Bert Zefat's Tech Blog

If you are using a SAN attached ESX environment, make  sure:
Disk.UseLunReset is set to 1 (default = 1)
Disk.UseDeviceReset is set to 0 (default = 1).

The reason to disable the Disk.UseDeviceReset param is because it does a complete SCSI bus reset. All SCSI reservations will be cleared, not for a a specific LUN but for the complete device (being the whole SAN controller).

This could disrupt your SAN fabric. I would suggest setting the ESX host in maintenance mode and reboot it afterwards.

Alternatively, you can also set this via the Service Console by issuing the following commands:

esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /Disk/UseLunReset
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Disk/UseDeviceReset
service mgmt-vmware restart

Filed Under: ESX, EVA, Storageworks, VMware Add Comment »

Many applications are designed to issue large I/O requests for higher bandwidth. ESX/ESXi 3.5 and ESX/ESXi 4.x support increased limits for the maximum I/O request size passed to storage devices. These versions of ESX pass I/O requests as large as 32MB directly to the storage device. I/O requests larger than this are split into several, smaller-sized I/O requests.

Some storage devices, like the EVA, have been found to exhibit reduced performance when passed large I/O requests (above 128KB). As a fix for this, you must lower the maximum I/O size ESX allows before splitting I/O requests.

To reduce the size of I/O requests passed to the storage device using the VMware Infrastructure/ vSphere Client:

1. Go to Host > Configuration.
2. Click Advanced Settings.
3. Go to Disk.
4. Select Disk.DiskMaxIOSize.
5. Change value to 128.

Filed Under: ESX, EVA, Storageworks, VMware Add Comment »

There are some Advanced Settings that you can change from within your VMware HA Cluster.

das.AllowNetwork
By default the Service Console portgroup is used for failure detection. By entering in das.AllowNetwork you can specify an additional portgroup to use.

das.isolationAddress
By default VMware HA nodes check heartbeats of other nodes . When this heartbeat is lost the suspected Isolated nodes then pings its Service Console gateway by default to check that it is truly isolated. By using the das.isolationAddress command, you can add additional IP addresses for the server to check. These IPs must be on the Service Console portgroup, or in the portgroup you’ve added for das.AllowNetwork

das.failureDetectionTime
This is the time required before VMware HA considers a host to be Isolated.Default setting is 14 seconds, this can be changed to a setting that will better fit your needs.

das.failureDetectionInterval
This is the rate of monitoring between VMware HA nodes, think of this as a heartbeat check.
Default setting is 1 second, if you feel that this is just too often you can change it.

Filed Under: ESX, VMware Add Comment »

I’m going to assume that you have COD4 installed on your C: drive.

Navigate to:

C:\Activision\Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare\players\profiles\(YOUR PROFILE NAME HERE)

You will then see two files.

config_mp.cfg: In here are your graphics and texture settings.
mpdata: This is where your gun and online status are saved.

Save both files. Reformat, reinstall COD4 and just move the files back in there.

NOTE: Keep in mind that each mpdata only works when you have the same serial key as before.

Filed Under: COD, Games Add Comment »

Be alerted on a default setting on ESX 4, which is potentially dangerous these days.

If you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del on an ESX 4 console, it will reboot the server even if there are running VMs and it doesn’t care if the server is not in Maintenance Mode. Even if your not logged on it will capture the Ctrl-Alt-Del and reboot.

This is an old throwback which most modern Linux distribution disable these days.

To disable this yourself, open up /etc/inittab in your favourite editor and comment out the “ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now” line with a # symbol so it looks like this:

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
# ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

Save and exit the file. For this to take effect without a reboot, then run: init q This certainly disabled by default on ESX 3.5 hosts, so I assume that this was an oversight on VMware’s part on the new release.

Filed Under: ESX, VMware Add Comment »

Settings for EVA[468][10]00 storage systems:

Settings for EVA[468][4]00 storage systems with HP SCSI CA configured:

The basics:

Filed Under: B-Series, Storageworks Comments Off on Basic settings Brocade Switches

I’ve looked at the origin of all the search actions that came to my blog site. I can give following answers to most questions:

Filed Under: EVA, Storageworks Comments Off on Answers to EVA4400 and WOCP questions

The default ip address of the controllers are:
10.0.0.2 for controller A
10.0.0.3 for controller B

Default the networking setting is set to DHCP. Also the host ports need to be checked. They are standard set to Loop. Connected to a switch they should be set to Point-to-Point

Filed Under: P2000, Storageworks Comments Off on P2000 MSA from HP FAQ

Although SPOCK from HP on this date states that TS100R025 is the latest firmware version for the P2000 FC G3, technisiants from HP indicate that TS201P007 is the firmware to use today.

Filed Under: P2000, Storageworks Comments Off on Latest firmware P2000 FC G3