UPDATE: removevmhba
Wednesday, 10 February 2010 16:13

Today I've updated the popular removevmhba script to version 5.0. This version now includes the removal of the drivers in vSphere ESX 4.0 update 1 isos. Thanks to Dinny Davies who did excellent work again on finding a solution for removing them on vSphere ESX4 (he just beat me to it Wink). Check the original ESX 3.x.x version here, and the new ESX 4.x.x document here.

Go ahead, grab removevmhba from the downloads section and give it a try. It removes the drivers only during installation, so you don't need to bother disconnecting your SAN or zone out anything during installation (both Emulex and Qlogic - and also hardware initiated iSCSI adapters). It's much safer for a scripted installation of ESX using the UDA or EDA. After the installation you will have the drivers (since it is installed as a package) - so you will get connection back to your SAN.

Instructions

You can use an ESX server, but you need to have mkisofs installed and mkfs. So I just take a default Ubuntu installation or like Dinny, using a default CentOS installation. The script checks the requirements and quits with a message if they are not met.

Make sure you are logged in as root, and start the script with:

# removevmhba-updatenewbuildsv5.sh <ESX 3 or 4 iso>

The results should be:

removehba-updatenewbuildsv5

Download

Download is for free, from here (I hope you enjoy it):

 Download removevmhba
File Title:removevmhba (Details)
File Type:sh
File Version:5.0
File Size:18.34 Kb
License:
Downloads:4424

Comments (3)
  • |2010-02-10 17:02:51 Viktor
    avatar
    Hi Bouke,

    Does the --onfirstdisk not solve this issue? We are using this option and not the removehba script....

    Viktor
    Reply
  • |2010-02-10 17:34:41 Bouke Groenescheij  - I guess it would...
    avatar
    Hi Viktor,

    Yes, it should. But after reading http://communities.vmware.com/thread/249941 I just wasn't so sure. So if you want absolute safety and want to be absolutely sure you don't kill a VMFS on SAN, you could strip out the drivers during installation. But if yours is working fine, removevmhba is not needed.

    Regards,
    Bouke
    Reply
  • |2010-09-15 16:44:26 Eric Garbos  - Better safe than sorry
    avatar
    For my $0.02 you can never be too careful. ESX instances themselves are not mission-critical data. VMs living on VMFS volumes on the SAN, however, are, and must take precedence. This is worth some extra precaution.

    While I believe --onfirstdisk is vastly more likely to see local disk before SAN disk, I'm not 100% sure this is always the case in every server architecture. All you'd need is to have the HBA seen before the RAID controller in the order the PCI bus is walked, and there's a potential issue. Also, consider the case of a failed internal disk or controller. The installer wouldn't see any local disk and --onfirstdisk would necessarily target some unintended SAN volume. If you don't realize this is the case before kicking off the build, I assure you the installer will be happy to overwrite the SAN disk - we tested this!
    Reply
  • |2010-09-20 23:52:57 Gavin Craig  - Script for ESXi
    avatar
    Hi Bouke,

    Are there any plans to rework this for ESXi?

    Cheers

    Gav
    Reply
  • |2011-12-15 13:25:25 Frans van Dokkumburg
    avatar
    Hi Bouke,

    Does this work also for the new esx5i version?
    Reply
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