Tag Archives: ESXi 6.0

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Further ESXi 6.0 CBT bug info – Reset your CBT!!!

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Following on from the recent (November 2015) ESXi 6.0 CBT bug, which has now been fixed in the latest released patch ESXi600-201511401-BG, some further information has come to light, provided by Anton Gostev, of Veeam.

You can read the snippet of important information from the Veeam forum post following the issue (Official Veeam KB2075);

All, we have completed the first day of testing in the same exact lab and using the same heavy write I/O test that made the original issue easily reproducible. After a few TB of increments, the above-mention patch appears to fully resolve the original issue when installed on ESX 6.0 Update 1a build 3073146.

However, we found that simply installing the patch is not sufficient, and CBT reset is required for all of your VMs. This is because existing CBT map files may contain issues created earlier due to the original bug, which may result in inconsistent full backups in future. Having CBT reset will also force the following job run use "full scan" incremental pass, thus fixing any existing inconsistencies in backups and replicas, as discussed earlier in this topic.

Provided CBT reset has been performed, Active Full backups is not required.

Performing Active Full backups by itself cannot be considered as a substitute to CBT reset with this particular CBT issue.

Thanks!

You can either follow the CBT Reset instructions from Veeam or look over to Chris Wahl’s latest blog post “Resetting VMware’s Changed Block Tracking (CBT) File with PowerCLI”.

Regards

Dean

2015 04 20 22 05 11

Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 3 – from scratch for VMware ESXi

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This is the final part of the series, where I cover off installing ESXi 6.0 onto the blade of the UCS system.

  • Setting up the SD Cards (FlexFlash)
  • Installing ESXi via KVM

Note: Please check your firmware is at the correct level needed. You can see this guide for upgrade the firmware.

Setting up the SD Cards (FlexFlash) Continue reading Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 3 – from scratch for VMware ESXi →

2015 04 20 22 05 11

Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 1 – from scratch for VMware ESXi

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First off, huge thanks to the following posts by Rene Van Den Bedem and his Cisco UCS installation guide.

My aim here is not to rip off his posts, but to detail the process myself and use my own screenshots, as along the way, the setup was slightly different to Rene’s, such as the configuration needed for the SD Cards, and the lack of boot from SAN configuration.

Covered in Part 1;

  • The hardware/software
  • Cabling diagram
  • Pre-Reqs
  • Understanding Cisco’s policy based management
  • Summary of Task List
  • Setting up Fabric Interconnects
  • Connecting to Cisco UCS Manager

The Hardware/Software Continue reading Deploy a Cisco UCS system – Part 1 – from scratch for VMware ESXi →

2015 04 09 14 53 48

Cisco UCS – Install ESXi 6.0

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So I’ve just deployed a Cisco UCS B Series system, which is on the HCL as supported by VMware for ESXi 6.0

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However there is no install media available as for previous ESXi versions.

How to install ESXi 6.0 on Cisco UCS

Quite simple actually, I installed the Customised version of ESXi 5.5 update 2d onto the B series servers, and then deployed vCenter 6.0, after setting up update manager, I imported the standard ESXi 6.0 ISO, and upgraded the hosts using update manager.

After a week, I can report that I’ve found no issues with this at all.

I posted on reddit about the location or availability of the media, and someone suggested this method of install, further more another user stated their Cisco Account Manager said everything should work with the standard ESXi install for the B200 M4 blades and not need additional drivers.

Hope this clears it up for some users who are hunting around for install media or an explanation that doesn’t yet officially exist.
Regards

Dean