnP's user avatar
  • 1,684
6 votes
4 answers
2k views

SAN system upgrade/design

Greetings, I'm a long-time lurker, first time poster. For brevity, let me ask my question up-front and then give the longer backstory, so you can choose how much you want to read. Short version... ...
Matt's user avatar
  • 304
6 votes
1 answer
5k views

How to configure mirror/span port on vSwitch?

I have vSphere. And I need to config SPAN/mirror port on vSwitch. How can I do that?
d_pilot's user avatar
  • 323
6 votes
1 answer
21k views

Connect to ESX Server with vSphere using Port Forwarding

I have an ESX server that I am trying to connect to. I have no way to access it currently other than using some sort of port forwarding. So I am doing it with SSH. I am reaching the other end and ...
Kyle Brandt's user avatar
  • 84.3k
6 votes
2 answers
9k views

Setup redundant iSCSI network with 2 switches, SAN and ESX

I am in the process of re-doing the iSCSI network at my work. We currently have the following equipment: 1x Dell PowerConnect 6224 switch 1x Dell PowerVault MD3000 SAN connected to 2x Dell PowerEdge ...
DanielJay's user avatar
  • 265
6 votes
4 answers
15k views

Slow local file transfer (copy) on ESX vmware server?

I have a 8 CPU VmWare ESX server (3.5) with 4 HDD drives in RAID that is not loaded at all. I enabled SSH and installed mc (midnight commander) in order to be able to copy(clone) virtual machines but ...
sorin's user avatar
  • 8,216
6 votes
2 answers
4k views

VMware Virtual Machine Clustered Filesystem Setup

The situation is: I am running VMware ESX 3.5 (3 ESX Hosts w/ vCenter Server in a Cluster); I need five Virtual Machines to read from the same disk running a clustered file system; I cannot replicate ...
Antitribu's user avatar
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