Napp-IT / ESXi issues

[fatmcgav]

So I'm having a bit of a mare with my ESXi/Napp-IT AIO box atm...

It's been running perfectly happily for 2 years+, however in the past week or so I've been experiencing random IO waits when streaming via Kodi or Plex, and they have now got bad enough to trigger an 'All Paths Down' event in VMWare which effectively pauses all my VM's...

Hardware config looks like:
* Supermicro X10SL7-F
* Xeon E3 1220v2
* 32GB EEC Memory
* 32GB USB drive for 'napp-it' VM Datastore
* 2 x 256GB Samsung SSD's for VMWare NAS datastore
* 8 x 4TB Hitachi HDD for general storage

I was running ESXi 6.0, and a version of Napp-It from around May 2015.
However I've since tried various upgrades in an attempt to get things working...

Currently, I've upgraded ESXi to 6.7 latest, and I'm trying to deploy the latest Napp-It OVA (zfs_vsan_omni028_esxi67v4.ova), however the ova deployment process seems to hang in ESXi after the 'upload disk' step...

I've tried re-downloading the ova several times, and also downloading a couple of older versions, such as 'napp-it-san026-may2018.ova', however they all exhibit the same behaviour:

Any pointers on what the issue could be?

Cheers
Gav

 

[gea]

The problem seems your 32GB USB stick.
Too small for ESXi and OmniOS. My current OmniOS bootdisk is 40GB.

I would avoid an USB stick at all, maybe using a small SSD in an USB case.
Best solution would be an Sata boot SSD (ESXi and datastore).

As you have more than 8 disks you can either use the SSDs as a mirror from ESXi vdisks
or try sata rdm or better buy another HBA.

 

[fatmcgav]

@gea
Cheers for the quick reply...

So I've managed to make some progress by installing OmniOS 28 using an 8GB HDD and then adding Napp-It on-top... I've now got a working NAS, and was able to import the pools and things seem to be running ok ATM...

WRT local datastore, it looks like my memory was incorrect... I'm running a 32GB Transcend SSD (SATA III 6Gb/s SSD370) But yeh, 32GB is feeling a bit tight... Might bump it to a 64GB
And only ESXi itself is running from a USB thumb drive...

 

[fatmcgav]

Any pointers on how to enable Jumbo frames on OmniOS @gea ?

I've tried:
> ifconfig vmxnet3s0 mtu 9000
>ifconfig: setifmtu: SIOCSLIFMTU: vmxnet3s0: Invalid argument

But just get an error

I've also updated /kernel/drv/vmxnet3s.conf to include:
> MTU=9000,9000,9000,9000,9000,9000,9000,9000,9000,9000;
And rebooted, but still no joy...

Cheers

 

[gea]

Jumbo must be enabled on any client, server, switch, nic and OS (and even can give problems then)

- enable for ESXi vswitch
- enable for vmxnet3, vmxnet3s.conf

- enable for OS
for Solarish, use ipadm (or napp-it System > Network eth)
Setting Datalink Properties - Oracle Solaris Administration: Network Interfaces and Network Virtualization

 

[fatmcgav]

Cheers for the pointers on jumbo frames, I'll take a look...

One final question @gea - I'm trying to enable the tftp service, and can't seem to find the correct section within the napp-it UI... any pointers?

 

[gea]

Check Services > tftp
where you find a help, a setting to set a shared folder and to enable tftpd.

 

[fatmcgav]

That's what I expected to see, but there's no tftp option under services...

This was a manual napp-it install onto an Omnios host if that makes any difference...

 

[gea]

tftpd is not a default Solarish service.
Switch from sol (Solarish) to en menu set with all (included unsupported) options.

Menu sets (languages, features) can be selected in the top menu beside logout.

 

[fatmcgav]

tftpd is not a default Solarish service.
Switch from sol (Solarish) to en menu set with all (included unsupported) options.

Menu sets (languages, features) can be selected in the top menu beside logout.

Awesome, cheers for that... Worked a treat