by Duncan Epping
Duncan Epping · ·
Today I visited a customer that wanted to enable the VMware tools timesync during an automated install of a Windows VM. The customer didn’t want to use powershell / perl or anyother SDK enabled tool. So what’s left?
“C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareService.exe” –cmd “vmx.set_option synctime 0 1”
So this command ticks the checkbox for timesync via VMware Tools, which can come in handy when doing RIS alike installs.
Duncan Epping · ·
A lot of people have been asking for this: When will ESX 3.5 Update 3 be released? Well here’s your answer, download it now.
There are a couple of new things introduced:
Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.
Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported
I think the most exciting thing is the VMDK Recovery Tool! If I can find the time I will definitely test it!
Duncan Epping · ·
So you can easily add users with useradd command we talked about. But there’s still a problem, you can’t add user-roles to the user you’re creating. You still need the VirtualCenter client to do that. My colleague Horst Mundt read my post and was so kind to email me a powershell script he created that can add roles to specific users or groups for you:
$VCimpl = Get-VIServer -Server 192.168.116.201 -User root -Password <...>
# Note: Server is an ESX host, not VC
# Force load
[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("vmware.vim")
# Edit hostname below
$hostname = "esx302.hm.local"
# The name of the role to be assigned
$roleLabel="Read-Only"
#$roleLabel="Administrator"
#The name of the principal (user or group) that the role is assigned to
$principal="GroupX"
# set to false if principal is a user , not a group
$principalIsGroup = $true
$propagateToSubEntities = $true
$svcRef = new-object VMware.Vim.ManagedObjectReference
$svcRef.Type = "ServiceInstance"
$svcRef.Value = "ServiceInstance"
$serviceInstance = get-view $svcRef
$authMgr = Get-View $serviceInstance.Content.AuthorizationManager
$hahost = Get-View (Get-VMhost -Name $hostname).ID
$compResource = $hahost.Parent
$oldperms = $authMgr.retrieveEntityPermissions($hahost.MoRef, $true)
$roles = $authMgr.roleList
$roleid = 0
$found = $false
for ($i = 0 ; $i -lt $roles.Length ; $i++)
{
$role=$roles[$i]
if ($role.Info.Label -eq $roleLabel)
{
$roleid = $role.RoleId
$found = $true
}
}
if ( $found -eq $false )
{
echo ("Role not found: " + $roleLabel )
exit 1
}
$permission = New-Object Vmware.Vim.Permission
$permission.group = $principalIsGroup
$permission.principal = $principal
$permission.propagate = $propagateToSubEntities
$permission.roleID = $roleid
$authmgr.SetEntityPermissions($compResource, @($permission))
The script has been tested on ESX 3.0.2. I did not have the opportunity to test it myself by the way… So if anyone can test it against ESX 3.5 and let’s us know what the results are!
Duncan Epping · ·
A few weeks ago I posted a document which contains valuable information on implementing VMware HA. I just received an update on this document and uploaded it. I’ve also changed the link in the original post.
As most of you know I work for VMware which means I receive a huge amount of email and documents with excellent technical info. Some I can’t blog about but some I can. Last week I received this VMware HA implementations notes document by Seva Semouchin. Seva is a Technical Account Manager based in Germany!
This document deals about VMware HA clusters and all the advanced options you have with the use cases for these options. And that’s what makes this document very useful, the use cases! So everyone dealing with HA clusters should definitely read this document. Thanks Seva for letting me distribute it, and thanks for a great document!
Duncan Epping · ·
How cool is this video about Distributed Power Management, it demonstrates how DPM works and what the possible utility savings could be. Just watch it: