How To Install and Boot VMWare VSphere/ESXi from Persistent Memory (or not)

How to
June 8, 2021

In a previous post I described how to install and boot Linux using only Persistent Memory, no SSDs are required. For this follow on post, I attempted to install VMWare VSphere/ESXi v7.0u2 onto the persistent memory.

TL;DR - It doesn’t work. The installer doesn’t list the PMem devices, and I was unable to find a way to manually select the PMem device(s).

I assume you followed the previous post to configure sector namespaces that we’ll use to install ESXi.

Create a Bootable VMWare VSphere/ESXi USB Drive

You can download an evaluation copy of VMWare VSphere/ESXi from https://www.vmware.com/go/get-free-esxi . You will need to login or create a new account before downloading.

Once the ISO has been downloaded, identify and wipe the USB drive:

$ sudo lsblk -o +model
NAME                     MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT MODEL
sda                        8:0    1  29.9G  0 disk            Flash Drive FIT

$ sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda
/dev/sda: 5 bytes were erased at offset 0x00008001 (iso9660): 43 44 30 30 31
/dev/sda: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (dos): 55 aa
/dev/sda: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sda: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success

Use the dd utility to write the ISO contents to the USB device.

$ sudo dd if=VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0U2a-17867351.x86_64.iso of=/dev/sda bs=8M status=progress oflag=direct

Install VMWare vSphere/ESXi

Reboot the system and press F6 to enter the Boot Manager. Select the USB device for the installation media.

After a few moments, you should be presented with the Welcome screen.

Press Enter to continue and accept the EULA agreement using F11

Unfortunately, none of the PMem devices are listed in the available drives to install vSphere/ESXI, and I see no way to manually add them.

Since I can’t select the PMem device(s), there’s no way to continue with the installation. My experiment ended here.

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How to Boot Linux from Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory

How to , Linux

Introduction

In this article, I will demonstrate how to configure a system with Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem) and use part of the PMem as a boot device. This little known feature can reduce boot times for those that need it.

The basic steps include:

Configure the Persistent Memory in AppDirect Interleaved
Create two small SECTOR namespaces, one per Region
Install the OS and select one or both of the namespaces (single disk install, or mirrored LVM)
Read More

How To Enable Debug Logging in ipmctl

The ipmctl utility is used for configuring and managing Intel Optane Persistent Memory modules (DCPMM/PMem). It supports the functionality to:

Discover Persistent Memory on the server
Provision the persistent memory configuration
View and update the firmware on the persistent memory modules
Configure data-at-rest security
Track health and performance of the persistent memory modules
Debug and troubleshoot persistent memory modules

I wrote the IPMCTL User Guide showing how to use the tool, but what if ipmctl returns an error or something you’re not expecting? How do you debug the debugger? On Linux, ipmctl relies on libndctl to help perform communication to the BIOS and persistent memory modules themselves. This is a complicated stack involving multiple kernel drivers and the physical hardware itself. Anything along this path could be causing a problem.

Understanding STREAM: Benchmarking Memory Bandwidth for DRAM and CXL

In today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) landscape, memory bandwidth is a critical factor in determining overall system performance. As workloads grow increasingly data-intensive, traditional DRAM-only setups are often insufficient, prompting the rise of new memory expansion technologies like Compute Express Link (CXL). To evaluate memory bandwidth across DRAM and CXL devices, we use a modified industry-standard tool called STREAM.

In this blog, we’ll explore what STREAM is, how it works, why it’s commonly used for benchmarking memory bandwidth, and how a modified version of STREAM can be used to measure performance in heterogeneous memory environments, including DRAM and CXL.