vInfrastructure Blog

Reading Time: 3 minutes As you probably know VMware vSphere 6.0 had a critical issue con its Change Block Tracking (CBT) implementation that can impact all incremental backup with “VMware native” backup program (all agent-less implementation using the VMware VDAP API). This issue occurs due to an issue with CBT in the disklib area, this causes the change tracking information of I/Os that occur during snapshot consolidation to be lost. The main backup payload data is never lost and it is always written to the backend device. However, the corresponding change tracking information entries which occur during the consolidation task are missed. […]

Reading Time: 3 minutes After an upgrade to VMware vSphere 5.5 on a Dell PowerEdge R710, I’ve got strange occasion issues, where the hosts got completly disconnected from vCenter (with the ESXi/ESX host’s status as Not Responding or Disconnected in vCenter Server) and there was no way to reconnect, also after restarting the management services. Locking in the ESXi console those kind of errors where notable: Bootbank cannot be found at path ‘/bootbank’. The only temporally solution was power-off the VMs and restart the host. But the issue can randomly came back.

Reading Time: 3 minutes In previous posts (see ESXi – Partitions layout of system disk and ESXi – More on partitions) I’ve described how are handles the partitions table on the destination installation media of ESXi 5.x (both in the case of a hard disk or a SD/USB disk). With the new ESXi 6.0 the partition tables is similar in the case of a 1 or 2 GB destination device (like a previous SD media), but has some changes in the case of larger devices. Core partitions remain the same with standard size:

Reading Time: 2 minutes In previous post we have already see how add custom drivers to an ESXi installation ISO and how use ImageBuilder to make custom ESXi ISO, but in other cases you may need to define some custom settings during the installation or add custom vib files. Booting from CD is not the only way, but custom ISO could be used also for boot from USB or for boot from virtual devices (like the iDRAC or ILOE). In case you need to build custom ISO with custom option this post could help you: How to Create Bootable ESXi […]

Reading Time: 8 minutes After the new Virtual Volumes, the most “spoilered” features of the new VMware vSphere 6.0 was probably the new vMotion that allow VMs to move across boundaries of vCenter Server, Datacenter Objects, Folder Objects and also virtual switches and geographical area. VMware vMotion was probably the first important virtualization related features that make important VMware (and its product) but, much important, that make relevant the virtualization approach: having VM mobility means handle planned downtime and also workload balancing. Now VMware reinvent vMotion to become more agile, more cloud oriented: breaking the boundaries and going outside […]