How do I set an advanced setting which is not listed through esxcli on the commandline?

Someone asked this question recently, and it is a valid point, it seems that some namespaces are not available through esxcli when it comes to the advanced settings. Now you can of course set the advanced settings via the UI, but in some cases you may need/want to script them. This is possible when you use one of the older CLIs available on your host, namely “vim-cmd”. Now, vim-cmd was never really intended to be used by administrators so I would urge caution. However, in some cases it is very difficult to get around it, and for instance, setting “Config.HostAgent.ssl.keyStore.allowSelfSigned” to “true” is one of those. You can’t, to my knowledge, currently do this via esxcli. You can, however, simply do this via vim-cmd. The syntax is as follows:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update name.option type value

In my particular case, that means the command would look like this:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update Config.HostAgent.ssl.keyStore.allowSelfSigned bool "true"

Where “update” is used to update the value for the advanced setting. If you just want to list all settings first you could use the following command:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/settings

I hope that helps someone out there!

When I joined Tech Marketing in February of this year my first task literally was the ESX System Analyzer. I was part of the team who developed the specs and test the app, but the main driving force behind the tool was my colleague Kyle Gleed (@VMwareESXi).

The tool / fling was designed specifically to help people migrate from ESX to ESXi and to smoothen the transition especially in those environments where the Service Console was customized over the years. If you haven’t migrated yet, and want to make the jump to a lean and mean hypervisor I suggest to take a look at this fling and analyze your environment to help with planning the transition!

Source: VMware Labs

The ESX System Analyzer is a tool designed to help administrators plan a migration from ESX to ESXi. It analyzes the ESX hosts in your environment and, for each host, collects information on factors that pertain to the migration process:

Hardware compatibility with ESXi

VMs registered on the ESX host, as well as VMs located on the host’s local disk

Modifications to the Service Console

RPMs which have been added or removed

Files which have been added

Users and cronjobs which have been added

This tool also provides summary information for the whole existing environment

Version of VMware Tools and Virtual Hardware for all VMs

Version of Filesystem for all datastores

By having this information, administrators can determine what tasks need to be done prior to the migration. Examples include:

Relocate VMs from local datastores to shared datastores

Make note of what agent software has been added to the host and obtain the equivalent agentless version

Replace cronjobs with equivalent remote scripts written with PowerCLI or vCLI