Quantcast
Channel: VMware Communities: Message List - vSphere Hypervisor
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3837

Re: Hypervisor 6.0.0 bld 3620759 no option to convert VMFS3 to VMFS5

$
0
0

Thank Matt.

 

I tried a different route. I attached the drive to a Dell Precision T3600 workstation that I'm looking at making into my main server since it has an Xeon E5. Using just the drive from the old ESXi 4.1, I did a 6.0.0 install using the Dell custom install A00. I told the install to keep the datastore and had it do a full 6.0 install since there isn't an upgrade path per se from a 4.1 system. The upgrade was perfect, and it also told me that I had a VMFS 3 datastore that needed to be upgraded.

 

When I connected to the server's IP address, I noticed that in using the Dell customized version, they wisely removed the atrocious Web Client. LOL. So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to upgrade the datastore. I downloaded and installed the vSphere Client 6 from the newly upgraded system, got signed in, and looked at the datastore. Sure enough, there was an option off to the very right side that said Upgrade to VMFS 5. I used that option to perform the upgrade from 3 to 5 and then went to look at the VMs that were supposed to be in that datastore.

 

Uh oh. When I clicked on the VMs tab, there was nothing there. Having been a long time reader of that Universal/Galactic classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I recalled the sage words of the cover. DON'T PANIC. Very good advice. LOL.

 

I then realized I just needed to browse the newly upgraded datastore and add back each VM by right clicking on its VMX file and selecting "Add to Inventory". It worked perfectly for all but one machine's VMX file I'll need to look at further. I don't think it was ever a working VM. A very fast perusal of the file seemed okay but the system doesn't like something as it listed the file type as "file" and not "Virtual Machine". It's not anything critical so I'll just recreate it later.

 

I did run into one vexing problem that had me chasing my tail for a couple hours. I had searched the Net for a solution but never found one, so I thought I'd put it in here for someone's future reference.

 

When I initially tried to run the upgrade, it would error out with:

 

Error loading /s.v00

Compressed MD5: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Uncompressed MD5: (all zeros)

Fatal error: 10 (out of resources)

 

I'd read that sometimes VMware doesn't like Nvidia adapters so I tried an old PCI adapter I had but the system wouldn't recognize there was anything in that one PCI slot. I tried switching the Nvidia Quadro 600 with a very basic Nvidia 8400GS. No go.

 

Thinking maybe it was an upgrade/install problem, I used the disk from the working X99 system. It started booting up but then failed at that same spot with the same messages. So it apparently was not only an install/upgrade problem but also one that affecting a previously well running system as well.

 

Then I started digging into the Precision T3600's BIOS and came across two settings someone had changed. They didn't affect the Windows system that was running on that machine, but ESXi sure didn't like them.


PCI Busses had been changed from the default value of 64, to 128, the middle value.

PCI MMIO Size had been changed from the default of Small to Large.

 

I'd never seen those before and have no idea what they do but figured it couldn't hurt to set them back to the defaults. Turns out that was the problem! After resetting those two values back to their defaults, The previously installed system booted up and ran just fine. So I tried the Upgrade/Install of the 4.1 system to 6.0 again and it worked perfectly. Hopefully that will help someone in the future with that issue.

 

Mark


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3837

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>