serial concole always disconnected after vmotion

[loungehostmaste]

why it the checkbox (see marked screenshot) for "connected" everytime you migrate a guest wioth vmotion disabled and the device disconnected?

i mean it's enough that you need go through the extened options to prevent the question if you really want to overwrite the file at power-on which would break HA (at least in a useful way) and in case it's your gateway - i am tired everytime i move the firewall jumping trough the settings - hell migrate the file like everything else belonging to the guest and don't tocuch the configuration

[Martin Gustafsson]

Hi,

My guess is that you're not storing the output file on a shared datastore. If you store the output file on a datastore that all ESXi hosts can access, the output file won't be disconnected during vMotion.

[loungehostmaste]

your guess is wrong - there are just 2 hosts and 2 storages

* SAN storage with SAS
* NFS storage with a direct 10 GBE connection on both hosts

[Martin Gustafsson]

I just tried this on vSphere 7. When using Output to file, file being stored on a shared datatore - the serial connection stays connected using vMotion.

What version are you using? Is the file saved to VMFS or NFS? Is the NFS share named the same on both hosts? If VMFS, same LUN presented to both hosts?

[loungehostmaste]

* vSphere 6.5

* VMFS
* both hosts have identical configuration
* storages where added back in 2018 via vCenter and not to single hosts

frankly what annoys me the most is that this file is not moved as part of the virtual machine to begin with because it's a joke that you have config options and files with a path to namd storages and when you replace the storage you need to remember every exception of this kind

[Martin Gustafsson]

If the datastores are shared and accessible by both hosts, the Serial Output file would stay connected even if you do a Storage vMotion.

[loungehostmaste]

most likely the problem is that you can't just say "serial.out" to simp,y store it in the vm directory but "[2018-raid10] firewall/serial.out" and that it's not moved at all with storage motion

the result after migration and back is that you have even a new folder with the virtual machine files
it makes me a sad panda that such stuff happens in 2020

[root@esx1:/vmfs/volumes/5b45d9f7-7403f466-123e-5cb9018c2284] ls -l firewall

total 64

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            56 Jul 19 20:01 serial.out

[root@esx1:/vmfs/volumes/5b45d9f7-7403f466-123e-5cb9018c2284] ls -l firewall_1/

total 1337536

-rw-------    1 root     root             0 Jul 19 15:40 firewall-462c091d.vswp

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           597 Jul 19 15:40 firewall-7a2c515b.hlog

-rw-------    1 root     root            13 Jul 19 15:40 firewall-aux.xml

-rw-------    1 root     root         33280 Jul 21 00:02 firewall-ctk.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root     536870912 Jul 21 00:01 firewall-flat.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root          8684 Jul 21 00:02 firewall.nvram

-rw-------    1 root     root           608 Jul 21 00:01 firewall.vmdk

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            43 Jul 21 00:01 firewall.vmsd

-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          9070 Jul 21 05:04 firewall.vmx

-rw-------    1 root     root             0 Jul 19 15:40 firewall.vmx.lck

-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          9054 Jul 21 05:04 firewall.vmx~

-rw-------    1 root     root        393728 Jul 21 00:02 firewall_1-ctk.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root     6442450944 Jul 21 07:46 firewall_1-flat.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root           614 Jul 21 00:01 firewall_1.vmdk

-rw-------    1 root     root     115343360 Jul 19 15:40 vmx-firewall-1177291037-1.vswp

[root@esx1:/vmfs/volumes/5b45d9f7-7403f466-123e-5cb9018c2284]

[Martin Gustafsson]

Well, first off. A Storage vMotion is different from a normal vMotion. A Storage vMotion is used for migrating the disks between datastores, a vMotion is used for migrating the running VM to another host. Both can be used when selecting "Change both compute resource and storage".

A Serial Output file is not migrated during Storage vMotion, which is what you're experiencing.

If you have 2 hosts with shared storage, you can place the Serial Output file on a persistent location so it stays connected even after you run a Storage vMotion on the VM disks.

[loungehostmaste]

* a Storage vMotion does not only migrate the virtual disks but the whole virtuial machine including vmx and nvram files
* i need to use "both compute resource and storage" anyways given that storage alone is not possible with Essentials Plus license
* it make sno sense not migrate the serial file as part of the guest
* anyways, even stored outside the guest folder it get disconnected when i move the guest
* there is no single non-shared storage given that the hosts don't have any disk
* in a sane world you could enter "serial.out" as file and it would be part of the guest like every other file

[loungehostmaste]

and that also happens *everytime* i use vmotion, no matter if you change the storage
the whole point of the serial console is to catch some information in case of a kernel crash

not funny when you ned to remember everytime to tick the checkbox after ESXi updates which implies vmotion all vms to the second host