Knowledge Base

The Eco4Cloud Knowledge Base provides support solutions, error messages and troubleshooting guides.

Contact support team if you cannot solve your issues here.

KB10: Unable to configure host [host name]: [message]

This is a general communication problem between vApp and vCenter.

The issue occurs during both consolidation and monitoring phases.

Troubleshooting:

  1. Verify accessibility from E4C vApp to vCenter
  2. Verify accessibility from vCenter to the specific host specified in the message.
  3. Control ecocloud user permissions

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KB7: VMWARE TOOLS NOT RUNNING

VMware tools need to be installed and running on vApp. If VMware tools do not work correctly, some VMs can migrate to a not compatible host and then go back to the original host. In vCenter appears a message like: VMware tools are not running on virtual machine: [message]

The issue can occur during consolidation phase.

Possible solutions: control if VMware Tools are running on vCenter in the VM summary tab or directly on VM console through by the command service vmware-tools status. If the tools are stopped, reboot VM or launch the command service vmware-tools start on VM console.

The steps for re-Installation of VMware tools can be find in the following vmware article.

 

 

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KB9: Unable to configure VM [vm name]: [message]

This is a general communication problem between vApp and vCenter.

The issue occurs during both consolidation and monitoring phases.

Troubleshooting:

  1. Verify accessibility from E4C vApp to vCenter
  2. Verify accessibility from vCenter to the specific VM specified in the message.
  3. Control ecocloud user permissions

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KB2: NO NETWORK INTERFACES

It happens in consolidation or in monitoring phase, when vCenter doesn’t reach HOST network interfaces. In vCenter appears a message like: Unable to find network interfaces on host [host name]

In order to solve this issue, you can control if:

  1. you can ping the host from vCenter server
  2. host is correctly connected to the network
  3. network interface is up
  4. network devices are up and correctly configured

 

 

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KB3: MIGRATION VALIDATION FAILED

Hot migration validation can fails for different reasons (in the message field). In vCenter appears a message like: vMotion validation failed for VM [VM name]: [message]

The issue can occur during consolidation phase. Refer to vSphere documentation to solve the issue.

 

 

 

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KB4: Host [host name] activation failed: [message]

Host activation validation can fail for different reasons (in the message field).

The issue can occur during consolidation phase. Refer to vSphere documentation to solve the issue.

 

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KB5: Host [host name] suspension failed: [message]

Host suspension validation can fail for different reasons (in the message field).

The issue can occur during consolidation phase.

Refer to vSphere documentation to solve the issue.

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KB6: CLUSTER CONFIGURATION FAILED

The issue occur when Eco4Cloud fails to change DRS policy from fully automated mode to partially automated mode, probably due to a bad configuration of the E4CRole created in vCenter.

Troubleshooting

For the E4C role creation follow the istructions in the APPENDIX A – PRIVILEGES of the Eco4Cloud user manual.

 

 

 

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KB1: RDM HARD DRIVE

If a virtual machine has even only one hard disk configured as a Raw Device Mapping with Physical Mode, it cannot be hot migrated. In vCenter appears a message like: Hard disk [device name] is RDM with Physical Mode on VM [VM name]

You can either change the hard disk configuration, through the procedure suggested by VMware, or disable shutdown on the physical host where the VM resides, on the eco4cloud dashboard.

 

 

 

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KB25: BALLOONED MEMORY OCCURENCE

This is a performance parameter of a VM Memory. The value should be under 1% to ensure optimal performances. Troubleshooting:

  1. Check if the cluster is overloaded
  2. Check if VM resources are too low

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KB27: HOST DISCONNECTED

The host lost the connection from vCenter.

This can be a temporary situation, it is necessary to wait a few minutes in order to check the connection with vCenter. If problem persists, first of all check if host is reachable and powered on, then follow the steps of the following VMware knowledge base article.

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KB28: Login menu doesn’t appear in Dashboard home page

If you access the E4C dashboard using Internet Explorer, it is possible that login menu under Account does not appear. Date and time in upper right corner do not appear neither.

Troubleshooting:

On Internet Explorer options, choose Security tab, then select Internet Zone and click on Custom Level. In the window find Scripting section and enable Active Scripting and Scripting of Java Applets.

 

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KB13: MISSING BMC CONFIGURATION

This error occours when the Power Management section for an host is not correctly configurated or IPMI/iLO/BMC is not reachable.

In vClient a message like: Missing or wrong BMC configuration for host [hostname] can appear

 

Troubleshooting:

  1. Verify accessibility to the specific Host BMC from vCenter.
  2. Verify username, MAC address and IP of Host BMC .

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KB14: PERFORMANCE DATA NOT AVAILABLE

The error occurs when Eco4Cloud virtual appliance does not obtain performance data from vCenter.

 

Troubleshooting:

  1. Verify reachability from  E4C vApp to vCenter.
  2. Verify network connection from  E4C vApp to vCenter.
  3. Verify ecocloud user permissions on vCenter.
  4. Restart Host agent (restarting hostd, vpxa and ntpd deamons on host)

If the same error occours on VMware Infrastructure Client too probably the time is not synchronized between the VI Client host and the ESXi/ESX host so you have to restart the Network Time Protocol (NTP) as described in the following VMware Knowledge base.

 

 

 

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KB15: INSUFFICIENT PERMISSIONS

This is a critical error due to a bad configuration of the E4CRole created in vCenter. This can eventually lead to inability to perform tasks and operations over vCenter.

 

Troubleshooting

For the E4C role creation follow the istructions in the APPENDIX A – PRIVILEGES of the Eco4Cloud user manual.

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KB16: CLUSTER OVERLOADED

This is a major error and it points out that the workload is too extreme for the hosts in a cluster, and the Quality of Service is decreasing.
Troubleshooting:
Either relovate workload out of the cluster, or add hosts to the cluster.

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KB17: INVALID LICENSE

This is a critical error and prevents Eco4Cloud from working.

The license can expire after a specific amount of time, or if trying to handle more hosts than allowed. The reason for license expiration appears on the Eco4Cloud dashboard.

In order to never break Eco4Cloud service, after expiration, Eco4cloud works another month and license can be eventually reactivated. Then, after a month without license renewal, Eco4cloud stops working.

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KB26: FAILED MIGRATION

The error occurs when Eco4Cloud tries a vMotion, but the related task fails. This is a generic error, and there are several possible motivations.

If you are using the E4C Misconfiguration Troubleshooting tool, you will find the error cause in the Problems tab of the overview report.

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KB18: CRASH DETECTION FAILURE

Eco4Cloud has an automated check detection function. The solution is composed by an alarm (named “E4C Crash Detection Alarm”) and a scheduled task (named “E4C Crash Detection Task”). In case of a crash, the solution sets VMware DRS in fully automated mode.

The error “Crash detection failure” means that the alarm, the scheduled task, or both, could not be created.

 

Troubleshooting

Check E4cRole role permissions are enabled on:

  1. Scheduled Tasks
  2. Tasks
  3. Alarms

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KB19: SWITCH ON FAILED

The error occurs when Eco4Cloud attempts to switch on a host, but the task fails. This is a generic error, and there are several possible motivations.

If you are using the E4C Misconfiguration Troubleshooting tool, you will find the error cause in the Host Switch-on tab of the overview report.

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KB20: SWITCH OFF FAILED

The error occurs when Eco4Cloud attempts to switch off a host, but the task fails. This is a generic error, and there are several possible motivations.

If you are using the E4C Misconfiguration Troubleshooting tool, you will find the error cause in the Host Switch-off tab of the overview report.

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KB21: ACTIVE NETWORK NOT ACCESSIBLE

The issue occurs if the port groups names are not the same across all of the ESX hosts in the network. This prevents VM migrations. An error like “Currently connected network interface‘device’ uses network ‘network’, which is not accessible” can appear in vCenter. This error block definitively a VM migration

 

Troubleshooting:

To work around the issue, ensure that the virtual machine network port groups names are the same across all of the ESX hosts that participate in the vMotion operation, as explained in the following vmware knowledge base article.

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KB22: NO GUEST OS HEARTBEATS

When performing a vMotion, a warning like “No guest OS heartbeats are being received. Either the guest OS is not responding or VMware tools is not configured properly” can appear in vCenter.

This prevents VM migration and indicates that the VMware Tools are either not installed or are not running in the virtual machine.

 

Troubleshooting:

As explained in the following vmware knowledge base article:

  • Ensure that the VMware Tools are installed in the virtual machine before performing a migration.
  • Ensure that the virtual machine has been running long enough for the operating system to be completely started before performing a migration.
  • Restart the VMware Tools service. To restart the VMware Tools service:
    1. Click Start > Run,type services.msc, and press OK.
    2. Right-click VMware Tools Service and click Restart.

If the issue persists, reinstall VMware Tools to ensure that you are on the latest version.

 

 

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KB23: INVENTORY ERROR

Generic error of missing connection to the vCenter Server, usually due to:

  1. Connection refused by vCenter
  2. Connection timed out with the vCenter
  3. general communication problem with vCenter

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KB24: HIGH CPU READY TIME

This is a performance parameter of a VM CPU. The value should be under 5% to ensure optimal performances.

Troubleshooting:

  1. Check if the cluster is overloaded
  2. Check if VM resources are too low

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KB12: DEVICE BACKING NOT ACCESSIBLE

This unable to migrate warning message indicates that the virtual machine has a device that is disconnected and pointing to an image that is not accessible on the destination host. In vCenter an error like: migration compatibility warning: Device uses backing which is not accessible appears.

 

Troubleshooting:

  1. This warning can be solved, if you are using an image file (ISO, FLP, etc.) and not a physical device, unmounting the device how outlined by VMware Knowledge base.

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KB11: exit from standby mode: Operation timed out

When a host leaves the standby mode, it may happen that the operation is extremely slow. By default, the vCenter waits 15 minutes for the operation to be completed; if, after this time, the host does not reboot, the following error appears on vCenter: Operation timed out.

 

Troubleshooting:

  1. You have to change the value of timeout through the procedure suggested by VMware.
  2. Then try to restart vcenter service.
  3. If host appears in “not connected” state try to disconnect and reconnect it.

 

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KB8: Farm update failed: [message]

This is a general communication problem between vApp and vCenter.

The issue occurs during both consolidation and monitoring phases.

Troubleshooting:

  1. Verify accessibility from E4C vApp to vCenter
  2. Verify accessibility from vCenter to the specific resource specified in the message.
  3. Control ecocloud user permissions

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KB29: DIFFERENT SECURITY OR OFFLOAD SETTINGS

This is a migration compatibility error message and indicates that the source and destination servers have different security or offload settings configured on the virtual switch or portgroup that the virtual machine is connected to. The security and offload settings between virtual switches need to be the same to ensure that the functionality of the virtual machines is not affected upon migration
Troubleshooting:

To work around the issue,Check the properties of the virtual switch and/or portgroups between the source and destination servers. Ensure there are no differences between the settings on the Security tab, and the Traffic Shaping tab between the hosts, as explained in the following vmware knowledge base article.

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KB30: CONNECTION ERROR

The connection to the vCenter was rejected for connectivity problems.

Troubleshooting:

  • check if vCenter service is running
  • check if network is working on Eco4Cloud VM and on vCenter
  • check if vCenter is reachable from eco4cloud VM

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KB31: DEVICE BACKING NOT SUPPORTED

Cold migration fails with the error: Incompatible device backing specified for device. This issue may occur if CD-ROM properties are not correctly configured.

Troubleshooting

You must ensure that the CD-ROM device is configured correctly, as explained in the following VMware knowledge base article.

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KB32: VIRTUAL ETHERNET CARD NOT SUPPORTED

When performing a vMotion, a warning like “Virtual ethernet card ‘Network adapter xxx’ is not supported. This is not a limitation of the host in general, but of the virtual machine’s configured guest OS on the selected host.” can appear in vCenter.

This prevents VM migration.

Troubleshooting:

To fix this problem:

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KB33: INSUFFICIENT CPU CAPACITY

This issue occurs when the CPU resource reservations of the virtual machine exceed the available capacity on the target host.

Troubleshooting:

To resolve the issue you have to set the CPU reservations to a value lesser than the capacity of the ESX/ESXi host as explained in the following VMware knowledge base article.

 

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KB34: AFFINITY RULE VIOLATED

VM/Host DRS rules specify that selected virtual machines should be placed on specified hosts (affinity) or that selected virtual machines should not be placed on specified hosts (anti-affinity).

When a VM/VM DRS rule or VM/Host DRS rule is violated, it might be because DRS cannot move some or all of the virtual machines in the rule. A second reason could be the fact that the reservation of the virtual machine or other virtual machines in the affinity rule, or their parent resource pools, might prevent DRS from locating all virtual machines on the same host.

Troubleshooting:

To resolve the issue:

  • Check the DRS faults panel for faults associated with affinity rules.
  • Compute the sum of the reservations of all the virtual machines in the affinity rule. If that value is greater than the available capacity on any host, the rule cannot be satisfied.
  • Compute the sum of the reservations of their parent resource pools. If that value is greater than the available capacity of any host, the rule cannot be satisfied if the resources are obtained from a single host.

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KB35: DEVICE PREVENTS MIGRATIONS

This issue occurs if you have a SCSI controller in use in a virtual machine, which has the bus-sharing mode changed to either virtual or physical. This configuration is used in virtual machines that are running Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS).

Troubleshooting:

To resolve this issue, VMware recommends migrating a virtual machine that is participating in SCSI bus-sharing by powering down the virtual machine that resulted in the error message and performing a cold migration to the new host as explained in the following vmware knowledge base article.

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KB36: VM DISCONNECTED

This will happen when vSphere HA is not configured, or if the HA failover failed. Probably the host is unresponsive and the VMs are greyed out.

Troubleshooting

To resolve this issue follow the guideline of this vmware knowledge base article.

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KB37: INSTALLING VMWARE TOOLS

This issue may occur if the VMware Tools .iso image is not unmounted from the guest operating system after VMware Tools is installed or upgraded.

Troubleshooting:

To resolve this issue, you must disconnect the .iso image from the virtual machine, so that the migration can be completed. Also read the following VMware knowledge base article.

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KB38: CONNECTED DEVICE BACKING NOT ACCESSIBLE

This unable to migrate error message suggests that the virtual machine cannot be migrated because one of the connected devices is not accessible on the destination host.

Troubleshooting

To workaround the issue, perform one of the following actions:

  • If you are using an image file (ISO, FLP, etc.), ensure that it is accessible from all ESX Servers. Store the files on a datastore that is shared between all ESX Servers that will participate in the VMotion of the virtual machine.
  • Disconnect the device from the virtual machine before performing the migration.

Read also the following VMware knowledge base article to delve deeper.

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KB39: HA SUPPORT FAILED

This issue is due to possible problems with VMware HA cluster configuration.

Troubleshooting

The following VMware knowledge base article helps you to resolve the problem.

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KB40: INSUFFICIENT CPU CAPACITY

This error occurs when the CPU resource reservations of the virtual machine exceed the available capacity on the target host and vMotion of a virtual machine fails.

Troubleshooting:

To resolve this issue:

  1. In the vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  2. Click the Resources tab.
  3. Set the CPU reservations to a value lesser than the capacity of the ESX/ESXi host.

as explained in the following vmware knowledge base article.

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KB41: DEVICE CONTROLLER NOT SUPPORTED

This issue is similar to device prevents migration issue. Probably the destination host of VM doesn’t support a particular device.

Troubleshooting

You have to change manually the configuration of Vitual Machine, or you can use VMware Converter to fix the issue by converting the VM to an ESX/vSphere compatible VM. Read also this post of vmware community.

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KB:42 WRONG RESOURCES ASSIGNMENT

This is an advice by E4C Troubleshooter to remove limits on virtual machines.

Setting a limit on VM memory OR CPU directly is not the best thing to do. VM level reservation can be rather evil, it will hoard memory if it has been used by the virtual machine once. Even if the virtual machine becomes idle, the VMkernel will not reclaim this memory and return it to the free memory set. This means that ESX can start swapping and ballooning if no free memory is available for other virtual machines while the owning VM’s aren’t using their claimed reserved memory. It also has influence on the slot size of High availability.

Troubleshooting:

Eco4Cloud suggests to rightsize VMs through E4C Troubleshooter and use limits on resource pools, avoiding resource limits as much as possible.

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KB43: OPERATION NOT ALLOWED

This is a generic error, but in most cases it is the symptom of a failed vMotion migration operation.

When performing a vMotion, you see this compatibility error: Unable to migrate from <source server> to <destination server>: The operation is not allowed in the current state.

This issue can occur if the ESX/ESXi host or a virtual machine is in an unexpected state.

Troubleshooting:

To work around the issue, perform one of these options:

  • Cancel any existing task from the VMware Infrastructure Client.
  • Wait until any pending tasks are complete.
  • Restart the VMware vCenter Server service.
  • Restart management agents of the host.
  • Disconnect and reconnect the host to the vCenter Server.
  • Start the host if it was powered off.

Read also the following VMware knowledge base article.

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KB44: WRONG RESOURCES RESERVATION

This is an advice of E4C Troubleshooter to remove reservations on virtual machines.

Setting a memory reservation on a resource pool level has its own weaknesses, but it is much fairer and more along the whole idea of consolidation and sharing than virtual machine memory reservations. RP level reservations are immediately active, but are not claimed. This means it will only subtract the specified amount of memory from the unreserved capacity of the cluster.
RP reservations are used when children of the resource pool uses memory and the system is under contention. Reservations are not wasted and the resources can be used by other virtual machines. Be aware, using and reserving are two distinct concepts! Virtual machines can use the resource, but they cannot reserve this as well if it is already reserved by another item.

It appears that resource pool memory reservations work almost similar to CPU reservations, they won’t let any resource go to waste. And to top it off, resource pool reservations don’t flow to virtual machines, they will not influence HA slot sizes. Which unfortunately can lead to (temporary) performance loss if a host failover occurs. When a virtual machine is restarted by HA they are not restarted in the correct resource pool but in the root resource pool, which can lead to starvation. Until DRS is invoked, the virtual machine need to do it without any memory reservations.

Toubleshooting:

Both Eco4Cloud and Vmware suggest to use resources pool and set CPU or memory reservation on them.

There is a full article on the subject available here.

 

 

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KB45: BALLOONED MEMORY OVER 5 PERCENT

By this error, Troubleshooter reports that VM and Host performances are highly degraded because of high memory ballooning.

Virtual memory ballooning is a computer memory reclamation technique used by a hypervisor to allow the physical host system to retrieve unused memory from certain guest virtual machines (VMs) and share it with Others.

So host physical memory is reclaimed based on four “free memory states”, each with a corresponding threshold. Based on the Threshold, the VMkernel chooses which reclamation technique it will use to reclaim memory from virtual machines as explained in this vmware White paper.

When memory reclamation exceeds the 5% limit, memory ballooning leads to an high degradation of host performance.

Further information can be retrieved in this article.

Troubleshooting:

If the host has little free memory available, and if you notice a degradation in performance, consider taking the following actions

  • Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each virtual machine. The balloon driver is installed with VMware Tools and is critical to performance.
  • Verify that the balloon driver is enabled. The VMkernel regularly reclaims unused virtual machine memory by ballooning and swapping. Generally, this does not impact virtual machine performance.
  • Reduce the memory space on the virtual machine, and correct the cache size if it is too large. This frees up memory for other virtual machines.
  • If the memory reservation of the virtual machine is set to a value much higher than its active memory, decrease the reservation setting so that the VMkernel can reclaim the idle memory for other virtual machines on the host.
  • Migrate one or more virtual machines to a host in a DRS cluster.
  • Add physical memory to the host.

Read also the following section of VMware manual.

 

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KB46: BALLOONED MEMORY OVER 2 PERCENT

By this alarm, Troubleshooter reports that VM and Host performances are slightly degraded because of high memory ballooning.

Virtual memory ballooning is a computer memory reclamation technique used by a hypervisor to allow the physical host system to retrieve unused memory from certain guest virtual machines (VMs) and share it with Others.

So host physical memory is reclaimed based on four “free memory states”, each with a corresponding threshold. Based on the Threshold, the VMkernel chooses which reclamation technique it will use to reclaim memory from virtual machines as explained in this vmware White paper.

When memory reclamation exceeds the 2% limit, memory ballooning leads to an a slight degradation of host performances.

Further information can be retrieved in this article.

Troubleshooting:

If the host has little free memory available, and if you notice a degradation in performance, consider taking the following actions

  • Verify that VMware Tools is installed on each virtual machine. The balloon driver is installed with VMware Tools and is critical to performance.
  • Verify that the balloon driver is enabled. The VMkernel regularly reclaims unused virtual machine memory by ballooning and swapping. Generally, this does not impact virtual machine performance.
  • Reduce the memory space on the virtual machine, and correct the cache size if it is too large. This frees up memory for other virtual machines.
  • If the memory reservation of the virtual machine is set to a value much higher than its active memory, decrease the reservation setting so that the VMkernel can reclaim the idle memory for other virtual machines on the host.
  • Migrate one or more virtual machines to a host in a DRS cluster.
  • Add physical memory to the host.

Read also the following section of VMware manual.

 

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KB47: OVERPROVISIONED VM

Overprovisioning resources brings some risks and downsides that should be understood:

  • Potential for high CPU Ready times. As more vCPUs are added to hosts that might already have high workloads, CPU ready time can increase, thus forcing the VM to wait for resource availability.
  • Wasted RAM and additional cost. With the introduction of VMware’s vRAM entitlements, which came with vSphere 5, overprovisioning RAM to a virtual machine can now carry a real and direct cost as the RAM assigned to a virtual machine is now licensed

Troubleshooter suggest to assign the right resources to VM, based on a computation of resources consumption in the last week.

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KB48: UNDERPROVISIONED VM

Running underprovisioned VMs has a direct impact on infrastructure efficiency and applications performance and a negative impact on virtualization bottom line.

Under-provisioned VMs may experience poor performance or not run at all. It is also possible to provision a VM properly. Assign new resources carefully and upgrade the host computer if necessary. Powering down VMs will free the virtualized resources for re-use by other VMs or the host.

Troubleshooter evaluates the right resources to assign to the VMs, based on a computation of respective resources consumption in the last week.

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KB49: VIRTUAL MACHINE CONFIGURATION NOT ACCESSIBLE

This issue occurs if vCenter Server is unable to access the virtual machine configuration files across the ESX/ESXi hosts that are participating in the vMotion. This error typically occurs if the virtual machine is located on local storage. However, it can also indicate a misconfiguration of the shared storage between the ESX/ESXi hosts.
Troubleshooting:

  • Verify your storage configuration. Ensure that the virtual machine is located on shared storage and not a local datastore that is only viewable to one specific ESX/ESXi host. The shared datastore must be presented to both ESX/ESXi hosts in your environment that you intend to vMotion between. Select the ESX/ESXi host within the vCenter Server client and click the Summary tab to see which datastores are currently presented to each ESX/ESXi host. See the VMware Knowledge base article.
  • Power down the virtual machine and perform a cold migration

Read also this Vmware Knowledge base article.

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KB51: CPU READY TIME OVER 5 PERCENT

With this Alert, Troubleshooter reports that VM and Host performances begin to degrade because CPU Ready Time is becoming too high.

VMware CPU over-subscription means a VM is trying to get access to a physical CPU, but it can’t. This is measured by VMware as “CPU Ready Time”, as a percentage of time. Ideally, ready time should be at zero. On the field, VMware recommends less than 5% ready time for all VMs, while a CPU Ready value of 10% or greater on a vCPU, shows shrinking performance for server workloads.

Troubleshooting:

Typical solutions are to remove unused vCPUs, remove limits, or add more hosts.

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KB50: VMOTION INTERFACE NOT CONFIGURED

This error occurs when a host has not been properly configured for VMotion. To VMotion a VM between ESX host, a VMkernel port with a unique IP address is required on each of the ESX host systems. If this port group has not been configured or has been configured with a duplicate IP address, this error occurs.

Troubleshooting:
Check the configuration of the VMkernel port that is being used for VMotion.
To check the configuration of the VMkernel port:
Note: If one does not exist, create a VMkernel portgroup to be used for VMotion.

  1. Log in to the VirtualCenter Server from the VMware Infrastructure Client as an administrator.
  2. Select the ESX Server from the inventory.
  3. Click the Configuration tab.
  4. Click the Networking link.
  5. Look for the switch that has a VMkernel port configured.
  6. Click the Properties link.
  7. Select the portgroup noted in Step 5.Ensure that it has an appropriate IP address assigned and that VMotion is enabled on the portgroup.

Read also the following vmware knowledge base article.

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KB52: CPU READY TIME OVER 10 PERCENT

With this Error, Troubleshooter reports that VM and Host performances are degraded because CPU Ready Time is too high.

VMware CPU over-subscription means a VM is trying to get access to a physical CPU, but it can’t. This is measured by VMware as “CPU Ready Time”, as a percentage of time. Ideally, ready time should be at zero. On the field, VMware recommends less than 5% ready time for all VMs, while a CPU Ready value of 10% or greater on a vCPU, shows shrinking performance for server workloads.

Troubleshooting:

Typical solutions are to remove unused vCPUs, remove limits, or add more hosts.

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KB53: HOST MAINTENANCE MODE

E4C Troubleshooter raises a warning when a host remains in maintenance mode for more than 12 hours.

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KB54: VM IDLE

The issue is reported when a VM remains in a powered off state for at least three days.

If that happens, Eco4Cloud Troubleshooter considers that an inefficiency, as the idle/ghost VM is not productive, but still consumes storage resources.

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KB55: CLUSTER RECOMMENDATIONS

The warning is raised by E4C Troubleshooter when there are important pending DRS recommendations that need to be applied on VMware vClient.

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KB56: FRAGMENTED FARM

Troubleshooter is reporting an alert because the farm has too much clusters with few hosts.

The best practice is to have few clusters with many hosts, in order to make the best use of Eco4Cloud Workload Consolidation features, along with DRS and HA.

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KB57: MAPPED DIRECT ACCESS VIRTUAL DISK NOT ACCESSIBLE

Powering on or migrating a virtual machine fails with the error: Virtual Disk ‘X’ is a mapped direct access LUN that is not accessible. This is an informational event which indicates that the host attempting to start or receive the virtual machine cannot access the device (LUN) backing the raw disk mapping.

A raw device mapping file contains metadata, specifically SCSI vital product data (VPD) page 0x83, for uniquely identifying a device. A host attempting to access the physical LUN reads the mapping file metadata, and searches the devices known to the host for a LUN with the same VPD page 0x83 information.

The contents of SCSI VPD page 0x83 should match when requested by all hosts in a vSphere cluster, and the RDM should be accessible by all hosts in the cluster. However, discrepancies in device presentation between hosts in a cluster may lead to different hosts receiving different contents for VPD page 0x83 for the same device. In this case, hosts which did not create the RDM mapping file may be unable to locate the raw device mapping LUN when powering on or migrating a virtual machine.

Troubleshooting:

For a complete resolution read the following Vmware knowledge base article.

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KB58: INCOMPATIBLE CPU

The issue occurs when the CPU capabilities of the two hosts are not the compatible. vMotion requires that the CPU capabilities between the hosts must be the same.

Troubleshooting:

  1. In vCenter Server, click the Summary tab and check the CPUs architecture.
  2. Ensure that the affected hosts have the same BIOS settings. For more information on how to access your system BIOS, see the hardware vendor documentation.

For more information read this Vmware knowledge base article.

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KB59: VIRTUAL DISK NOT ACCESSIBLE

This issue may occur when a VM vmdk file is corrupted or the host attempting to start or receive the virtual machine cannot access the device (LUN) backing the raw disk mapping.

Troubleshooting:

If the vmdk file is corrupted you can troubleshoot the issue following this vmware knowledge base article.

If the second case occurs you can leverage this vmware knowledge base article.

 

 

 

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KB60: VIRTUAL HARDWARE NOT SUPPORTED

This issue may occur if a ESXi host doesn’t support the virtual hardware version of a VM.

Troubleshooting:

To resolve this issue try to upgrade the virtual hardware:

  1. Power on the virtual machine.
  2. Install VMware Tools.
  3. Power off the virtual machine.
  4. Upgrade Virtual Hardware

For more information read also this vmware knowledge base article.

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KB61: NO DATA EXECUTION PROTECTION

By default, VMware vCenter allows only vMotions between compatible source and destination CPUs. So if you have been trying to move a VM from one host to another, and you got stuck with a error message telling you that the CPU of your destination host is incompatible with the CPU configuration of your Virtual Machine, then this usually means one of the following:

a) you did not mask the NX/XD bit in the settings of the VM or…
b) you did not enable the “No-Execute Memory Protection” on both your source host and destination host or…
c) you did not have your cluster of ESX hosts configured for Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC)
Troubleshooting:
  1. To enable NX or XD in the BIOS:
    • Restart your host.
    • While booting, before Windows starts, press the key to go to BIOS.
    • In the BIOS, go to the Security tab.
    • Look for the NX or XD flag.Note: For Intel processors, you see the XD flag and for AMD processors, you see the NX flag. If that is not enabled, toggle the option and enable it.
    • Save the settings and exit the BIOS settings.
    • Restart your computer.
  2. To enable the “No-Execute Memory Protection”
    • Reboot the server and access the BIOS
    • Select “Advanced Options”
    • Enable “No-Execute Memory Protection” (this is what is called on HP servers)
    • Press “F10″ to save and the server will restart.
  3. To have ESX hosts configured for Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC)
    • Right click your cluster and choose Edit Setting
    • Click on the VMware EVC in the left panel
    • Select the option “Enable EVC for Intel Hosts” or “Enable EVC for AMD Hosts”.
    • Now choose your VMWare EVC mode: you can raise the EVC mode to expose more CPU features, or lower the EVC mode in order to hide CPU features and increase compatibility with older hardware
    • Click Ok

Further informations can be retrieved in  this article.

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KB62: INSUFFICIENT RESOURCES

This issue derives from trying to power on a VM on a ESX host that does not have sufficient resources to satisfy the resources reservation.

Toubleshooting:

The resolution depends on which resource is needed. For example, in order to resolve the issue on CPU reservation of the virtual machine that exceed the available capacity on the target host you need to:

  1. In the vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine, and click Edit Settings.
  2. Click the Resources tab.
  3. Set the CPU reservations to a value lesser than the capacity of the ESX/ESXi host.

If this is not feasible/possible, an alternative solution is to relocate the VM to another host meeting its requirements.

Further information can be retrieved in the following article.

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KB63: SMALL CLUSTER

Troubleshooter is reporting an alert because some clusters in the farm have too few hosts (less than 5)

The best practice is to have few clusters with many hosts, in order to make the best use of Eco4Cloud Workload Consolidation features, along with DRS and HA.

Troubleshooter suggest to merge clusters in order to improve efficiency.

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User Manual

This document, the Eco4Cloud User Manual, describes how to install and use the Eco4Cloud Virtualization Infrastructure Management software components, monitor and manage the information generated by the components, build your Eco4Cloud datacenter environment, consolidate virtual machines within the datacenter environment, and set up rules for virtual machines, hosts and clusters included into the datacenter environment.

Read it

User Manual – Addendum: Power Management

This document, the Eco4Cloud User Manual Addendum – Power Management, describes how to configure and manage IPMI implementation for several server vendors in a VMware environment. These configurations are a requirement for Eco4Cloud consolidation process, because they make it possible to automatically powering on servers.

The document also shows full examples about how to configure iLO, iLO2, iRMC, iDRAC and IMM protocols on servers from several vendors.

Read it