The HPE iLO Amplifier Integration into the vSphere Lifecycle Manager is an easy way to update your ESXi hosts not only with updates, but also with the latest firmware. Despite the fact that HPE has discontinued HPE ILO Amplifier, the product is widly used. The final version is 2.22, the final version for the HPE iLO Amplifier HSM Provider for VMware vSphere is version 1.5.0.
A recurring problem is an error message during the compliance scan:
This error gets me from time to time, regardless which server vendor, mostly on hosts that were upgraded a couple of times. In this case it was a ESXi host currently running a pretty old build of ESXi 6.7 U3 and my job was the upgrade to 7.0 Update 3c.
If you add a upgrade baseline to the cluster or host, and you try to remediate the host, the task fails with a dependency error.
During the deployment of a vSAN cluster consisting of multiple HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 hosts, I noticed a memory health warning after updating the firmware using the Support Pack for ProLiant. The error was definitely not shown before the update, so it was clear, that this was not a real issue with the hardware. Furthermore: All hosts showed this error.
Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0
The same day, a customer called me and asked me about a strange memory health error after he has updated all of his hosts with the latest SPP…
After a reboot, a VMware ESXi 6.7 U3 told me that he has no compatible NICs. Fun fact: Right before the reboot everything was fine.
The ILO also showed no NICs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t onsite to pull the blade server and put it back in. But there is a way to do this “virtually”.
You have to connect to the IP address of the Onboard Administrator via SSH. Then issue the reset server command with the bay of the server you want to reset and an argument.
I’ve got several mails and comments about this topic. It looks like that the latest ESXi 6.7 updates are causing some trouble on HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers.
I’ve blogged about recurring host hardware sensor state alarm messages some weeks ago. A customer noticed them after an update. Last week, I got the first comments under this blog post abot fan failure messages after applying the latest ESXi 6.7 updates. Then more and more customers asked me about this, because they got these messages too in their environment after applying the latest updates.
If you found this blog post because you are searchting for a solution for a FAN FAILURE on your ProLiant Gen10 HW after applying the latest ESXi 6.7 patches, then use this shortcut for the workaround: Fan health sensors report false alarms on HPE Gen10 Servers with ESXi 6.7
I had a really annoying problem at one of my customers. After deploying new VMware ESXi hosts (HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10) along with an upgrade of the vCenter Server Appliance to 6.
One of my customers bought a very nice new backup solution, which consists of a
HPE StoreOnce 5100 with ~ 144 TB usable capacity, and a new HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 with Windows Server 2016 as new backup server. StoreOnce and backup server will be connected with 8 Gb Fibre-Channel and 10 GbE to the existing network and SAN. Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 U3a is already in use, as well as VMware vSphere 6.
When taking a backup with Veeam Backup & Replication, a VM snapshot is created to get a consistent state of the VM. The snapshot is taken prior the backup, and it is removed after the successful backup of the VM. The snapshot grows during its lifetime, and you should keep in mind, that you need some free space in the datastore for snapshots. This can be a problem, especially in case of multiple VM backups at a time, and if the VMs share the same datastore.
A couple of days ago, I took the HP0-Y47 exam “Deploying HP FlexNetwork Core Technologies”. It was one of two required exams to achive the HPE ASE - Data Center Network Integrator V1, and the HP ASE - FlexNetwork Integrator V1 certification. It was a long planned upgrade to my HP ATP certification, and it is a necessary certification for the HPE partner status of my employer.
You might find it confusing that I’m talking about an HP ASE and a HPE ASE.
During the replacement of some VMware ESXi hosts at a customer, I discovered a recurrent failure of the vSphere Distributed Switch health checks. A VLAN and MTU mismatch was reported. On the physical side, the ESXi hosts were connected to two HPE 5820 switches, that were configured as an IRF stack. Inside the VMware bubble, the hosts were sharing a vSphere Distributed Switch.
The switch ports of the old ESXi hosts were configured as Hybrid ports.
