Verifying boot device in ESXi for USB issues

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps for verifying which physical device is the boot device on your host.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Resolution

To verify which physical device is the boot device on ESXi:

1. Run this command for a vm-support-based investigation:
   
   cat vm-support*/tmp/esxcfg-info.*.txt | grep -A10 "Diagnostic Partition"
   cat vm-support*/tmp/esxcfg-info.*.txt | egrep -A4 "Parallel SCSI Interface|Block SCSI Interface"
   
   
2. Run this command on a live support-mode session:
   
   esxcfg-info -s | grep -A10 "Diagnostic Partition"
   esxcfg-info -s | egrep -A4 "Parallel SCSI Interface|Block SCSI Interface"
   

Note: In each case, the first command identifies the booted device (by finding the diagnostic/dump partition) and the second command identifies the device type. For example, usb-storage, cciss, or mptscsi_2xx.