Virtualization

Scsi with a Parachute

admin@bubbakraut.com (Sven Jambor) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:14:55 +0100

Great stuff: utilize the power of your SAN and have ESX(i) churn a lot less at the same time when your VDI boxes use their disks. Sounds good? It is. But: Microsoft doesn't provide us with a driver for the VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapter when booting from the install DVD. So - what now?

Gimme some space, man

admin@bubbakraut.com (Sven Jambor) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:08:43 +0200

Most modern virtualization software lets you add a disk (and hence: disk space!) to your virtual machines while the machine is powered on. That's great - but then the VM's operating system needs to be able to do something with it.

In Linux, that can be quite a chore. Especially if the disk running out of space is your / partition.... In this article, I'll show you what to do about that. And no, it's not scary. Almost.

Shrinking a VMDK

admin@bubbakraut.com (Sven Jambor) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 21:19:06 +0200

Resizing a disk in VMWare vSphere (or ESX 4i, for that matter) is a piece of cake - at least, when it comes to increasing diskspace for a VM. All you do is change the VM's settings, run a tool like Diskpart (if you're using Windows in your VM) - and you're set.

But - what about shrinking it? Now that's a whole different ballgame. Especially if the VM is running Windows Server 2008 R2 - and you want to resize its boot disk... with it's "interesting" disk layout...

Oops - my VM is stuck!

admin@bubbakraut.com (Sven Jambor) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:49:30 +0200

One of the drawbacks of a virtual machine is... that it does not have a power plug! So you can't, after all else failed, pull the plug to get it to turn off.

So what do you do if you "Reset" a virtual machine in VMWare ESXi and it gets stuck at 95% of doing so? Wait - right? But what if it's still sitting there being stuck a few hours later? Then you begin to panic. Especially if said VM is the one running your vCenter...