esxi

Automating ESXi host level changes without opening SSH

Duncan Epping · Jan 8, 2013 ·

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 **

ESXi host disconnected from vCenter?

Duncan Epping · Jan 7, 2013 ·

I noticed a couple of people reported this problem in the last two months so I figured a blog post would be useful. This thread on VMTN triggered this article. If your ESXi host is disconnected from vCenter (even 5.0 and 5.1 appear to be impacted by this) and you see error messages in your log files about free space like these:

WARNING: VisorFSObj: xxxx: Cannot create file /var/spool/snmp/xxxxxxxx_x_
x_xxxx.trp for process hostd-worker because the inode table of its ramdisk (root) is full.

VmkCtl Locking (/etc/vmware/esx.conf) : Unable to create or open a LOCK file. Failed with reason: No space left on device

This could be caused by the fact that ESXi is running out of inodes. You can simply check that on the command line by using the following command:

stat -f /

The outcome of this command will look as follows:

File: “/”
ID: 1        Namelen: 127     Type: visorfs
Block size: 4096
Blocks: Total: 449852     Free: 324368     Available: 324368
Inodes: Total: 8192       Free: 55

As you can see the amount of “free” inodes is low and this is causing the experienced issues. In some cases it is reported (by vdsyn in this case) that “/var/spool/snmp/” is full and needs to be cleaned out. In this KB Article “/var/run/sfcb/” is explicitly called out and also explains what you can delete and how. So make sure to look at those two directories when an ESXi host is disconnected from vCenter.

Renaming virtual machine files using SvMotion back in 5.0 U2

Duncan Epping · Dec 21, 2012 ·

I have been pushing for this heavily internally together with Frank Denneman and it pleases me to say that it is finally back… You can rename your virtual machine files again using Storage vMotion as of 5.0 u2.

vSphere 5 Storage vMotion is unable to rename virtual machine files on completing migration
In vCenter Server , when you rename a virtual machine in the vSphere Client, the vmdk disks are not renamed following a successful Storage vMotion task. When you perform a Storage vMotion of the virtual machine to have its folder and associated files renamed to match the new name. The virtual machine folder name changes, but the virtual machine file names do not change.

This issue is resolved in this release

src: https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsp_vc50_u2_rel_notes.html#resolvedissues

Those who want to know what else is fixed, you can find the full release notes here of both ESXi 5.0 U2 and vCenter 5.0 U2:

** do note that this fix is not part of 5.1 yet **

Creating a nested lab

Duncan Epping · Jun 12, 2012 ·

I was just building a nested lab to record some demo videos. I find myself googling for this every single time so I figured I would write about it so I can easily get it of my own website. Many have written about this before and all credits go to William Lam and Eric Gray, which are the two main blogs I have used in the past to get this working.

After installing ESXi on my physical box I “ssh” in to it. In order to allow “nested ESXi” to boot a 64bit OS you will need to run the following:

echo 'vhv.allow = "TRUE"' >> /etc/vmware/config

After you have done that you will want to make sure you will get network connection. Go to your “VM Network” portgroup, or if you named it differently the portgroup that is used to connect the virtual ESXi hosts to. For each of the hosts do the following:

Click on the host
Go to “Configuration”
Click on “Networking”
Click “Properties” on the vSwitch
Select the correct portgroup
Click “Edit”
Click “Security”
Set “Promiscuous Mode” to “Accept”
Click “Ok”
Click “Close”

Now for each virtual ESXi host (note there is a “guest os” called ESXi 5 in there, use it!) that you have created do the following:

Right click on the VM
Click “Edit settings”
Click the “Options” tab
Click on “CPU/MMU virtualization”
Select the 4th option “Use Intel VT-x / AMD-v…”

I am building this out to record a new of “DR of the Cloud”. In other words, 3 virtual clusters + vCloud Director + SRM + vSphere Replication + Virtual Storage Appliances… Cool stuff right.

Fling: Auto Deploy GUI

Duncan Epping · Feb 9, 2012 ·

Many of you probably know the PXE Manager fling which Max Daneri created… Max has been working on something really cool, a brand new fling: Auto Deploy GUI! I had the pleasure of test driving the GUI and providing early feedback to Max when he had just started working on it and since then it has come a long way! It is a great and useful tool which I hope will at some point be part of vCenter. Once again, great work Max! I suggest that all of you check out this excellent fling and provide Max with feedback so that he can continue to develop and improve it.

The Auto-Deploy GUI fling is an 8MB download and allows you to configure auto-deploy without the need to use PowerCLI. It comes with a practical deployment guide which is easy to follow and should allow all of you to test this in your labs! Download it it now and get started!

source
The Auto Deploy GUI is a vSphere plug-in for the VMware vSphere Auto Deploy component. The GUI plug-in allows a user to easily manage the setup and deployment requirements in a stateless environment managed by Auto Deploy. Some of the features provided through the GUI include the ability to add/remove Depots, list/create/modify Image Profiles, list VIB details, create/modify rules to map hosts to Image Profiles, check compliance of hosts against these rules and re-mediate hosts.