# sudo vima-update scan
# sudo vima-update update

ghettoVCBg2

11/17/09 – The following enhancements and fixes have been implemented in this release of ghettoVCBg2. Special thanks goes out to Gerhard Ostermann for assisting with some of the logic in the ghettoVCBg2 script and the rest of the ghettoVCBg2 BETA testers. Thanks for everyones time and comments to make this script better!

Enhancements:

• Email log support
• Include/exclude specific VMDK(s)
• Additional logging + dry run mode

Fixes:

• Independent disk aware
• Large VMDK backups

Original script, but updated with new features and a bug fix:

ghettoVCB

11/17/09 – The following enhancements and fixes have been implemented in this release of ghettoVCB. Special thanks goes out to all the ghettoVCB BETA testers for providing time and their environments to test features/fixes of the new script!

Enhancements:

• Individual VM backup policy
• Include/exclude specific VMDK(s)
• Logging to file
• Timeout variables
• Configur snapshot memory/quiesce
• Adapter format
• Additional logging + dryrun mode
• Support for both physical/virtual RDMs

Fixes:

• Independent disk aware

sudo vima-update update

• New New licensing format/summary
• New EVC Enabled information
• New Cluster VM monitoring
• New Cluster Host monitoring
• New # of VMotions within a cluster
• New Datastore uncommitted info
• New CPU power management info
• New VM info (FT, Record/Replay, Clean Poweroff)
• New Host IPv6, FT, SSL Thumbprint
• New Host Profiles
• New vApp information
• New Distributed vSwitch information

Check the detailed output example William uploaded recently.

The procedure still requires an unsupported change on ESXi. My guess is that this will soon be fixed by using perl on VIMA. Perl enables you to use the SDK and vi-fastpass. Vi-fastpass is an authentication component which supports unattended authentication. In other words, there’s no need to store clear text passwords in script files anymore and no need to change ESXi. On twitter William Lam aka “@lamw” already hinted that he’s looking into this…

The script reports on the following:

• vCenter Build/Release
• ESX/ESXi Build/Release
• Cluster(s) Name/Statistics (Hosts,CPU and MEM availabity, HA,DRS and DPM enabled)
• ESX/ESXi Hardware configuration (NICs/HBAs)
• ESX/ESXi State
• ESX/ESXi Config (WIP)
• ESX/ESXi Datastore summary
• Virtual Machines summary
• VM Storage summary
• VM Network summary
• VM w/Snapshots
• VM w/RDMs
• VM w/NPIV enabled
• VM w/connected CD-ROMs
• VM w/connected Floppys

For more details, please take a look at the sample report located at here. There’s an extensive VMTN blog article here which contains usage information. The requirements for this script is: vCenter 2.5, ESX(i) 3.5, VI-Perl Toolkit or VIMA.

William described his script as follows:

ESXi is a formidable hypervisor solution in both licensed and free operation mode. When fully licensed in a Virtual Center cluster, ESXi’s features (VMotion, HA, DRS, VCB, etc…) are indistinguishable from ESX. One feature of importance, VMotion, is used to perform live migrations of VMs that reside on shared storage from one host to another. In free operation mode however, ESXi hosts are independent of each other, in which case, useful features like VMotion become unusable.

The motivation for this script (ghettoQuickMigrate.sh) then is to provide administrators running the free version of ESXi on several hosts with the capability to perform Hyper-V-like “quick” migrations of virtual machines residing on shared storage between the hosts. VMware’s VIMA virtual appliance was chosen as the central launch point for the quick migration process. ghettoQuickMigration.sh is executed from within VIMA and is compatible with ESXi 3.5u2+.

William wrote an extensive Communities blog post on how this script works, what the requirements are and how to set this up. Another reason for you to start using VIMA!

Working with VMware ESXi can be frustrating; you’re not supposed to enable the Dropbear SSH client or use its technical support mode without the assistance of a VMware support representative. System administrators, however, may be tempted to use tech support mode (or enable Dropbear) to fix problems or manage connections on the fly. Cracking this security shell, however, can void the VMware ESXi warranty and break support contracts.

Read the complete article here!

And Edward is right. The consultants and sys admins are used to SSH access to their ESX boxes and most of them opened up Dropbear SSH on their ESXi box as soon as they heard it was possible. That’s why I think everyone should start investigating VIMA. When I got some more time on my hands I will try to post more on VIMA.

The cool thing about VIMA is that it includes the RCLI commands, the Perl toolkit and a logger daemon named vilogd. The last one will be the topic for this blog. So what does this logger daemon include?
The vilogd daemon collects all the logs that are available through the DiagnosticManager VI API:

• ESX/ESXi3.x service log
• VI Client Agent log
• Virtual Machine kernel core file
• System log

First add servers to the VIMA appliance:

sudo vifp addserver esx01.localdomain
sudo vifp addserver esx02.localdomain

Now you will need to enable the vilogd for the servers you added:

vilogger enable

So when you’ve enabled it you could also set the max log size(default 5MB) or for instance the amount of log rotations(default 5 rotations). So the way you do this is as follows:

vilogger updatepolicy --maxfilesize 10 --collectionperiod 5 --numrotation 10

So the maximum filesize of a log will be 10MB. When the 10MB has been reached it will rotate the log files, their will be 10 log files kept by setting “numrotation”. The log files will be collected every 5 seconds.

As you can see, it’s kinda like a syslog daemon but in my opinion a bit easier to setup. I would love to see a web interface of some sort that immediately points you out to possible problems, and with a bit of work it should also be possible to direct people to kb articles on these problems. But we will just have to wait and see what will be coming up. I honostly don’t know.