@Jahabani, I wish I could but I have a only have Intel based MB's around and most of the HA/DRS works best with identical cpu's. I went and bought this AMD MB and AMD cpu just to do this testing - I cant afford any more. I dont have any real server hardware. I wanted to use these F1 boards because they can be populated with 32 GB ram and there arent too many PC based boards that can go up this high without major money. Who wants to donate to the buy a moose more hardware fund ?!?
@Moose Thx for the post There is a mechanism called nested virtualization which allows running hypervisors inside virtual machines running IN a hypervisor I think we should start testing with that. I tested nested virtualization with 2 Hyper-V Servers inside vSphere 5 update 1 and it went smoothly.
@Jahanbani Thanks for the information and please continue your testing. - For me, I'm not sure how much effort is needed if our main goal is to prove that a modded BIOS has no effect on advanced features of esxi 5.X - I've spent far more time just to get vcenter running on 5.1 with all of this new single sign-on stuff that was added. Now that I have, vcenter vmotion continues to work and I am moving on to other HA/DRS testing. As for the modded bios, we should all know that you should never be using this in a real production environment anyway. At work, company should always be paying for server and desktop machine licensing and running non modded everything to preserve vmware support. This is just for our own personal testing and home use of course.
Sure, company pays, but instead of KMS I still prefer to use OEM BIOS activation Modded BIOS was never an issue in my environment (itself it has no effect on vMotion, HA/DRS) sebus
I spent many hours on it but could not get vCenter installed at all! SSO install fails to install this lookup service correctly, always ends in a 404, service not found. Without it you cannot go to next step. Googled several solution proposals but none worked. I tried on 3 different servers and all failed, gettin kinda irritated why this new stuff does not work at all
Shamus, I got it working after going through the same scenario as you for several days. Try installing in this order. From the VCenter directory, first go to the single signon directory, install this first. Then go to "Inventory Service" directory, install this second. It builds on stuff installed from the single sign on. Then install from the VCenter-Server directory. This uses stuff from the previous two installs. - I was so relieved when this order got me a working vcenter 5.1 up and running. Thanks Moose @Sebus, I thought (see post #286) that you were the one posting that vmotion does not work on modded bios ? That's what a couple of us here were trying to verify after you said that. - Also, if you are "paying" for vsphere at your company, modded bios will certainly throw a wrench in any possible support calls you may need to make. After all, we're just "testing" here, we aren't here to circumvent our legal obligations, eh ?
Nothing said about modded BIOS there... Of course, that is why I do not use modded executable, but BIOS on SAN If I need support I only need to delete a line in vmx & I am clean sebus
Wish I could help you, I can only provide details of my install. I created a Server 2008 (not R2) 64-bit machine running on VMWare workstation 9 to host vcenter. I installed in basic spouse mode (taking OK OK OK OK on all the questions to answer) using sql express installed on Server 2008 itself. This machine was a domain member, static IP address and all I.P. information is available in DNS. This 2008 server was newly created and I let it install all Windows Updates. So it did not have anything else on it to corrupt it. I hope you get this straightened out, I now feel lucky that I got my issue solved. Previous to this, I also got the 5.1 VCenter Appliance to run and work. You might try that angle next. This can also be imported into VMWare workstation. Moose
found the issue, is a dumb vmware setup bug (found this on their forums), asa your FQDN contains the string "port" (mine contained "support" in it) it will fail Asa I took my machine out of the domain with "support" in it, it installed fine, and could rejoin domain afterwards.
I assume it is without Mac unlocker included, right? It is unlocker that causes the HA/DR/VM issues, plain BIOS SLIC/SLP mod is fine
Right. I only used ESXi Bios tools to get bios440.rom, modified with phoenix tool 2.10 and inserted a dell Slic. Then, uploaded again to ESXi with ESXi bios tool. Since then, VC has made 1500 vmotions and 130 storage vmotion without any problem.
I installed a ESXi 5.0 u1, build 623860, which should be same as you. I tried to mod the bios440. I read through this post in detail, and did the extraction and moding accordingly. The procedure were so smooth: I find s.v00, gunzip, vmtar and tar it, then I got vmx file, and use esxi-bios-tools to extract bios440.rom. I used rw everything 1.53 to get rw file, and used phoenix-tool to add dell slic to bios440. The phoenix-tool returned a success result, and gave me a bios440_SLIC.rom file. Then I upload this bios440_SLIC.rom file to vm directory, and added a line in .vmx file. Everything were doing just fine, not a single error occured. HOWEVER, when I power on the vm, it just stopped at the first screen, with a big vmware in the middle. I am so frustrated, and have no idea what is wrong, and how to make it right. Would some one kindly give me some help??? Thanks!
Did you get to work? I did my esxi 5.1 yesterday with the esxi toll, thx!, did like revin. Extracted bios with the tool, mod the bios with poenixtool 2.11 rw-everything report from a vm win7, added dell slic, put that bios back with the tool. BUT i did rename the bios from bios440_SLIC.rom to bios440.rom before i uploaded it again to be injected in the esxi tool. Win7 activated just fine
For me, it doesn't work. I did this on a vm of workstation 8.0, which I installed esxi 5.0 update1 and tried to mod the bios. I plan to find a phsical pc and install esxi 5.0, then do the mod again. However, I don't think there should be some difference. Another odd thing, I download a mod-file in an early post here, which is for esxi5.0 build 474610. I only use its bios440 file and upload it to my esxi5.0 update1 which is build 623860. Then I change my vm setting to use this bios440 file. The vm startups normally and works fine. I don't test other feature like HA. Thank amdmannen for the info. I will try esxi5.1 if I couldn't get it work anyway. BTW, I would like to list the latest builds of esxi5: esxi 5.0 build 821926 ( the latest build we discussed here is 623860, and most is 474610) esxi 5.1 build 838463
Same error on version 1.5 run from local drive (on one ESXi server, others were fine, so not really an issue) VMware ESXi 5.0.0 build-821926 Getting host fingerprint Error getting host fingerprint Getting vmx using scp winscp> open scp://root:********@10.0.0.51 Error transferring vmx file:
If you inject the BIOS, you don't have to modify the .VMX file. I've sent you a PM with the link to download the modded BIOS I used. I dont have enough message to post links. You only have to upload with ESXi tools 1.15
Thank revin for your message. I will test this file. Actually, I didn't inject the bios, I just modified the .vmx file to use the modded bios440 file. But after I did that, the vm couldn't start up. I also tried to inject the bios, using esxi-tools to mod the s.v00 on the remote server, but it gave me the same result.