VMware vSphere 4.
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Overview This document contains important information about VMware ESX 4.x and VMware ESXi 4.x running on Dell PowerEdge systems. This document is an addendum to the ESX and ESXi deployment guides available at support.dell.com/manuals. NOTE: To install the Dell OpenManage software on PowerEdge systems running ESX/ESXi, and for related known issues and troubleshooting steps, see the relevant documentation at support.dell.com/manuals.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4 ESXi reports an incorrect MAC address for PowerEdge M-Series modular systems enabled with FlexAddress. The network connection to one of the 10G ports may drop. ESXi fails to reboot from the OpenManage BIOS setup page. Error messages related to SFCB are displayed on ESX Service Console. System hangs during reboot when ESX is deployed through PXE environment. Symbolic link warning messages are displayed on ESX service console.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • When you install ESX 4.0 on a PowerEdge T310 system with Intel Core i3 5xx processor, the 80.Iommu script fails to execute. Unknown entries are displayed when the lspci command is executed. The iDRAC communication stops when ESX loads network drivers. ESXi 4.0 (Embedded edition) installation fails. VMware vCenter Server does not display the correct network performance details.
• • • • • • • • 6 When you unplug the power cord from the PowerEdge R410 and PowerEdge T410 systems, the VMware vSphere Server health status page displays a green status for the power supply and also displays the power rating. Running the vihostupdate command from the vSphere CLI fails. vSphere Client displays invalid values for hardware information of the Double-Data-Rate 3 (DDR3) and Dual in-line Memory Module (DIMM). Service console becomes inaccessible on upgrading to ESX 4.0 from ESX 2.5.5.
Known Issues and Resolutions Issue Description Resolution Applies to Installer screen is Screen resolution is misaligned during improper during ESX ESX installation. installation. This is a known issue. ESX 4.1 Update 2 BIOS Revision string displays incorrectly on ESXi installation failure screen. BIOS Revision string displays the vendor name instead of the BIOS revision, when ESXi installation fails. This is a known issue. ESXi 4.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to ESX boot log displays an error. The ESX bootup log file There is no functionality esxcfg-boot.log shows loss due to this message. the error message You can ignore the error /etc/vmware/sim message. ESX 4.x With AHCI mode set for SATA CD/DVD drive, the ESX installer does not recognize the ESX driver media inserted during installation of ESX. ESX 4.1.x ple.map is missing SATA CD drive running in AHCI mode does not recognize the ESX driver media.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to VMDirect Path I/O behaves abnormally on AMD systems configured with more than 256 GB of memory. On AMD systems configured with more than 256 GB of memory, the VMDirect Path I/O feature fails. Such systems running virtual machines (VM) configured with a passthrough device do not boot. This is resolved in ESX/ESXi ESX/ESXi 4.1 Update 2. 4.x For resolution see, kb.vmware.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Upgrade from ESXi 3.5 Update 5 to ESXi 4.0 Update 3 fails. ESXi upgrade from 3.5 Update5 to ESXi 4.0 Update3 fails. This is a known issue. For ESXi 4.x resolution, see Embedded kb.vmware.com/kb/2000407 Edition When you use VI Host Upgrade utility for upgrade, the following error message is displayed: The Upgrade has failed. Click View Log...for more details.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Removal of USB storage device creates dead entries in Service Console (COS). Removing a USB storage device creates a dead entry in the COS SCSI subsystem. The This is a known issue. To remove the dead entries from the COS, run the command esxcfg- ESX 4.0.x The Dell PowerVault MD36xxi storage array configured with VMware ESX fails. esxcfg-mpath -l rescan -d command displays the dead entries information in ESX.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to esxcli.exe -server -username root -password nmp satp addrule -V DELL -M MD36xxi -s VMW_SATP_LSI -description "Dell MD36xxi" where esxcli.exe is the executable file installed on a Windows system as part of vCLI package installation. ESX 4.x logs INTERNAL ERROR messages related to the SATA CD/DVD ROM present in the system.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to For stopping the error messages logged into the log file, use one of the following workarounds: • Ensure a media is always present in the SATA CD/DVD drive. This workaround avoids exception messages being sent to the log files. • Reduce the level of event logging by adding strings in /etc/vmware/logfilters. For more information, see kb.vmware.com/kb/10044 99. A system running ESX 4.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to The network connection to one of the 10G ports may drop. When a 10G network card is connected as a pass-through device to a virtual machine (VM), with Windows Server 2003 Standard (x64) Edition guest operating system installed, the network connection to one of the 10G ports may drop. This issue occurs when you use the network driver version v15.5. To work around the issue, perform one of the following procedures: ESX/ESXi 4.0.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Error messages related to SFCB are displayed on ESX Service Console. When using Dell Distributed Web Server (DWS) for ESX Server Management, you may encounter error messages related to SFCB in the Service Console such as: The issue is in ESX due to ESX 4.0.x an incorrect library path. Ignore the SFCB related error messages as there is no loss of functionality. ioctl32 (sfcbdcim: Unknown cmd...
Issue Description Resolution Applies to If you make licensing changes using vSphere Client and then reboot ESXi, the changes are lost. When you update the ESXi host to an evaluation license or to a different license using vSphere Client and then reboot the ESXi host, the updates are lost. This issue does not occur if you make licensing changes using VMware vSphere Server. To work around this issue, perform one of the following procedures: ESXi 4.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to ESX 4.x stops responding with a Purple Screen on the Intel Xeon 3400 series processor-based systems. ESX 4.x running on Xeon 3400 series processor-based systems such as PowerEdge T110, R210, T310, and R310 may stop responding with a Purple screen. This occurs when the Power Management option of the system BIOS is set to Active Power Controller. To resolve this issue, download and apply the following minimum BIOS versions from support.dell.com: ESX/ESXi 4.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to ESX installation on a Dell PowerEdge R815 system stops responding. During ESX installation on a PowerEdge R815 system, the keyboard/mouse may not function if connected to the top USB port on the back panel of the system. To resolve this issue, perform one of the following procedures: ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 1 The failure of the input device might be misinterpreted as system hang during ESX installation.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to VMware VMotion without Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled fails on AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx series processors. To work around this issue, ESX/ESXi When EVC is not 4.0 Update enabled, vMotion fails if see you attempt to migrate kb.vmware.com/kb/1020958. 1 a virtual machine between older 3rd generation Opteron 13xx, 23xx, 83xx, 14xx, 24xx, 84xx series processors and the newer 3rd generation Opteron 61xx and 41xx series processors.
Issue Description ESX has performance issues because of interrupt request (IRQ) sharing. When the system To resolve this issue, see ESX/ESXi initializes, VMkernel kb.vmware.com/kb/1003710 4.0.x assigns IRQ numbers to all PCI devices based on the system's hardware topology and the number of available IRQs. If the number of available IRQs are limited due to hardware constraints, two or more PCI devices may be assigned the same IRQ number.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to One or more uplink adapters (physical network adapter) may stop functioning on heavy network stress. On heavy network stress, one or more uplink adapters (physical network adapter) may stop functioning, leading to communication failure between the corresponding Port Group(s) and the external network. This may result in failure of the VM, VMkernel, or Management Network traffic. This issue is fixed with ESX/ESXi patch ESX4004.x 201002001/ESXi400201002001.
Issue Description Incorrect devices are classified under the Processor section in the Hardware Status tab of the VMware vSphere Server. Devices like vFlash, This is a cosmetic issue. disk-drive bays, internal There is no loss of dual SD module functionality. (IDSM) and so on, may be displayed in the Processor tab of the Hardware Health Status page of the VMware vSphere Server. ESX/ESXi 4.0.x RAID 10 virtual disks are displayed as RAID 1 in VMware vSphere Server/ VI Client.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to When you install ESX 4.0 on a PowerEdge T310 system with Intel Core i3 5xx processor, the 80.Iommu script fails to execute. Though the processor This warning message can ESX/ESXi does not support Intel be ignored as there is no loss 4.0 VT-D feature, the of functionality. Update 1 system BIOS exposes DMA Remapping (DMAR) in the ACPI tables. ESX reads the ACPI tables and fails to load the VT-D kernel module. The following warning message is displayed: 80.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to The iDRAC communication stops when ESX loads network drivers. The communication to iDRAC stops when the ESX NIC driver loads under the following conditions: The issue occurs because ESX/ESXi the ESX NIC driver (bnx2) 4.0.x cannot handle the VLAN ID specified in the iDRAC NIC.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to 3 If you cannot upgrade the ESXi image, downgrade the iDRAC firmware to a version earlier than 1.30. During server boot, press to get the USC screen, or disconnect the power cord and then reconnect. Or, wait for 18 hours and start ESXi installation. This disables the USB device exposed by USC. Use the esxtop command ESX/ESXi on the ESX host to view the 4.0.x correct network performance details.
Issue Description Resolution On a NonUniform Memory Access (NUMA) enabled system, ESX/ESXi may fail to install or boot because of unbalanced memory distribution across the nodes. On a NUMA enabled system with unbalanced memory configuration, ESX/ESXi may fail to install or boot. The following error message is displayed: The BIOS reports that NUMA node X has no memory. This problem is either caused by a bad BIOS or a very unbalanced distribution of memory modules.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to The PowerEdge 6850 service console displays the following message: Can't boot system as genuine NUMA. The following message There is no loss of is displayed on the functionality. This error PowerEdge 6850 service message can be ignored. console: TSC: 40723530 cpu0:0) NUMA: 706: Can't boot system as genuine NUMA. Booting with 1 fake node(s).
Issue Description Resolution The contents of the PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) or CostEffective RAID Controller (CERC) cache are not flushed to the disk during a graceful shutdown of ESX/ESXi 4.0. During a graceful shutdown, ESX/ESXi fails to trigger the shutdown of the storage controller. This might result in a data loss if the RAID controller cache policy is set to write-back. To resolve this issue, install ESX/ESXi 4.0 the ESX400-200907001 patch for ESX 4.
Issue Description The PERC 6/i Integrated device name is displayed incorrectly as vSphere Client and the lspci command in the service console display the PERC 6/i device name and label as MegaRAID SAS1078R. Resolution Applies to This issue occurs because the PERC 6/i label, Device ID, and PCI ID are not updated in the /etc/vmware/pciid MegaRAID configuration file and the SAS1078R instead of pciid xml file. Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 6/i. ESX/ESXi 4.
Issue Description Resolution The ESX service console displays error messages related to the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) on some PowerEdge systems. On some PowerEdge systems, you may observe error messages related to SCSI. For example, SCSI: Removable device failed error recovery – offlined. Sr 2:0:14:0: Rejecting I/O to offline device. The issue occurs because of ESX 4.0.x the invalid entries created in the /proc/scsi/scsi file when you attach or detach USB-based devices.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Running the vihostupdate command from the vSphere CLI fails. In some cases, if you attempt to use the vihostupdate command from the vSphere CLI to install a patch/driver offline bundles on an ESXi 4.0 host without an associated LUN, the scratch directory on the ESXi 4.0 host might not be configured and the installation fails. When installation fails, the following error message may be displayed: You can either install the ESXi 4.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Service console becomes inaccessible on upgrading to ESX 4.0 from ESX 2.5.5. When you follow the For resolution, see ESX 4.0 upgrade path of ESX kb.vmware.com/kb/1013431. 2.5.5ESX 3.5.x ESX 4.0, you cannot log in to the service console of the upgraded system. This is due to corruption of the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) libraries in ESX 4.x COS when upgraded from 2.5.x to 4.x.
Issue Description Resolution Applies to Network adapter description displayed in VMware vSphere Server is not correct. The on-board 5722 network adapter description in VMware vSphere Server displays the codename of the PowerEdge system, that is Pandora. This is a cosmetic issue. There is no loss of functionality. This issue is fixed in ESXi 4.0 Update 1. ESXi 4.0 Installable It is shown as PWA-Pandora Motherboard [PowerEdge T105]. The device enumeration order displayed in ESXi 4.
Release Notes
