ESXi 4.1 on UCS C210 M2 servers intermittently hanging at "initializing scheduler" on boot up

[terran0925]

Has anyone experienced intermittent hanging on bootup during the "initializing scheduler" operation for ESXi 4.1?  I've done some searches and only managed to find one blog post but the user was using the B series and ESXi 4.0 Update 2.

Thanks.

[clint.pearson]

YES!  I am using the UCS B200 M2 Blade, and I also intermittently hang at "initializing scheduler" on boot up.

AND, if we give up and power off, and power back on, it will boot past.  But then the server IP address is gone.

We are using the Nexus 1000v with all sorts of nics and special setting for networking.

When the Blade hangs during reboot, and we are forced to power off, we loose everything.

We can recover by readding all the settings, but it's a major pain.  Furtunately we are not yet in production.

~Clint

[mipetrin]

Hi Terence / Clint,

Cisco is aware of this problem and has been working with VMware to address this issue - as this issue has also been seen on other vendor's servers. Additionally, it only seems to be affecting platforms running ESXi.

On the Cisco side, this issue is being tracked via CSCtj19224 - ESXi stuck at Initializing Scheduler - (CCO Account Required to view details)

The workaround is to disable legacy USB within the BIOS.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Michael

[clint.pearson]

Michael,

THANK YOU for the quick response and the Work Around that actually Works! 

So far, it is MUCH better after disabling the USB in the BIOS.

From a Cisco UCS Perspective, I wish that I could set a BIOS Policy to apply against all blades at once, but that setting is not yet an option in the BIOS Policy options under UCS Manager.  But that's fine, setting it on each blade is okay with me, especially since it seems to be helping out situation.

We look forward to seeing the fix from VMware.  This was  our first leap of faith into ESXi, (verses using the full version of ESX) and I sure do not like to see these kinds of ESXi only gotchas coming to make me regret the decision.  If this is the only thing that gets us, I'll be ok.  Hoping so. 

Thanks again for the quick response and the advise that worked out well,

~Clint

[terran0925]

Thanks for the quick reply as we'll be going production within a month for 3 environments!  While doing research, I found a similar post for an HP server so it does sound like it's not vendor specific.

Do you know if it's just ESXi 4.1?  Does this affect ESXi 4.0?  Thanks.

[mipetrin]

Glad that it all worked out well.

In response to Terence, from what I can tell, it seems to mainly affect ESXi 4.1 - based on the number of cases I could find, however I have seen a couple of cases on ESXi 4.0 as well.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,

Michael

[terran0925]

Thanks for the information!  I did a B series deployment with 4.0 and haven't noticed it after deploying

8 blades but I'll definitely notify the client about it in case he experiences it.

[gsalisbu]

AI ran into this tonight while doing a 1000v upgrade.  UCS B250 M1 blades with ESXi 4.0 (Build 236512).  Disabling the Legacy USB resolved the issue.