• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

VMWare vSphere/ESX/ESXi 4.0 released

lopoetve said:
God help us all.
Click to expand...

Already running into trouble. The beta I was running worked fine, GA won't install, stuck at "Loading 34.stroage-drivers" yet again. Adaptec 51245, latest firmware, no joy.

I think the new features are very cool, especially FT, but the issues surrounding hardware that is on the vSphere HCL not working make me a sad panda. BIG TIME!
 
Thuleman said:
Already running into trouble. The beta I was running worked fine, GA won't install, stuck at "Loading 34.stroage-drivers" yet again. Adaptec 51245, latest firmware, no joy.

I think the new features are very cool, especially FT, but the issues surrounding hardware that is on the vSphere HCL not working make me a sad panda. BIG TIME!
Click to expand...

On a supported system on the HCL?
 
lopoetve said:
On a supported system on the HCL?
Click to expand...

Well, it's a whitebox, Intel S5000VSA motherboard which has Adaptec 51245 controllers.
Works from esx-DVD-4.0.0-140815.iso, doesn't work from esx-DVD-4.0.0-164009.iso

The system crashes hard, no response to ATL+F11, no output to console, etc.
 
Last edited:
No guarantee intel didn't half-ass those. It's happened before :( Motherboard mounted adapters aren't always as fully compatible as the ones on the actual, physical card, if that applies in this case.
 
Oh no, I didn't mean that they are onboard. It's a motherboard with two physical Adaptec 51245 cards. I will monkey around with it a bit today, but if I don't get it working then I'll file an SR.
 
Thuleman said:
Oh no, I didn't mean that they are onboard. It's a motherboard with two physical Adaptec 51245 cards. I will monkey around with it a bit today, but if I don't get it working then I'll file an SR.
Click to expand...

ah, that's different!
 
Anyone going to be running the new client on W7 will be sorely disappointed - it errors out with

Error parsing the server "SERVER IP" "clients.xml" file. Login will continue, contact your system administrator.
Click to expand...

followed by

The type initializer for "VirtualInfrastructure.Utils.HttpWebRequestProxy" threw an exception
Click to expand...

Until VMware fix the client, management with a GUI will not work from W7. Good opportunity to test out XP Mode, I suppose.
 
Anyone else getting "The boot device layout on the host does not support upgrade." when trying to do a VI upgrade of ESXi hosts.
 
geiger said:
Anyone else getting "The boot device layout on the host does not support upgrade." when trying to do a VI upgrade of ESXi hosts.
Click to expand...

think that means you need more space, but I could be wrong. Not an install guy :)
 
yep. ESX 3.5(i) could be installed on a total boot partition of 5GB, or less (if you whacked the local VMFS3 partition). ESX4 requires 10GB (okay fine, it's 9.5GB, actually) for a boot partition, because the COS is requiring more space. Your upgrade likely isn't going well because your previous ESX 3.5i partitioning was spec'd to the requirement at the time, which I am guessing was less than what vSphere4 wants.

If the boot device allocation is of the right size, don't forget that the partitions contained therein must also be A: not full and B: capable of holding current ESX(i) information, plus have enough spare space to copy in the ESX4 files, and free space left over...inside of each partition.

I also got excited about the ability to upgrade ESX3.5(i) hosts to ESX4 from the vSphere Client, but there's a pretty big hurdle that will need to be overcome, in order to make this work, and it all goes back to the LUN provisioning that was initially done for the ESX3.5 servers, at the time of deployment. It's a nice idea in theory, but I think in practice, most people will end up creating new boot LUNs for the ESX4 deployment, of the appropriate size, and then rolling servers out on the new platform.
 
Last edited:
sabregen said:
yep. ESX 3.5(i) could be installed on a total boot partition of 5GB, or less (if you whacked the local VMFS3 partition). ESX4 requires 10GB (okay fine, it's 9.5GB, actually) for a boot partition, because the COS is requiring more space. Your upgrade likely isn't going well because your previous ESX 3.5i partitioning was spec'd to the requirement at the time, which I am guessing was less than what vSphere4 wants.

If the boot device allocation is of the right size, don't forget that the partitions contained therein must also be A: not full and B: capable of holding current ESX(i) information, plus have enough spare space to copy in the ESX4 files, and free space left over...inside of each partition.

I also got excited about the ability to upgrade ESX3.5(i) hosts to ESX4 from the vSphere Client, but there's a pretty big hurdle that will need to be overcome, in order to make this work, and it all goes back to the LUN provisioning that was initially done for the ESX3.5 servers, at the time of deployment. It's a nice idea in theory, but I think in practice, most people will end up creating new boot LUNs for the ESX4 deployment, of the appropriate size, and then rolling servers out on the new platform.
Click to expand...

If I remember right, I just chose the defaults when installing. This is definitely something to look out for in the future.
 
So if we just chose the defaults from the original 3.5 install, we will or we won't have enough space to do the upgrade?
 
very likely will not. additionally, in deploying my vsphere 4 environment in a box, it has been uncovered that vCenter will not install on an AD DC of any type (PDC/BDC), so be prepared for that.
 
sabregen said:
very likely will not. additionally, in deploying my vsphere 4 environment in a box, it has been uncovered that vCenter will not install on an AD DC of any type (PDC/BDC), so be prepared for that.
Click to expand...

Well hopefully the 2nd part shouldn't be an issue, I have two boxes dedicated to running my two virtualcenter instances. But the whole upgrade thing is going to suck because it will require reloading the boxes, which really sucks since I'm not onsite. Can we expand the boot partition in anyway if we have local free space?
 
Just to keep it all in one thread: Support for the aacraid driver has been pulled from ESX4. The driver is still included in the release, but doesn't show up on the HCL anymore.
 
ND40oz said:
Well hopefully the 2nd part shouldn't be an issue, I have two boxes dedicated to running my two virtualcenter instances. But the whole upgrade thing is going to suck because it will require reloading the boxes, which really sucks since I'm not onsite. Can we expand the boot partition in anyway if we have local free space?
Click to expand...

Don't know. lopoetve may be able to help, here. Could be a problem though, since you swould not only need to do an OCE for the boot LUN on your controller, but also expand out eac of the partitions on that LUN/device.

Thuleman said:
Just to keep it all in one thread: Support for the aacraid driver has been pulled from ESX4. The driver is still included in the release, but doesn't show up on the HCL anymore.
Click to expand...

If I am reading this right, what you're saying is that the driver is still in the release, and is still loading for the appropriate adapters, but has been removed from the listed drivers/devices on the Storage HCL? Sounds like an oversight, if that's the case...and a weird one, too.
 
sabregen said:
If I am reading this right, what you're saying is that the driver is still in the release, and is still loading for the appropriate adapters, but has been removed from the listed drivers/devices on the Storage HCL? Sounds like an oversight, if that's the case...and a weird one, too.
Click to expand...
I can attest to the fact that there are problems with the aacraid driver. For example, my Adaptec 51245 controllers work fine using aacraid in 3.5, and I was at least able to install ESX4 beta after a firmware upgrade.

However, ESX4 GA will crash hard during install when using those controllers.
The driver is included in the GA and does load, but is no longer shown on the HCL. It used to be on the HCL but was removed from it. The removal of that driver cuts the list of officially supported Adaptec I/O devices from 172 to a mere 17.

I actually have an open SR on the issue. It will be interesting to see what happens to that now that aacraid is no longer on the list, and thus one is no longer eligible for support since those 51245s are now "unsupported" hardware. ;)
 
My Adaptec 51245 SR remains open and eligible for support. However, there is currently no solution to the problem. I have tried numerous SATA drives (Samsung, Hitachi, Seagate) and the end result is the same even though the install hangs at different spots.

The suggestion was to install 3.5 and wait for a 4.0 patch that fixes aacraid. Since I am running out of time I will have to do that and just wait for accraid to be patched which is likely to happen at some point seeing that Adaptec isn't exactly some obscure noname brand.

Obviously I am disappointed that there's this issue. I am also surprised how much slack VMware seems to be getting over this. Imagine Microsoft releasing Windows with no support for the majority of Adaptec devices. The blogosphere would go berserk.

Having said that, lopoetve has been extremely helpful, as always, but unfortunately I can't continue the testing at this point.
 
Last edited:
dandragonrage said:
So does anyone actually have anything GOOD to say about 4.0?
Click to expand...

FT is awesome
Lun expansion/filesystem expansion is awesome
Res. conflict handling is awesome.
Round robin is awesome
Vmware Data Recovery is going to be awesome.
:)
 
So, what, 4.1 will be awesome, then?

btw, I also had a 3rd-gen F-body (89 RS 305 TBI) then later a 4th-gen (99 Z28) which I just sold a couple weeks ago :D
 
lopoetve said:
4.0 is great if you have supported hardware :)
Click to expand...

I did, till you guys changed your mind to support it after GA! lol
I almost feel sore about that as it seems like a cheap trick in retrospect, but meh, vSphere was released to make it into the 2nd quarter results. Marketing/Finance will always top Engineering when it comes to decisions as to when to actually release a product.

Also, what's up with vmware.com "temporary" maintenance all day long, can't log into the account to retrieve licenses, downloads, etc.
 
still waiting on my new NFRs, and was told it will be at least next week before I get them.
 
Is it just me, or did the console performance go way down?
Meaning if I open a console to the VM (pop-out console) I have significantly (and annoyingly) more input lag than if I were to access a 3.5 based VM at the same location. Same location in this case means same number of hops between the client and the host, same type of host hardware, same time of day, only difference is 3.5 vs. 4, and yes, VMware Tools are installed.

Also, how the heck can I turn off PXE boot for the network cards? I checked the BIOS, no such option.
 
Are you running vCenter Server or just the standalone client attaching directly to ESX boxes?
 
For the vSphere one I run the client, for the 3.5 vCenter. Will install vCenter 4 today and see how that goes, though I would assume that the console code is the same for client and vCenter.
 
They recommend a gig connection for pc's running the client and they upped the specs for server, it's 2 processor, 2 GHz, 3 gig of ram minimum. I haven't installed it yet though, I'm on page 7 of my deployment write-up/instructions, hopefully I'll finish it up today.
 
dandragonrage said:
So does anyone actually have anything GOOD to say about 4.0?
Click to expand...

Yes. A lot of good things..very good things. But I run it on supported hardware and haven't had any issues. I can understand the frustrations if trying to build a lab...but my lab is our two physical labs at our offices so that's nice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top