Esxi Installer Fatal Error 33
Error loading /scsi-qla.v01, fatal error:33. Re-install ESXi. When re-installing, it will discover the older installation, and ask to upgrade or re-install. Feb 27, 2018 - FlexPod Datacenter with Cisco UCS Mini and VMware vSphere 6.0 with IP-Based Storage Deployment Guide. Oct 14, 2016. Pingback: ESXi 5.
Help! ESXi install unrecoverable. Trying to rescue VMs.
So last night we had a power outage and unfortunately my UPS is offline right now waiting for new batteries. This isn't the first time my host has shut down improperly, but once power came back and I went to reboot, I got the following error while esxi was loading:
error loading /sb.v00 fatal error 8 (device error)
From what I have read online this appears to be an unrecoverable error due to a device failure or corruption, and requires a fresh install. Obviously the HDD isn't totally dead or it wouldn't have tried to boot at all. Everything else passes post just fine so I am fairly confident it is the boot drive that is corrupted (it's an old laptop HDD I have been meaning to replace for a while now). My setup is a boot drive that only houses the esxi install and an SSD datastore where all the VMs live. There is also a passed through FreeNAS setup as well. So it looks like I have to rebuild esxi on a new drive (already ordered). My question is can I retrieve my VMs and what is the best way to go about it?
I was running 5.5 so I am thinking this may be a good time to switch to the latest version unless that might cause issues retrieving the VMs. From what I gather, I should be able to re-add them to inventory by accessing the VMX files on the datastore. Is this accurate if I am trying to add them to a fresh install? If I add them from the datastore, will that setup their configurations automatically (passed through devices, resource allocation, etc) or is it more involved than that? I really don't want to have to start from scratch with the VMs. How would you go about resolving this situation? Any help or input would be GREATLY appreciated. I do have backed up OVF files for the VMs but they are ancient because I am a terrible person that didn't backup frequently. I would like to avoid resorting to using the OVFs if at all possible since there has been a large number of changes to the VMs since they were created.
Edit in case anyone searches this post: I ended up installing a fresh copy or ESXi 6u2 to a USB drive and everything went fine with the install. To recover the VM's I re-added the datastore (via the search function) and then navigated to the VMX files and right clicked and hit add to inventory. For the VMs with passthrough, I had to set up the pass through for the host, then remove the passed through devices from the VMs and re-add them. Other than that the only things I needed to do was to set the networking back up and setup the startup/shutdown rules. Take pics of the mac addresses of your nics if you have a complex networking setup. When I reinstalled, the nics were not numbered the same, but I was able to replicate my networking setup by insuring the right MACs were attached to the right vswitches.