I came across an issue today with a Dell 2900. Every time I rescanned the host bus adapters I got a Purple Screen Of Death. After some research on the issue, it appears that it is a known one and will be resolved in a future bux fix from VMware.

The issue is with how the ESX kernel handles the USB controller in the Dell 2900. VMware engineering is working on the patch and the current workaround is :

Edit the /etc/modules.conf and remove the entries for USB as listed below :

alias usb-controller usb-uhci
alias usb-controller ehci-hcd

I can confirm this workaround does indeed fix the problem

DataCore SANmelody PSP3 has been released. 

Please note that this is NOT a simple upgrade. Extreme care must be taken to ensure that the process is followed exactly as stated in the guides. The upgrade will break AIM relationships, HA Mirrors and HA partnerships between servers. Downtime for application servers is a distinct possibility.

RTFM and it will be fine.

Installing ESX into VMware Workstation 6 (for test and demo)
 
For those people like me who have needed to install ESX 3.x.x (and most recently ESX 3.5 build 64607) into a VM, here is a nice way I have found to do it.
 
Those nice folks over at xtravirt.com have a great guide that details step by step how to complete it.
 
Here’s the link to the pdf document http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=startdown&id=11
 
It describes some specifics around processor and the latest revisions from Intel and AMD should both be able to manage it – my experience was based around using a DELL Lattitude D830 with a T7700 processor, 4GB RAM, Vista Business and version 6.03 of VMware Workstation.
 
Below is the .vmx file that I used for one of the VM’s that is fully functional.

config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
numvcpus = "2"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "1024"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "ESXDEV01.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.VirtualDev ="e1000"
ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
svga.autodetect = "TRUE"
mks.keyboardFilter = "allow"
displayName = "ESXDEV01"
guestOS = "redhat"
nvram = "Red Hat Linux.nvram"
deploymentPlatform = "windows"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "esx"
tools.upgrade.policy = "useGlobal"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "TRUE"
monitor_control.vt32 = "TRUE"
 
The specific for Intel processor is the last line of the config file – shown in bold, and has to match.

In addition I ensured the VT (Virtualistion Technologies) part was enabled within the BIOS of the laptop I was running it on as well.

If you are looking for a comprehensive list of commands for the service console or even understanding of the switches associated, you have probably used Mike Lavericks guides, searched the VMware documentation set and googled away. Well someone has submitted a link that has most if not all the commands that you will ever need to use and detail on them.

Its called the B2V Guide to VMware ESX Server 3 and can be found @ http://b2v.eu/b2vguide2vmware3.htm

They have the guide for ESX 2.x as well located @ http://b2v.eu/b2vguide2vmware.htm

an example of the content is shown below.

esxcfg-
 
There are a new set of command line tools in ESX 3.x which all start with "esxcfg-". These tools are used to configure each part of the ESX 3.x configuration. For example, esxcfg-firewall is used to manage the service console firewall while the esxcfg-nic is used to manage the physical Ethernet adapters present in the server.
Watch out for vicfg- commands also. If you are using the RCLI tools for managing ESX 3i, then the esxcfg- tools are now prefixed with vicfg- although the esxcfg- prefix still works.

 
esxcfg-advcfg

The esxcfg-advcfg command is interesting as there is not a huge amount of help about this command. However, we can figure out that it is meant to do advanced configuration and we can figure out some settings that can be made. The -g switch is used to "get" settings; the -s switch is used to "set" settings.
Here are a few examples of some VMkernel parameters which can be interrogated.

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg -g /Misc/BlueScreenTimeout
Value of BlueScreenTimeout is 0

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg -g /Misc/HostName
Value of HostName is esx1.vmlab.net 

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg -g /VMFS3/ZeroedThickVirtualDisks
Value of ZeroedThickVirtualDisks is 1

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg –g /Disk/SupportSparseLUN
Value of SupportSparseLUN is 1

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg –g /Disk/MaxLUN
Value of MaxLUN is

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg –g /Scsi/ConflictRetries
Value of ConflictRetries is

[root@esx1host vmware]# esxcfg-advcfg –g /LVM/EnableResignature
Value of EnableResignature is

The question is, how much is configurable? To figure out what is configurable, we recommend that you look in the directory /proc/vmware/config which you will find in the service console command line and then you will see the following directories

BufferCache
Cpu
Disk
FileSystem
Irq
LVM
Mem
Migrate
Misc
Net
NFS
Numa
Scsi
User
VMFS3

From these directories and the files within, you can work out the paths to be supplied to the esxcfg-advcfg command as parameters. Alternatively, you could also use the command

esxcfg-info –o

to list the advanced options.

When using the esxcfg-advcfg command, remember case sensitivity!

Usage: esxcfg-advcfg <options> [<adv cfg Path>]
 -g|--get             Get the value of the config option
 -s|--set <value>     Set the value of the config option
 -d|--default         Reset Config option to default
 -q|--quiet           Suppress output
 -k|--set-kernel      Set a VMkernel load time option value.
 -j|--get-kernel      Get a VMkernel load time option value.
 -h|--help            Show this message.
 -r|--restore         Restore all advanced options from the configuration file. (FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY).