Tag Archives: ESX

ESX vs. ESXi Which is Better? Revisited.

Posted by on October 22, 2009 5 comments

For over a year now, I have started off telling customers in Plan and Design engagements that they would be using ESXi unless we uncovered a compelling reason to NOT use it. The “which do I use” argument is still going strong. Our blog post “ESX vs. ESXi which is better?“  was posted in April and is still the most popular. It seems to be a struggle for many people to let go of the service console. VMware is trying to go in the direction of the thinner ESXi hypervisor. They are working to provide alternatives to using the service console.

VMware has provided a comparison of ESX vs. ESXi for version 3.5 for a while. Well, VMware posted a comparison for ESX vs. ESXi for version 4 last night. It’s a great reference.

Running VMware ESX 4 RC in a VMware 6.5.2 VM.

Posted by on April 29, 2009 3 comments

I just set up another quick VI4 lab on my laptop for the purposes of capturing screen shots and testing some things out. I was worried because I was not able to start VMs in this lab using ESX 4 Beta 2, but everything is fine again! Here is a screen shot of a Winders 2003 VM running inside an ESX 4 RC VM which is running inside of Workstation 6.5.2 on an Ubuntu machine.

vm-in-vm

Click on the image for a full-size view.

My VMX settings were from a post on VMTN when I was trying to get ESX 3.0.x to run on a WS 6.0.  Actually, XTraVirt came up with the solution originally.

Well, my VMX has not changed MUCH since then. I only added some parameters for sharing SCSI disks so I don’t need an iSCSI server. I found THAT information on Duncan’s Blog.

##################################################
# Start DAC Customization

guestOS = “other-64″

monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = “true”
# monitor_control.virtual_exec = “hardware”
monitor.virtual_exec = “hardware”
monitor_control.vt32 = “true”

# REQUIRD FOR USING NTFS DRIVES WITH LINUX HOSTS
mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE

# For SCSI disk sharing
disk.locking = “FALSE”
diskLib.dataCacheMaxSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCacheMaxReadAheadSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCacheMinReadAheadSize = “0″
diskLib.dataCachePageSize = “4096″
diskLib.maxUnsyncedWrites = “0″

bios.bootDelay = “5000″

ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet0.virtualdev = “e1000″
ethernet1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet1.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet1.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet1.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet1.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet2.present = “TRUE”
ethernet2.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet2.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet2.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet2.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet3.present = “TRUE”
ethernet3.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet3.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet3.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet3.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet4.present = “TRUE”
ethernet4.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet4.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet4.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet4.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet5.present = “TRUE”
ethernet5.connectionType = “custom”
ethernet5.vnet = “/dev/vmnet3″
ethernet5.virtualDev = “e1000″
ethernet5.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”

ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
ethernet1.addressType = “generated”
ethernet2.addressType = “generated”
ethernet3.addressType = “generated”
ethernet4.addressType = “generated”
ethernet5.addressType = “generated”
# End DAC Customization
#####################################################

My next posts will involve installing ESX 4 in text mode and some very interesting findings during that install….

Fixed: VMware Tools status shows as not running after running VMware Consolidated Backup

Posted by on April 1, 2009 No comments

A while back I mentioned that VMware Tools would appear to change to a not running status after a VCB Snapshot was taken. Vmware said a fix would be forthcoming in ESX U4. VMegalodon posted on the communities this morning that he is running VC 2.5U3 and ESX 3.5 U4 (Which is probably a bad combination…) and the VMware Tools issue appears to be corrected.

So, what are you waiting for?? Get to upgrading!

Thanks VMegalodon!