Running SCO Unix VMs [# 00581520]

[ramon82]

Hi all

We have a bit of a situation at the office and need your help. We are running an ESXi 5.1 host on an IBM x3550 M4 server. On it we have 3 VMs; one is running Windows 2003 (was P2V'ed), and the other two are running SCO Unixware 7.0.1. We use Veeam Backup and Replication to backup these VMs to a Windows Server over a gigabit network (no fiber channel or SANs)

Unfortunately the SCO virtual machines are giving us a lot of trouble. In one particular instance one of the VMs rebooted by itself and lost all settings like passwords, data etc as if it has been reset to its original state. On another occasion one of the VMs was shutting its services and restarting them alone - when these SCO boxes were on a physical server (legacy) these things never used to happen except when the number of inodes were exceeded. Also its not the first time that we find the vSphere console window freezed when on these SCO VMs....we have to give the SCO VM init 0 or init 6 to be able to use it again. Even trying to backup these SCO VMs with Veeam will cause them to reboot or freeze the minute the backup job starts...we have to shutdown them first before backing them up. Everything is so unstable.

Has anyone had any experience with SCO and Veeam/Vmware? any help? unforutnately we cannot find a physical server compatible with them.

Thanks a lot

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

Do you see this behavior during snapshot creation/commit operation? Have you had a chance to review VMware VM logs for the reboot reason?

Thank you!

[ramon82]

Yes same thing happens...the SCO VM reboots on its own!

[tsightler]

Unixware 7.0.1 was released in 1998 and, as far as I know, is not a supported operating system under any ESXi version. My guess is the SCSI drivers in this version of the product would simply not be tolerant of I/O delays introduced in virtual environments, especially from things like snapshot operations. Do you have any ability to upgrade to at least one of the supported variants, which I believe are 7.1.1 and 7.1.4 with appropriate maintenance packs (would be listed on the VMware compatilibity guide).