Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Howto

partitioning your esx

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So I talked about using /var instead of /var/log for you standard ESX deployment… Still I see people do lots of weird things, these are my recommendation for esx partitioning:

Primary:
/boot   - 250MB
/       - 5120MB
Swap    - 1600MB
Extended Partition:
/var    - 4096MB
/home   - 2048MB
/opt    - 2048MB
/tmp    - 2048MB
VMKcore - 100MB
VMFS    - Fillup, but leave atleast 5GB for additional partitions in the future as Bouke and Eric suggest below!

This will take up around 18GB of the 36GB you have these days as a minimum. And you’ll avoid filling up your root file system with log files, core dumps or temporary files. Start using it if you’re not doing it…

And if you did manage to fill up your root file system use this command from the COS to find any files larger than 10MB:

find –type f –size +10240k

ESX vs ESXi

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I’ve had this question about a kazillion times by now, what’s the difference between ESX and ESXi. How do they compare… Can I do this with ESX, can I do that with ESXi.

Here’s the answer! This KB article contains a table with features and a description of what you can and can’t do in VirtualCenter. Check it out, it’s definitely worth reading.

And in addition to that, it is possible to do most configurations post installation via powershell. Check this topic on the VMTN forum by Lance!

ESXi and SSH, what’s next

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I get a lot of questions about ESXi and SSH. Most people manage to connect to their ESXi but don’t know what to do next because there’s no actual Service Console there. Well the answer is short and simple: vim-cmd.

A couple examples of stuff you can do with vim-cmd:
enter maintenance mode: vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

List all registered vm’s: vim-cmd /vmsvc/getallvms

Install VMware Tools for VM with ID: vim-cmd /vmsvc/tools.install [vmid]

Power on a specific VM: vim-cmd /vmsvc/power.on [vmid]

So check out the link above and start trying out this poweful command

Book: Deploying the VMware Infrastructure

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There’s a new book launched at VMworld Vegas 2008! This book is written by John Arrasjid(VMware), Daniel Conde(VMware), Karthik Balachandran(VMware), Gary Lamb(INX) and Steve Kaplan(INX).

You can pre-order the book via Digital-Guru, and here’s there description just to give you an idea: Deploying the VMware Infrastructure is an introduction to the world of VMware virtualization technology written by hands-on experts in the field. This booklet explains virtualization, enumerates its many benefits, and describes a set of real-world use cases. Overviews are provided for each of the VMware server virtualization, desktop virtualization, and automation and infrastructure management products; and detailed information is given about virtualizing your infrastructure-from building a VMware Infrastructure and selecting candidates for migration, to managing and optimizing the virtual environment. Other topics include security and disaster recovery, virtual desktop infrastructure, and advanced capabilities such as high availability, virtual machine snapshots and consolidated backups. This booklet is highly recommended for anyone interested in virtualizing their IT infrastructure or expanding their knowledge of VMware Infrastructure, including managers, technical staff, and those new to virtualization or VMware technology.

ESXi ssh and non-root users

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I’ve never seen this before. I wrote an article about root SSH access to a ESXi system. Today I noticed a blog entry that describes how you can disable root access for SSH and create users which can use “su” to become root! Cool stuff.

Check the article here! Here’s the procedure:

Log in to the console,
edit the inetd.conf:

vi /etc/inetd.conf

search for the following line (type: “/ssh”) (This is the line you uncommented to enable SSH in the first place.)

ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i

add -w to the end of this line: (type: “i” for insert mode):

ssh stream tcp nowait root /sbin/dropbearmulti dropbear ++min=0,swap,group=shell -i -w

Exit and save the file (press escape, type “: x”)
Create a /home directory

mkdir /home

Create a new unprivileged user:

useradd your_name

Change the password for this user:

passwd your_name

Reboot the server

reboot

Once rebooted,
Log in with SSH using your new unprivileged user
Use

su –

to change to the root user.
Tested on:
VMware ESXi 3.5.0_Update_2-103909