As I am setting up the demo for our event tomorrow, I had actually install 1 of the Cisco UCS blade to run with Windows 7 64 bits. The Windows 7 contains 2 x Intel Xeon R5540 with 48 GB memory. Before we could install the machine with USB key, we need to connect the console cable that come with Cisco UCS package which allow VGA, console and USB ports to be connected to any of the UCS blade.

This picture show the live running Cisco UCS with console connector

Closer look in the picture, console cable, VGA cable and Dual USB ports into 1. With this in place, I can easily install the windows 7 with my boot able installation images from the high speed USB key. Entire setup is less than 30 mins.

Here is the screen shot to show 16 logical core and 48 GB physical RAM on the UCS server. To be honest, this is my 1st desktop operating system with huge memory capacity at 48 GB.

Have you ever experience your Virtual Console down and VMWare Infrastructure Client not working?

Here’s an alternative solution for you: a Bash script to run on your ESX Server.

Sample screen shot:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VMWARE ESX Management Tool Script
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author : http://malaysiavm.com/blog
Version : 1.00.20081107.14.31
Supported ESX Version : 2.5 – 3.5
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

0. VM Informations
1. Register VM
2. Unregister VM
3. Check VM Status
4. Power ON VM
5. Power OFF VM
6. Suspend VM
E. Exit

Choice:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Known Issue:
1) DO NOT support VM with space in the middle, ex: “MY VM Server”. It will show as 3 blank VM servers, and none of these 3 are working.

Note:
1) This script need to execute as ROOT on your ESX Server (DO NOT Support 3.0i and 3.5i).

2) There is absolutely no guarantee from us and use at your own risk!

DOWNLOAD HERE
Please feel free to modify, share and comment to make it perfect.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.

After that, I try to check most of the setting and log file from putty and virtual center. Here is my finding. Due to some unknown reason, the .vmx file setting and the configuration on the virtual center show really different. I had to force restart the virtual center service, and reconfigure some of the resources setting in virtual center to ensure it had not reserve or limit any resources on CPU and memory, and I power up the VM again. This round, the VM able to power up and functioning. Originally, It shouldn’t reserve any resource as I had not configured that. For some unknown reason, the resources limit had been configured by the ESX itself. This had happened in the pass but it had not cause any issue.

The root cause here is clear again that the virtual center information is not tally with the information from the command. I will say this is not something new and is well known and really causing so much issue sometimes. A lesson really had been learnt today.