Blog Archives
How to patch ESXi 5.0
A short memo about patching ESXi 5.0 without Update Manager:
- Download VMWare patch, in my case I downloaded recently released Update 1 for ESXi 5.0:
http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal - upload zip file to ESXi datastore
- check that ESXi shell and SSH access is running:
– connect to ESXi with vSphere Client, then open Configuration tab, select Security Profile, open Properties
– check that ESXi shell and SSH are running, if not then turn them on:
- shutdown all VM’s
- use whatever ssh client you prefer to connect to ESXi host as root
- install patch with the esxcli (change path to the patch appropriately):
esxcli software vib install --maintenance-mode --depot /vmfs/volumes/datastore2/ISO/VMWareUpdate1/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip
Note that everything must be on the same line!
- reboot ESXi host
I had a severe network performance problems with base 5.0 release that installation of Update 1 fixed.
VirtualBox replacement for VMWare Server 2.0.2
As you might know, end of general support for VMWare Server 2.0 is in front of us; I knew for the best part of the year 2010 that I’ll have to replace VMWare Server with some equivalent (or better) hosting virtualization product. Finally, I decided to replace VMWare Server with VirtualBox. More or less because the VirtualBox is under vivid development, with frequent and stable releases and as of today, there is not a sign from Oracle that VirtualBox could end like a VMWare server. What I’ll miss the most is VMWare Server web admin console – I know some folks hated the web interface (Remote Console), I for one, found it outstanding. It’s pity that VMWare put an end to this product line.
Anyway, I found some articles on the web describing how to migrate from VMWare to VirtualBox. I managed to migrate Oracle Enterprise Linux VM’s following instructions from Karl Arao’s blog. For Windows VM’s I decided to do a clean install instead of tweaking Windows OS and repairing installation.
If time permits I’ll post my own screenshots that I took while migrating Oracle Ent. Linux 5.5 from VMWare Server to VirtualBox.
Create new VirtualBox VM that you’ll use to start VM from VMWare Server VMDK files:
Windows 7 guest on VMWare Server 2.0
Today I spent considerable amount of time troubleshooting mysterious freezing of Windows 7 workstation that runs on VMWare Server 2.0.0 (Build 122589) as as guest. (I’m well aware that newer release of VMWare Server 2 is available and I would not hesitate installing it if I could only skip the required reboot of the host.)
Making long story short I finally found some indications on the net that video hardware acceleration might be the culprit for the problem. So, I turned Hardware acceleration completely off and problem was solved.
Firefox 3.6 trouble…
Today I had to downgrade Firefox 3.6 to 3.5.8. Why? Firefox 3.6 breaks VMWare Server 2 web browser Console plugin (ok, I could live without that, using either IE 7 or desktop shortcut to each VM) and more importantly “My Oracle Support” flash based content. I hope Mozilla team will fix this, otherwise Google Chrome will likely become my primary web browser.
VMWare Server 2.0 – Released
I was using VMWare Workstation for years – mostly for OS & RDBMS testing. Nothing at production level. This will soon change. I’ll most likely use recently released VMWare Server 2.0 for some less critical production workload, replacing a couple of physical servers, plus my own workstation. I tested VMWare Server 2 RC2 and was happy with the design and even management console performance (I was expecting much worse performance after reading some feedbak on vmware forums – it’s not that bad). I’m planning Hyper-V evaluation on Windows 2008 as well. I do like both products, but Hyper-V poor performance for Linux guests (and no thanks, I refuse to use Suse, not now not in the future) will at the end most likely result in VMWare Server 2.0 deployment.
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