V blog

This was one of the frustrating thing to wait for the node to boot.  Finally found a solution I was looking for.

For ESX and ESXi 4.0 hosts

The Scsi.UWConflictRetries parameter for ESX/ESXi 4 Update 1 hosts have a default value of 1000. This increases the time spent enumerating LUN and VMFS volumes.
To resolve this issue and to speed up the boot process, modify this value to 80.
To modify the Scsi.UWConflictRetries parameter from the GUI:
  1. Go to Host > Configuration > Advanced settings.
  2. In the Advanced settings window, select SCSI.
  3. Change the Scsi.UWConflictRetries value to 80.

For ESX and ESXi 4.1 hosts

To resolve this issue in ESX/ESXi 4.1 hosts, you must modify the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot parameter from the GUI.
To modify the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot parameter:
  1. Go to Host > Configuration > Advanced Settings.
  2. Select SCSI.
  3. Change the Scsi.CRTimeoutDuringBoot value to 1.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1016106

Came across this error “Error 1316 A network error occurred while attempting to read the file” when updating server 2008 vmware tools. Unable to uninstall the old version either.

This is an issue with Microsoft Windows Installer and does not affect all Windows 2008 systems. The problem can occur when the original install path from the older version of VMware Tools is invalid

To correct this issue, you must perform a forced uninstall and re-install of VMware Tools.

To uninstall and re-install VMware Tools:

1. Right-click on the virtual machine.
2. Click Guest > Install/Upgrade VMware Tools.
3. Open a Console to the virtual machine and log into the guest operating system.
4. Click Start > Run, type cmd, and click OK to open a command prompt in Windows.
5. Change the drive to your CD-ROM drive. For example, D:\.
6. Type setup /c and press Enter to force removal of all registry entries and delete the old version of VMware Tools.
7. In My Computer, double click the CD-ROM that contains VMware Tools.
8. Select setup.exe to install if Auto-Run doesn’t start.

I came across the above error under vSphere – ESX 4.0 running under workstation.
To fix it, add the following line to the /etc/vmware/config file in the VMware ESX Service Console:

” vmauthd.server.alwaysProxy=TRUE “

VMware released a new PDF called “VMware VDI Storage Considerations“ it focuses on design choices for the storage environment that forms the foundation of a production VMware VDI implementation. Check it out…

What’s the difference between ESX and ESXi.  Check out this link here. The article provides detailed comparison between VMware ESX and ESXi