4.1 on Nico Maas

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

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:00:37 +0000

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

[ESXi4.1U1] vCenter Server Startup Problems

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 09:00:01 +0000

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 )

[ESXi4.1] Update ESXi 4.1 to Update 1

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:00:34 +0000

Just found an awesome easy tutorial to upgrade ESXi 4.1 to ESXi 4.1 Update 1, that I would like to share with you:
http://www.sysprobs.com/guideserver-virtualization-update-vmware-esxi-41-update-1-vmkernel-release-build-348481

[ESXi4.1] Review

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:31:51 +0000

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.