Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Scripting

Compare specific ESX configuration items

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Hugo posted a great script. It will compare configuration items between a given set of hosts. This can especially come in handy when you’ve got a huge amount of datastores, portgroups or a huge amount of ESX hosts for that matter. Hugo’s post contains a set of excellent examples. Just check his post for more details and the script, heres what the outcome would look like for now:

InputObject                         SideIndicator
———–                                ————-
esxServer1_Local               <=
esxServer2_Local               =>
DATASTORE_TEST1            =>

Update: Hugo just posted a follow up to his original blog. This new script creates a CSV file, which can be imported in to Excel for example and the result will look like this:

New version of the Powershell Healthcheck script released

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Ivo Beerens just published a new version of his Powershell Healthcheck script. The script will report the following in a nicely formatted html file:

  • VMware ESX server Hardware and version
  • VMware vCenter version
  • Cluster information
  • VMware statistics
  • Active Snapshots
  • CDROMs connected to VMs
  • Floppy drives connected to VMs
  • Datastores Information such as free space
  • RDM information
  • VM information such as VMware tools version,  processor and memory limits
  • VM’s and there datastore
  • VMware timesync enabled
  • Percentage disk space used inside the VM
  • VC error logs last 5 days

Go to Ivo’s website for the download of the script and the source blog post. I use this script personally just to keep track of changes and get a quick overview of the current situation of an environment.

Old School: Label your Hardware

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So you were used to labelling your hardware with the name of the System running on it. But when running everything virtual you can label your ESX hosts but never know which VM resides at which Server without checking your console and/or vCenter.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you would have a magic Label that updated itself every once in a while. This way one would be able so see within just a glance which VM runs on which host.As you know there’s no such thing as a magic “label”, or maybe there is…

Yesterday I received an email from Nick Weaver(@lynxbat). He emailed me about a very very very cool script he wrote. No this script isn’t going to update your printed label off course. This script displays the VM’s running on your host on the front panel LCD. Most servers these days have frontpanel LCD’s and they can be updated with a couple simple ipmi commands.

Nick wrote an extensive article on how-to create a self updating magic label 🙂 in short:

  1. Install Dell OpenManage and run it on the ESX host (needed for ipmi drivers)
  2. Install ipmitool 1.8.10(SCP over, ./configure, make, make install….)
  3. Run lcd_update.sh script

Now walk over to your Dell server and check the result in the display, isn’t that amazing. Probably one of the most inventive scripts I’ve seen the last few months, it’s simple and gets the job done. Great job Nick, and I’m really curious what you will come up with next.

If I can find a Dell Machine this week I will definitely test it and post a screenshot!
I just received a link to a youtube video that shows it’s actually working!

vimsh, what can I do with it?

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Vimsh(and vmware-vim-cm) is probably one of the worst documented commands out there. At the same time it’s one of the most powerful commands(I know it’s a shell…) out there. You name it and “vimsh” does it. Most of you ran into the “enabling vmotion” from the Service Console problem when first starting out with scripted install. Vimsh solves this:

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd “hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set vmk0″

As you can see “vimsh” is very powerful, but most of the other command-line stuff can be handled with the “esxcfg-*” commands. Well almost, for instance we talked about enabling autostart in my previous post. According to the KB article you must edit the file “/etc/vmware/hostd/vmAutoStart.xml”. Editing this file can be dangerous, I guess this goes for most ESX configuration files. During the Dutch VMUG I had a short chat with Wil van Antwerpen, Wil told me he was busy documenting the “vimsh” “command” in a wiki. After I published the enabling autostart blog Wil emailed me that this could and should be done with “vimsh”. I fully agree with Wil:

vmware-vim-cmd /hostsvc/autostartmanager/enable_autostart true

This enables the autostart functionality without manually editing the files. But I guess you would like to check if it’s enabled or disabled:

vmware-vim-cmd /hostsvc/autostartmanager/get_defaults

The big question remains, how do I know what I can and can’t do with “vimsh”. Well that’s the main reason for this post, as I said Wil has been very busy documenting “vimsh”. Wil created VI-Toolkit.com. VI-Toolkit.com contains a section on vimsh. Besides the the info that the vimsh command provices Wil added sample code. The sample code can be very usefull, but the search function is even more useful. Searching the vimsh documentation provides you with a fast way to check if a specific configuration action can be scripted with “vimsh”. For instance a search on “vimsh role” returns the following:

* Vimsvc/auth/role add
==== vimsh vimsvc/auth/role_add ==== Usage: role_add roleName [priv0] [priv1] [priv2] [priv3] [priv4]
171 B (24 words) – 14:32, 26 December 2008
* Vimsvc/auth/role permissions
==== vimsh vimsvc/auth/role_permissions ==== Usage: role_permissions roleName
1 KB (118 words) – 22:26, 28 December 2008
* Vimsvc/auth/role remove
==== vimsh vimsvc/auth/role_remove ==== Usage: role_remove roleName [failIfUsed]
123 B (16 words) – 14:34, 26 December 2008
* Vimsvc/auth/roles
==== vimsh vimsvc/auth/roles ==== Usage: roles
7 KB (550 words) – 21:50, 28 December 2008

I guess I can sum up this blog post in just one line:”Bookmark VI-Toolkit.com and add it to your RSS reader!”. Be sure to not miss out on anything regarding “vimsh” or any of the VI Toolkits that Wil be be describing and aggregating source code for. The “vimsh” section alone is already 345 pages large and it will continue to grow even more. Keep up the great work Wil and it was nice meeting you in person!

UPDATE: ESX Deployment Appliance 0.85

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Like I told you guys in my post on the ESX Deployment Appliance, Herco keeps developing / tweaking the ESX Deployment Appliance. Two days ago 0.85 was released. This new version contains:

  • ESXi support (it works, just not unattended yet. hints appreciated!)
  • New scriptbuilder interface. Makes building scripts even easier and more accessible
  • Scriptpart editor. rudimentary but working nicely 😉

For version 0.9 Herco has got the following features / additions on his todo list:

  • Boot from SAN support
  • Editing the order of the scriptparts
  • Hopefully, unattended ESXi installations

So keep checking the VMware virtual appliances section or Herco’s blog for information on new releases. Start checking it out and keep giving feedback so Herco can keep improving his excellent appliance!