Tag: 4.1

[ESXi4.1U1] UMTS Stick on VM [ZTE MF 190 / HUAWEI E160G]

I needed to connect an UMTS Stick (O2 Surfstick) to an VM Machine which should serve as "Router".
No problem - ESXi does support "USB Direct Through" - so you can easily connect an USB Stick to your VM...
At least, thats "normally" the Case:
With UMTS Sticks, this feature doesn't work.
Why?
UMTS Sticks start up with an U3 Partition with all that needed, nice connection software....
And therefor, ESXi does see an CD Rom - which doesn't show up within USB.
And... how to solve that?
Luckily I found this post: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=26045
Which does contain the secret sauce:
Just connect your USB Stick to an already installed System... (your Laptop with the Connection Software and Drivers i.e.)
Look up your UMTS Stick within the Device Manager, get the COM Port.
Open Putty (9600 Baud worked for me, the Original Author does think of: 115200 kbps, 8 data bits, parity none, stop bits 1, Flow control None) with that Com Port.
Type in: AT+ZOPRT=5 and AT+ZCDRUN=8
Thats it!
Now the U3 doesn't show up anymore, and it works!!
To reenable the feature, enter AT+ZCDRUN=9

For Huawei E160G / T-Mobile Surfstick V / Essential:
CD – Rom Funktion deaktivieren at^u2diag=0
CD – Rom Funktion aktivieren at^u2diag=1

Additional Links:
http://3g-modem.wetpaint.com/page/ZTE+AT-commands
http://3g-modem.wetpaint.com/page/Huawei+AT-commands

Switch from Diag to CD-Rom Mode per AT-Befehl unter Macosx

[ESXi4.1U1] vCenter Server Startup Problems

I got the vmware virtualcenter server error 1000 odbc error on bootup of my Windows Server 2003 (64bit) which did serve my vCenter Server.
In fact this did mean in my case: The MSSQL Server didn't boot / or too slow, so that vCenter Server came up - couldn't access the DB and shutdown - "great!".
Luckily, there is an solution, pointed to by this ( http://communities.vmware.com/message/1247357 ) and this Website ( http://blogs.egroup-us.com/?p=1821 )

In the end I solved my problem following:
cmdline:
sc config vpxd depend= rpcSs/lanmanworkstation/MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM/ADAM_VMwareVCMSDS

With these new dependencies, vCenter should boot up on boot... at least it did that last time... ^^'.

[ESXi4.1] Review

It has been sometime, but I still want to tell my experiences with ESXi 4.1.
In the beginning, I was very annoyed from the fact that you really need an 64 bit System and at least 2 Gigs of RAM.
But the rest just turned out fine, I have to admit.

Theres an upgrade path available, so you can upgrade your ESXi 3.5 Machine via an Upgrade to 4.1 without losing your Machines or the need to reinstall.
Actually - it worked, which did surprise myself in a good manner.

In Terms of Speed and Stabilty I did not recognize anything bad.
Especially the new features were downright awesome:
I just love the USB Virtualisation.
I really hit the top by plugin in an USB Videocard to my ESXi 4.1, and adding this Virtual Device to an Vmware Appliance: Awesome speed, had realtime video within my VM.
( I used it to virtualize a bunch of Servers, Firewalls, Routers, Asterisk and a Webcamserver... was really nice running ).

The only thing I really couldn't test and missed was the PCI Virtualization.
That feature *should* work - but you need some kind of state-of-the-Art Intel CPU / Board with Virtual I/O... and I had an old Tyan AMD Dual Core Board, only... ^^'.

So maybe sometime later.

But after all, I'm really happy with that System, I could migrate an running Windows XP Machine to the ESXi4U1 and the Converter was really doing alright...