VMWare ESXi suicide

    Can Windows kill itself? I think no. But VMWare ESXi is easy. And so the conditions of the experiment.

    Given: Server based on Intel SR2500ALLXR platform with local storage. 6 × 300Gb SAS drives are combined into a RAID5 array. Install ESX in the usual way (for example, from a DVD disc).


    After installation, we connect to the console via VI Client and see a warning that in order to start working with ESXi, you need to install the repository. Logically, click “Click here to create a datastore ...”

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    The most interesting part begins, at first everything goes as usual:

    Choose Disk / LUN

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    Select a local RAID array

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    And here it is a stone of prediction. You’ll go along the first path and you’ll lose your head, along the second path

    As it turns out, VMWare ESXi sees that the disk has already been partitioned in some way, but it has no idea what partitioning it did and it was actually launched from these sections. If you select the first option, you will successfully create the storage, you can host virtual machines that will also work fine BUT until the host reboots for the first time as the clock strikes 12 your virtual environment will turn into a pumpkin and you will not see anything other than a Non bootable partition on the screen.

    What happened VMWare ESXi completely cleaned up the only local storage where it was installed. The hypervisor itself is fully loaded into RAM and a hard disk is essentially not needed for functioning. And your virtual machines lie to themselves as if nothing had happened safe and sound.

    If you find yourself in such a situation - the main thing is not to rush and try to restore ESXi from the installation disk - you will ruin everything.

    You need to connect any external drive of sufficient volume and install the ESXi hypervisor on it, then simply connect the local storage. After that, you will need to throw all the necessary virtual machines into a safe place and reinstall VMWare ESXi on the server RAID array, then copy and start the virtual machines back.

    To prevent this from happening, you should select Use free space, but in my opinion suicide by VMWare looks kind of silly - after all, you just had to issue a warning once again that ESXi was already installed and running on this disk. And the user error can no longer be.

    ps It was a matter of installing ESXi on another platform and there such a situation did not arise in principle. Even during the installation process, ESXi already created the repository, so perhaps this is a feature of this particular platform.

    Original dimka.yz74.ru/2009/03/13/wmware_suicide

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