Gather information from a PSOD on ESX 3.5

If you have a PSOD on ESX, you can get quite some information out of the PSOD screen.  Most of the times however, the server has been rebooted and the PSOD is gone.

The PSOD dump is stored in the /root directory.

cd /root

Run the following command to extract the log from the PSOD dump

vmkdump -l <dump_file>

A new file vmkernel-log.1 will be created in the same directory.  You will see the contents of the PSOD and the actions that happened right before it towards the end of this logfile.

 

You can find more information in this slidedeck from VMworld 2006.  It’s rather old, but most of it is still valid for vSphere!

Update Emulex HBA Firmware on VMware ESX

If you have Emulex HBA’s in your ESX host and you need to update the firmware, you have several options.

One of them is doing this inside the Service Console with the help of HBAnywhere.

This can be downloaded and installed on your ESX Server. Download the HBAnyware Kit from here.  Keep in mind that there are specific versions for ESX 3.5 and vSphere. Install the rpm through rpm -ivh elxvmwarecorekit…rpm

Change your working directory to /usr/sbin/hbanywhere

cd /usr/sbin/hbanywhere

Get a list of all HBA’s with the command below.

Note that you can access all the Emulex HBA’s in the zone.  So if you have other servers in the zone, you might see other HBA’s as well!  Be careful when selecting your HBA!

./hbacmd ListHBAs

Select the Port WWN and use it in the following command:

./hbacmd Download WWN /tmp/lpe1150_wf282a4.all

You will receive a message that the Download is complete! That’s it!

Startup

Hi,

i decided to start a blog.  Whenever i encounter something interesting i’ll try to post it.  It’ll probably belong to one of the following domains:

– VMware

– PowerShell, PowerCLI

– Exchange

– Active Directory

– SQL Server

– Storage

Have fun reading!