Automating ESXi host level changes without opening SSH

8 January, 2013 By 4 Comments

I have been asked by many if it is possible automating ESXi host level changes without opening SSH. In many organizations people are prohibited to open SSH however they do have the need to make certain changes on a host level. One of those changes for instance is in a stretched cluster environment where “disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault” needs to be set to true. This setting can only be configured in /etc/vmware/settings unfortunately. So how do you automate this?

Andreas Peetz from V-Front.de came up with an awesome solution. He created a plugin to esxcli allowing you to run commands on an ESXi host. So in other words, when you install his plugin (it is a vib) you can remotely fire off a command on an ESXi host as if you are sitting behind that host.

How does that work? Well first of all you install the vib Andreas created. (Or include it in your image.) When it is installed you can simply run the following on any machine that has the vSphere CLI installed:

esxcli -s hostname -u username -p password shell cmd -c "command"

Awesome right?! I think so, this is probably one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. Very clever solution, once again… awesome work Andreas and head over to V-Front.de to get more details and the actually download of this plugin!

** Disclaimer: implementing this solution could result in an unsupported configuration. This article was published to demonstrate the capabilities of esxcli and for educational purposes **

Filed Under: powerCLI, Various Tagged With: ,

Scripts release for Storage vMotion / HA problem

17 April, 2012 By 6 Comments

Last week when the Storage vMotion / HA problem went public I asked both William Lam and Alan Renouf if they could write a script to detect the problem. I want to thank both of them for their quick response and turnaround, they cranked the script out in literally hours. The scripts were validated multiple times in a VDS environment and worked flawless. Note that these scripts can detect the problem in an environment using a regular Distributed vSwitch and a Nexus 1000v, the script can only mitigate the problem though in a Distributed vSwitch environment. Here are the links to the scripts:

Once again thanks guys!

Filed Under: Management & Automation, Server, Various Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

PowerCLI Reference Book, the review

12 April, 2011 By 5 Comments

I was checking Amazon during the weekend, just like I do everyday, to see if we had new reviews and how the book was selling until I noticed the reviews on the PowerCLI book. The reviews were mainly about the fact that there’s a formatting issue with the ebook which I agree with should be fixed by the publisher but rating it with a 3 / 4 stars just doesn’t cut it in my opinion. Here’s my review of the book, please note that I know the authors really well and they gave me a free copy nevertheless I have been completely honest about what I think about the book. If I would think it was crap I would let you know, before I copy/paste the review here I would like to ask the Authors to pressure their publisher to lower the price of the ebook as right now it is more expensive than the paper version which is just nonsense. Mr or Mrs Sybex, it is time to change your strategy.

Anyway, I gave the PowerCLI Reference Book 5 stars as I truly believe it is one of a kind, here’s my justification for it:

I received the paper-version of the book last week and started reading it straight away. The authors are THE number one PowerCLI experts in the world and take you through the trenches of vSphere automation.
Although I know vSphere inside out I am a novice when it comes to PowerCLI. The main reason being that I never gave myself the time to actually learn PowerCLI as I figured I could do things faster using the UI. Although this might be true in some cases the first thing the book tought me was that my perception was wrong. The book shows you how to optimize your day-to-day operations by taking advantage of what PowerCLI has to offer out of the box, but it also teaches you how to create your own functions. The amount of examples in there in terms of PowerCLI scripts are such a valuable asset that I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning PowerCLI and/or optimizing their operational procedures. We are not talking about reporting only, for instance configuring vSwitches or restricting the amount of snapshots is all shown in this book. Be warned though, don’t expect a step-by-step Learning PowerCLI Guide, this is 700+ pages of pure PowerCLI automation at its best which will enable you to get the most out of your environment.

Not included on Amazon, but I do feel it would have been nice if the structure of the book was slightly different. I would have personally started with an Introduction chapter, followed “in-box” reporting functionality and finishing it off with deepdive functions and pages of script. But than again, this is a reference book and not course material. All in all, this book is more than worth it.

You can buy it here if you are interested.
(yes it contains an affiliate link)

Filed Under: Management & Automation, powerCLI Tagged With: , , ,

New version of RVTools!

11 April, 2011 By 7 Comments

Rob just released a brand new version of RVTools. So what’s new?

Version 3.1 (April, 2011)

  • Logon form tab order rearranged
  • Logon form will remember your last selected host / vCenter server
  • On vInfo new fields Provisioned, Used and shared storage
  • On vInfo new fields install Boot Required, number of Virtual Disks
  • On vInfo new fields Fault Tolerance State,  FT Latency Status, FT Band width and FT Secondary Latency
  • On vInfo new field 128-bit SMBIOS UUID of the virtual machine.
  • On vDatastore new fields Total provisioned, Used and shared storage
  • On vDatastore new fields SIOC enabled flag and congested threshold value
  • On vDisk new field disk persistence mode.
  • On vNetwork all IP addresses of adapter are now visible
  • On vMemory new field distributed Memory Entitlement
  • On vCPU new fields static Cpu Entitlement and field distributed Cpu Entitlement
  • On vHost new fields Current EVC mode and Max EVC mode
  • New batch command line parameters -u user and -p password
  • Bugfix: custom fields not always visible on vSnapshot tab.
  • Bugfix: Export to Excel, some numeric columns are saved as text instead of numbers
  • RVToolsBatch.cmd with send by email example deployed in RVTools program file directory
Filed Under: Management & Automation Tagged With: , , ,