WilliamLam.com

Quick Tip - Updating Intel ixgben driver enables Multi-gigabit (2.5gbE / 5GbE) selection in ESXi

by // Leave a Comment

Here is a nice protip from one of my readers, Peter, who recently came across an issue with an Intel x550 network adaptor and ESXi not listing any of the Multi-gigabit (2.5GbE or 5GbE) options even though his underlying physical network was setup as 2.5GbE, only 100MBps, 1GbE and 10GbE was available.

After a bit of trial/error, he discovered the solution was to update the inbox version of the Intel ixgben driver (1.7.1.44-1vmw.803.0.0.24022510) to the latest supported version for ESXi 8.x and he immediately saw the additional Multi-gigabit speeds as shown in his screenshot below:

[Read more...]

Quick Tip - Automating cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic configuration for ESXi Kickstart with USB

by // Leave a Comment

To prevent ESXi from PSOD'ing when an Intel Hybrid Consumer CPU is detected with non-uniform capabilities, a workaround can be applied to ignore the uniformity miss-match which is needed before the ESXi installer fully boots up and also after the initial reboot.

For those looking to fully automate this process using ESXi Kickstart using USB as an example, there are two places where the kernel boot option must be added:

1) The first is the EFI\boot\boot.cfg file on the ESXi installer media (e.g. USB) where you will append to the kernelopt line as shown in the snippet below:

bootstate=0
title=Loading ESXi installer
timeout=5
prefix=
kernel=/b.b00
kernelopt=ks=usb:/KS.CFG cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE
.....

2) The second must be added to the %post section of your ESXi kickstart, which will update the first ESXi bootbank's boot.cfg and ensure the kernel option is passed to ESXi when it reboots after installation:

%post --interpreter=busybox

sed -i '/^kernelopt=/ s/$/ cpuUniformityHardCheckPanic=FALSE/' /vmfs/volumes/BOOTBANK1/boot.cfg

Minimum vSphere privileges to install or remove patch from ESXi

by // Leave a Comment

I recently got a question from our field inquiring about the minimum vSphere privileges that would be required to either install or remove a patch (VIB/Component) from an ESXi host. The customer was interested in using PowerCLI and specifically the ESXLI interface to automate the installation and removal of a VIB and wanted to create a custom vSphere Role with the minimum privileges, which can be done with vCenter Server or even a standalone ESXi host (properly licensed).

Since I was familiar with the underlying ESXi patch API that is used for these operations, a nice benefit of the vSphere API Reference is that it also lists the specific vSphere Privileges that is required for a given operation and in this case, it is just Host.Config.Patch privilege.

However, when the customer attempted to create a custom vSphere Role with just this privilege and perform the installation operation, they still received an error as shown in the screenshot below, which was a bit cryptic but they had assumed it was still permissions related as full administrative account had worked:

OperationStopped: Response status code does not indicate success: 500 (Internal Server Error)


[Read more...]