esxi 5.0 pointers

[Helmonder]

And it works !  The mini ubuntu did it, and I am actually glad with it, I feel fine with a prompt an all I used Ubuntu desktop for is to start the terminal (and it took me half an hour to find that :-)

 

Installing SABNZBD, Couchpotato and Sickbeard actually was extremely easy. For the benefit of others the  short instruction herein (put together out of several webpages that all had their own shortcommings):

 

This is in real shorthand:

 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jcfp/ppa

sudo apt-get install -y sabnzbdplus sabnzbdplus-theme-smpl sabnzbdplus-theme-plush sabnzbdplus-theme-iphone

sudo vi /etc/default/sabnzbdplus
set the host field to 0.0.0.0 and set the port to 8080
sudo service sabnzbdplus start

wget https://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard/tarball/master -O sickbeard.tar.gz
tar xf sickbeard.tar.gz
mv midgetspy-Sick-Beard-8d7484d .sickbeard
sudo mv .sickbeard/init.ubuntu /etc/init.d/sickbeard
sudo vi /etc/init.d/sickbeard
Edit the APP_PATH to point to /home/user/.sickbeard, where "user" is your username and set RUN_AS to your username
sudo update-rc.d sickbeard defaults
sudo service sickbeard start

sudo apt-get install git-core python
git clone git://github.com/RuudBurger/CouchPotatoServer.git .couchpotato
cd ~/.couchpotato/init
sudo cp ubuntu /etc/init.d/couchpotato
sudo vi /etc/init.d/couchpotato
Edit the APP_PATH to point to /home/user/.sickbeard, where "user" is your username and set RUN_AS to your username
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/couchpotato
sudo update-rc.d couchpotato defaults

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
sudo mkdir /mnt/movies
sudo mkdir /mnt/series

Now add the following two lines to fstab (sudo vi /etc/fstab)
/192.168.1.13/Series /mnt/series cifs user=<user>,password=<password>,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777
/192.168.1.13/Series /mnt/series cifs user=<user>,password=<password>,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

 

The correct syntax to mount read/write took me several hours of trying out several "Yeah it works" solution that didn't ;-)

 

BobPhoenix: Yes, I found that last night, with a powered down VM you need to remove the interface and then re-assign it. I tried it with another VM and have still not done it with the unraid VM, everything is pretty speedy as it is.

 

jangjong: I am still using the USB to boot into unraid but I am using the SSD to boot into esxi (and esxi then boots the VM using the flashdrive, the nice thing is that I can now choose between running bare-metal and esxi by changing the boot option on the system, if I boot off the SSD I get esxi, if I boot of the SSD I get bare metal unraid.

 

I must say I am really loving this setup... As far as you could tell after one day the unraid VM is rock stable, I only have airvideo and cache-dirs running as plugins.  I even found a (free) APP for my iphone that controls the esxi setup and lets me start/stop and view performance of the vm's and the system itself.

 

All appears to be working with the exception of couchpotato, for some reason it refuses to scan all my movies.

 

[jangjong]

jangjong: I am still using the USB to boot into unraid but I am using the SSD to boot into esxi (and esxi then boots the VM using the flashdrive, the nice thing is that I can now choose between running bare-metal and esxi by changing the boot option on the system, if I boot off the SSD I get esxi, if I boot of the SSD I get bare metal unraid.

 

I was just commenting because of this guy that wanted to use unraid without the usb:

Is it possible to install unraid on esxi datastore without flash drive?

otherwise I will end up with two USB flash drives! one for esxi  and other one for unraid

 

I'm fine with two USB lol

 

 

One Question though.

You decided to go with CIFS (SMB). Any reason for that?

 

Maybe this could be a question for someone else.. I am using CIFS as well.. but I do see NFS option in unraid. What do people use in this case? and why?

I just don't have a good experience with NFS and maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[Ice_Black]

Managed to get Unraid to boot up via Plop.

 

I have added a few Hard Disk's from VM setting on Esxi (Not using RDM).

 

On the page it show all "unassigned" and when I select any disk from the dropdown then it goes back to 'unassigned'

 

I have notice on the syslog it show:

 

Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (100): rmmod md-mod |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (101): modprobe md-mod super=/boot/config/super.dat slots=6 |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver removed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver 2.1.5 installed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: read_file: error 2 opening /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: could not read superblock from /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: initializing superblock
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (102): udevadm settle
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: Device inventory:
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sda) 8388608
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdb) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdc) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdd) 1932735283
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (1): import 0 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (2): import 1 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (3): import 2 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (4): import 3 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (5): import 4 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (6): import 5 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (103): /usr/local/sbin/emhttp_event driver_loaded
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp_event: driver_loaded

 

What could be wrong? I have tried reformat the Flash USB and no luck!

 

Syslog attached..

syslog.txt

[Helmonder]

jangjong: I am still using the USB to boot into unraid but I am using the SSD to boot into esxi (and esxi then boots the VM using the flashdrive, the nice thing is that I can now choose between running bare-metal and esxi by changing the boot option on the system, if I boot off the SSD I get esxi, if I boot of the SSD I get bare metal unraid.

 

I was just commenting because of this guy that wanted to use unraid without the usb:

Is it possible to install unraid on esxi datastore without flash drive?

otherwise I will end up with two USB flash drives! one for esxi  and other one for unraid

 

I'm fine with two USB lol

 

 

One Question though.

You decided to go with CIFS (SMB). Any reason for that?

 

Maybe this could be a question for someone else.. I am using CIFS as well.. but I do see NFS option in unraid. What do people use in this case? and why?

I just don't have a good experience with NFS and maybe I'm doing something wrong.

 

Actually I do not have a real reason.. I guess it is as transparant as it can be towards windows ?

[Helmonder]

Managed to get Unraid to boot up via Plop.

 

I have added a few Hard Disk's from VM setting on Esxi (Not using RDM).

 

On the page it show all "unassigned" and when I select any disk from the dropdown then it goes back to 'unassigned'

 

I have notice on the syslog it show:

 

Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (100): rmmod md-mod |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (101): modprobe md-mod super=/boot/config/super.dat slots=6 |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver removed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver 2.1.5 installed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: read_file: error 2 opening /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: could not read superblock from /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: initializing superblock
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (102): udevadm settle
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: Device inventory:
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sda) 8388608
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdb) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdc) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdd) 1932735283
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (1): import 0 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (2): import 1 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (3): import 2 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (4): import 3 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (5): import 4 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (6): import 5 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (103): /usr/local/sbin/emhttp_event driver_loaded
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp_event: driver_loaded

 

What could be wrong? I have tried reformat the Flash USB and no luck!

 

Syslog attached..

 

How did you attach the drives?  What I did is pass thru the complete SATA controller and that works like a charm.. I would not even know how to add only one drive to be honoust :-)  I am rapidly learning but 3 days ago I had never seen esxi..

[Helmonder]

Errr...

 

To make it even more easy to install your whole mediaserver:

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18712538/LaSi/LaSi.sh

 

Start terminal and type:

wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18712538/LaSi/LaSi.sh

sudo chmod +x LaSi.sh

./LaSi.sh

 

An amazing scripted installer..

[Ice_Black]

Managed to get Unraid to boot up via Plop.

 

I have added a few Hard Disk's from VM setting on Esxi (Not using RDM).

 

On the page it show all "unassigned" and when I select any disk from the dropdown then it goes back to 'unassigned'

 

I have notice on the syslog it show:

 

Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (100): rmmod md-mod |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (101): modprobe md-mod super=/boot/config/super.dat slots=6 |& logger
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver removed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: unRAID driver 2.1.5 installed
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: read_file: error 2 opening /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: could not read superblock from /boot/config/super.dat
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower kernel: md: initializing superblock
Mar 12 17:14:02 Tower emhttp: shcmd (102): udevadm settle
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: Device inventory:
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sda) 8388608
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdb) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdc) 1073741823
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp:  (sdd) 1932735283
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (1): import 0 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (2): import 1 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (3): import 2 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (4): import 3 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (5): import 4 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower kernel: mdcmd (6): import 5 0,0
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp: shcmd (103): /usr/local/sbin/emhttp_event driver_loaded
Mar 12 17:14:03 Tower emhttp_event: driver_loaded

 

What could be wrong? I have tried reformat the Flash USB and no luck!

 

Syslog attached..

 

How did you attach the drives?  What I did is pass thru the complete SATA controller and that works like a charm.. I would not even know how to add only one drive to be honoust :-)  I am rapidly learning but 3 days ago I had never seen esxi..

 

I am not using pass thru the complete SATA controller and no RDM. My hard drives are attached to SATA ports on the motherboard.

 

Here what I did from VM setting:

 

1. Click on Add

2. Click on Hard Disk on the list and click Next

3. Select "Create a virtual disk" and click on Next

4. Choose a disk size and select a datastore where should virtual disk should be created in.

5. Click on Next and Finish

 

The virtual disks are showing on Raid but it wont let me format and assign any.

 

Not sure what is going on? 

 

 

 

 

[jangjong]

I am not using pass thru the complete SATA controller and no RDM. My hard drives are attached to SATA ports on the motherboard.

 

Here what I did from VM setting:

 

1. Click on Add

2. Click on Hard Disk on the list and click Next

3. Select "Create a virtual disk" and click on Next

4. Choose a disk size and select a datastore where should virtual disk should be created in.

5. Click on Next and Finish

 

The virtual disks are showing on Raid but it wont let me format and assign any.

 

Not sure what is going on? 

I don't know what you mean by they're showing on Raid.

 

but you have to add those virtual disk as an IDE drive, not SCSI. I don't know if unraid supports SCSI. Does it?

 

 

The screen shot is from "Advanced Options" when you're adding a new virutal hdd

[BetaQuasi]

As Jangjong suggested, you can't use SCSI virtual disks with unRAID, they must be IDE.  HOWEVER, (and this is a big however), you are impacting your potential performance quite heavily by using this method.

 

There is a good reason everyone either passes through a controller to unRAID to present the disks just like they would be seen in a physical machine, or uses the RDM method to map the drives to the VM. 

 

In your case, seeing as you are using the on board SATA controllers, I would be RDM'ing the array drives directly.

[Helmonder]

Sorry didn't get back last night.  Did try to change the format of the network card.  Only way I've found to change the networking device is to delete the existing virtual network device and add a new one where I tell it to use VMXNET3.

 

Just changed to vmxnet3 the day before yesterday. Was easy (with the tips I received here), works and appears stable:

 

- stop vm

- change vm type to ubuntu 32bir

- delete network adapter

- add network adapter

- pick vmxnet3 as type

- start vm

 

[Helmonder]

 

A bit out of the IT side I am noticing a distinct different behaviour with MYSELF since I moved to esxi... I used to play around with the unraid interface quite a lot, installing plugins, checking diskstats, marvelling at the simplefeatures graphs..

 

Since I have moved to fully stock I am allmost "forgetting" about it.. I am still toying around with the VM instance that runs sickbeard, couchpotato, sabnzb, transmission, spotweb and stuff like that but unraid itself is largely untouched by me...

 

My next challenge is to get the whole thing a bit more remote manageable.. I would like to be able to power up/down the VM''s remotely but as far as I have found out you need a vcenter license for that and those things have prices that really are business-only... If anyone has some bright ideas around that feel free to reply or PM !!

[BetaQuasi]

Powering up or down remotely is quite easy from the command line - if you enable SSH/console and SSH into the ESXi host remotely, you can do the following

 

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

 

That will give you a list of all the VM's with an assigned reference number.

 

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on <vmnumber>
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown <vmnumber>
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off <vmnumber>

 

The above will power on, shutdown the guest (if running VMware tools) and power off your VM's.

 

You can do something fancy like script it all using something like plink (by the developer of putty).

[Helmonder]

Yes I know, but that makes it necessary to have vmware tools running (I have those running so in a lot of circumstances this will suffice).

 

However, what when I am on holiday and the guest crashes, vmware tools might not be running anymore so an "in-virtual-reboot" will not work. I would need to physically pull the plug on the vmware guest,  that is possible from the vsphere client, you can "power off" the VM, effectively making it possible to restart it..

 

That is however ONLY possible using the windows client, the ipad client will not work without vcenter installed, there are a lot of great iphone tools giving graphs on vm usage that also have the possibility to power up/down (or even clone or suspend) a VM, but they cannot work without a vcenter server.

 

I have one big-hammer approach ready right now.. I have enabled my vm''s to autostart when the host reboots so if all else fails I can reboot the hardware using ipmi, that will autostart my vm''s also, but it is a bit messy..

[BetaQuasi]

The third command I mentioned above will force power off a VM.  I use these commands regularly via iPad -> VPN connection -> iSSH.  I've only ever had to use the power.off once though

[Helmonder]

The third command I mentioned above will force power off a VM.  I use these commands regularly via iPad -> VPN connection -> iSSH.  I've only ever had to use the power.off once though

 

WAUW ! That helps me a lot, thanks ! Now I do not need vcenter anymore :-)

[WeeboTech]

Interesting link - http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/p/vmware-vimsh_9940.html

[Hesse34]

Hi all, I've got a new system up and running with ESXi 5.1 and unRAID.  I'm still in the process of fully populating HDDs and stuff, but its running good so far.  I have a quick question about networking and what the "best" way to do it is for a VM of unRAID.  I have the Supermicro X9SCM-IIF-O motherboard that has 2 on board NICs and a dedicated IPMI NIC.  I read in the excellent ATLAS thread that he did a passthru of the NIC, which is how I currently have it configured on my box.  I'm going to be adding at least one more VM (a Ubuntu one) and it will use the unRAID VM a lot, so I want the two VMs to be able to communicate via the virtual 10Gb NIC.

 

So, what is the best way to configure the networking in this case?  The unRAID box is used for the standard things mostly, streaming videos, music etc, so I like to allow it to have its own NIC for bandwidth considerations.  But I also want the VMs to be able to communicate fast.  I haven't setup the other VM yet, but I was looking to see what the community's suggestions are for setting up the NICs for the VMs.

 

Thanks,

Jesse

[BetaQuasi]

I don't recommend passing through a NIC - VMware is optimised to use virtual NIC's and then maintain physical connections of those virtual NIC's as required.  In fact you are potentially bottlenecking possible speeds by doing this as it's quite possible to exceed gigabit speeds (internally on the ESXI host) on a completely virtualised network using VMXNET3 adapters.

 

So in your scenario, I'd ditch the passthrough of the NIC (I think the only reason Johnm did that originally was that the 82579LM on the X9SCM-F isn't supported in VMware officially) and put all your VM's on VMXNET3 adapters.  Your IIF I believe has two 82574's, so you don't have this issue anyway.

 

Make both 82574's members of the same vswitch (which should be the default anyway) and VMware will take care of the rest.

 

 

 

 

[Helmonder]

Hi all, I've got a new system up and running with ESXi 5.1 and unRAID.  I'm still in the process of fully populating HDDs and stuff, but its running good so far.  I have a quick question about networking and what the "best" way to do it is for a VM of unRAID.  I have the Supermicro X9SCM-IIF-O motherboard that has 2 on board NICs and a dedicated IPMI NIC.  I read in the excellent ATLAS thread that he did a passthru of the NIC, which is how I currently have it configured on my box.  I'm going to be adding at least one more VM (a Ubuntu one) and it will use the unRAID VM a lot, so I want the two VMs to be able to communicate via the virtual 10Gb NIC.

 

So, what is the best way to configure the networking in this case?  The unRAID box is used for the standard things mostly, streaming videos, music etc, so I like to allow it to have its own NIC for bandwidth considerations.  But I also want the VMs to be able to communicate fast.  I haven't setup the other VM yet, but I was looking to see what the community's suggestions are for setting up the NICs for the VMs.

 

Thanks,

Jesse

 

Mm... I did not do a passthru.. in my case I just chose a VMXNET3 adaptor and that should make sure all traffic stays within the physical box...

 

Is there any specific reason you have done a passthru ?

[Hesse34]

 

Mm... I did not do a passthru.. in my case I just chose a VMXNET3 adaptor and that should make sure all traffic stays within the physical box...

 

Is there any specific reason you have done a passthru ?

 

Sorry, I wasn't referring to you doing a passthru.  I believe that it was Johnm in the ATLAS thread that I followed for the ESXi setup.  The only reason that I did it was because I was just following the directions there since this is my first experience with ESXi.  As BetaQuasi says though, I don't think its an optimal solution for my use case.

 

@BetaQuasi, I was leaning towards going back to your exact suggestion.  For a while I did have it running of the VMXNET3 adapter and it worked fine, which was why I started questioning the passthru of the NIC.  I haven't done it yet, but in the network configuration section, it looks like you can configure how the virtual NICs link to the physical NICs.  So, to optimize bandwidth on the NICs, it seems it would make sense to have two VMXNET3 adapters linked to the two real ones on the MB.  Then the two virtual NICs would connect to a vSwitch so that all local traffic stays on the box.  Does that sound right?

[BetaQuasi]

As long as the two virtual NIC's are on the vSwitch that is attached to the two physical NIC's, you don't need to assign them to a specific NIC.  VMware will automatically take care of that for you (assuming the physical NIC's are on the same vSwitch), and you'll also get all the advantages of high speed internal traffic.

 

For example, I have a 4 port gigabit adapter set up as follows:

 

 

Ideally, you'd have the management port on a different VLAN and connected to a dedicated NIC, but in a home environment, it doesn't really matter (i.e. my example works fine.)

 

I have vSwitch0 dedicated to one of the onboard NIC's for a different purpose, which is why you see vSwitch1 in this example (that and I didn't cut and paste the entire screen ).. but if they all shared vSwitch0 in a basic setup, that would be fine.

[Hesse34]

Beautiful. I wasn't sure exactly because my other NIC is passed thru and doesn't show up in EDXi currently.  That makes it super easy. Thanks.

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[bit2bytes4fun]

I been reading this post and almost everyone post on building a ESXi host. 

 

I would like move away from RDM and use a dedicated SATA controller for unRAID to get better performance.  After installing the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 and added the hack, I get a PSOD when ever I write to the array.  The only drive connected to MV8 is the cache drive.  All others drives (Parity/Data) is using RDM through the motherboard SATA interfaces.  I am a little leery about moving all unRAID drives to the controller.

 

PSOD screen

 

unRAID as a guest - MV8 (cache), works, but performance sucks.

unRAID native + MV8 (cache), performance is good.

 

Any ideas? Use M1015 instead?

 

[Helmonder]

Mmm... I am using the MV8 first version and they work like a charm...

[BetaQuasi]

I don't believe you need the hack for the SAS2LP - try it without it.  Most people here use the first version of that controller, the SASLP, but I think if you search the forums, there might be one or two using the SAS2LP with ESXi.

 

Scratch that, it seems from reading a post here and there, you DO require it.

 

Did you edit the file in question from the ESXi command line?  Or with a linux-compatible text editor?  It could be that the file wasn't saved in the correct format after editing.