So you were used to labelling your hardware with the name of the System running on it. But when running everything virtual you can label your ESX hosts but never know which VM resides at which Server without checking your console and/or vCenter.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you would have a magic Label that updated itself every once in a while. This way one would be able so see within just a glance which VM runs on which host.As you know there’s no such thing as a magic “label”, or maybe there is…
Yesterday I received an email from Nick Weaver(@lynxbat). He emailed me about a very very very cool script he wrote. No this script isn’t going to update your printed label off course. This script displays the VM’s running on your host on the front panel LCD. Most servers these days have frontpanel LCD’s and they can be updated with a couple simple ipmi commands.
Nick wrote an extensive article on how-to create a self updating magic label 🙂 in short:
- Install Dell OpenManage and run it on the ESX host (needed for ipmi drivers)
- Install ipmitool 1.8.10(SCP over, ./configure, make, make install….)
- Run lcd_update.sh script
Now walk over to your Dell server and check the result in the display, isn’t that amazing. Probably one of the most inventive scripts I’ve seen the last few months, it’s simple and gets the job done. Great job Nick, and I’m really curious what you will come up with next.
If I can find a Dell Machine this week I will definitely test it and post a screenshot!
I just received a link to a youtube video that shows it’s actually working!
Scott Hanson says
Very cool ! I’m putting on a machine as a lunchtime diversion. I’ll see if I can beat you to the screenshots and a Camtasia 🙂
lynxbat says
Video….now why didn’t i think of that?