Vmware Esxi Fatal Error 33 Inconsistent Data. I downloaded and created a new installer from the latest version or SD card from the physical server.
In my previous Experts Exchange Articles, most have featured Basic and Intermediate VMware and Virtualisation Topics.If you would like to read my Basic VMware articles, they are listed here for your convenience.
During this series of articles VMware released VMware vSphere 5.5 and VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.5. These articles are also applicable to VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.x and 5.5. For consistency, I have used VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.1 through this series.
In this article we will show you HOW TO: Fix the Error loading /s.v00 Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data) in the VMware vSphere Hypervisor. This method can be used with any version of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor from 4.0 to 5.5.
I feel this is a little more advanced, so I've not included it in the Basic VMware article series, as it does require some basic Linux skills and command usage.
Please note before you make any changes to a Production VMware vSphere Hypervisor Host server, which is hosting virtual machines, it is important to ensure you have valid backups of your virtual machines.
See my Experts Exchange article here - Part 10: HOW TO: Backup (Export) and Restore (Import) virtual machines to VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 for FREE if you want to use a quick and free method to backup important virtual machines.
If you perform a Google Search for Fix the Error loading /s.v00 Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data) you are likely to stumble across the VMware Community forums, where VMware Administrators have reported this issue, or you will find the VMware Knowledgebase Article (2008817)
The issue is caused by either a corrupted file or faulty flash media if installed to USB flash drive or SD card, this fault can occur at random.
I'm writing this article, HOW TO: Fix the Error loading /s.v00 Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data) in the VMware vSphere Hypervisor, because this has recently occurred to me three times, on different occasions, at different sites with servers from different manufacturers after changing Advanced Settings on the ESXi host. After a server restart the server fails to boot with Error loading /s.v00 Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data).
The VMware knowledgebase would suggest reinstalling the ESXi OS. This however would result in a virgin installation and all the configuration would be lost, so reconfiguration would be required before the server could return to production.
This is how I fixed the issue.
Software Prerequisites
One of the following desktop hypervisors
1. Check the existing USB flash media or SD card for damage.
Remove the suspect USB flash drive or SD card from the physical server.Windows Installer Fatal Error 1603
Download and installI prefer to work on backups, rather than the production USB flash drive, when recovering installations, so using the USB Imaging Tool, you can use the previous backup image, to restore to a brand new good quality USB flash drive or SD card (e.g. HP, SanDisk, PNY, Lexar, Kingston).
2. Confirm the USB flash drive or SD card is Faulty using a virtual machine
To confirm if the VMware Hypervisor installation is faulty, I connect the backup USB flash drive I've created in Step 1, to a virtual machine, and try to start the Hypervisor. I'm usingin this guide, but any hypervisor can be used.
Create a small footprint VMware ESXi 5.0 Server virtual machine template, as long as the minimum requirements are met, you can BOOT the OS. e.g. 2 vCPUs, 2GB RAM, 40GB (thin hard disk) to test the USB flash drive.
Andy's Handy Tip VMware Workstation cannot normally BOOT from a USB device, because the USB device needs to be available and connected to the VM before the VM is powered-on, and USB devices can only be connected to a VM, when the VM is powered on. Catch22!! So I use the Plop Boot Manager 5.0 LiveCD iso from http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpbt.bin.htm. Connect the ISO to the CD ROM drive and BOOT the Virtual Machine as normal.
Ensure the USB flash drive media to test is inserted and connected to the VM, select USB in the virtual machine.
This confirms the USB flash drive has a corrupted file.
3. Replacing the corrupted file using SLAX
Power down the existing virtual machine, created in Step 2, and connect the Slax Linux pocket operating system Linux from http://www.slax.org/ to the virtual machine.We will use the Slax Linux pocket operating system to mount the VMware Hypervisor (ESXi) partitions to fix the corrupted file, by replacing with a known working version.
Ensure that the backup USB flash drive containing the VMware Hypervisor OS is connected to the virtual machine, I've also copied a working copy of the file s.v00 to another USB flash drive, ensure this is also connected to the virtual machine.
Open a terminal, and run the command dmesg, you should be able to see the two connected USB flash drives. In this guide, device [sdb] is a Kingston DT 100 G2 4GB flash drive which contains the faulty OS, with the corrupted file, and device [sdc] Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 16GB flash drive contains the new file s.v00.
In the next few steps we will mount the USB flash drives partitions, and checksum the files, and finally copy and replace the corrupted file.
Type the following in the terminal windowmkdir /mnt/sdb5 - create a folder directory for the mounted partition for the ESXi.
mkdir /mnt/sdc1 - create a folder directory for the mounted partition.
mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt/sdb5 - mount the ESXi OS flash drive partition.
mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/sdc1 - mount the flash drive partition.
Type the following commandsls -al /mnt/sdc1/s.v00 - check flash drive for file s.v00
md5sum /mnt/sdc1/s.v00 - checksum file ensure matches working copy from host.
ls -al /mnt/sdb5/s.v00 - check corrupted version
md5sum /mnt/sdb5/s.v00 - checksum corrupted file.
Type the following commands to copy the working copy of the file s.v00 to the ESXi OS faulty media.
cp /mnt/sdc1/s.v00 /mnt/sdb5
md5sum /mnt/sdb/s.v00
umount /mnt/sdb5
umount /mnt/sdc1
Exit terminal mode, disconnect the USB flash drives from the SLAX virtual machine.
Repeat Step 2 above.
You should find the server successfully boots, and the ESXi USB flash drive installation media, has been successfully repaired.
Congratulations, you have successfully Fixed the the Error loading /s.v00 Fatal error: 33 (Inconsistent data) in the VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
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Help! ESXi install unrecoverable. Trying to rescue VMs.
So last night we had a power outage and unfortunately my UPS is offline right now waiting for new batteries. This isn't the first time my host has shut down improperly, but once power came back and I went to reboot, I got the following error while esxi was loading:
error loading /sb.v00 fatal error 8 (device error)
From what I have read online this appears to be an unrecoverable error due to a device failure or corruption, and requires a fresh install. Obviously the HDD isn't totally dead or it wouldn't have tried to boot at all. Everything else passes post just fine so I am fairly confident it is the boot drive that is corrupted (it's an old laptop HDD I have been meaning to replace for a while now). My setup is a boot drive that only houses the esxi install and an SSD datastore where all the VMs live. There is also a passed through FreeNAS setup as well. So it looks like I have to rebuild esxi on a new drive (already ordered). My question is can I retrieve my VMs and what is the best way to go about it?
I was running 5.5 so I am thinking this may be a good time to switch to the latest version unless that might cause issues retrieving the VMs. From what I gather, I should be able to re-add them to inventory by accessing the VMX files on the datastore. Is this accurate if I am trying to add them to a fresh install? If I add them from the datastore, will that setup their configurations automatically (passed through devices, resource allocation, etc) or is it more involved than that? I really don't want to have to start from scratch with the VMs. How would you go about resolving this situation? Any help or input would be GREATLY appreciated. I do have backed up OVF files for the VMs but they are ancient because I am a terrible person that didn't backup frequently. I would like to avoid resorting to using the OVFs if at all possible since there has been a large number of changes to the VMs since they were created.
Edit in case anyone searches this post: I ended up installing a fresh copy or ESXi 6u2 to a USB drive and everything went fine with the install. To recover the VM's I re-added the datastore (via the search function) and then navigated to the VMX files and right clicked and hit add to inventory. For the VMs with passthrough, I had to set up the pass through for the host, then remove the passed through devices from the VMs and re-add them. Other than that the only things I needed to do was to set the networking back up and setup the startup/shutdown rules. Take pics of the mac addresses of your nics if you have a complex networking setup. When I reinstalled, the nics were not numbered the same, but I was able to replicate my networking setup by insuring the right MACs were attached to the right vswitches.