by 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.
If anyone needs an invite, Bluebear gave me 50 again.. So just drop me an email, or leave a comment with your email and I’ll make sure you’ll be able to beta test this new version!
I don’t have any invites left… Sorry, you’ll guys need to help eachother out!
Three weeks ago i wrote an article on Bluebear’s Kodiak. I guess the main conclusion was “great potential, not enough working features at the moment”.
Well, Bluebear’s engineers have been busy lately and added some additional features as you probably read in my previous post. The key message in that post clearly is “Configuration of all standard VM resources is available, e.g. Memory Size, CPU allocation/shares, virtual disks, virtual NICs, and removable devices”. In other words, this is the beginning… If they keep adding features in this pace then they probably have an alternative to VirtualCenter within 6 to 12 months.
So most of you probably want to see some screenshots of what to expect from the new version, I created screenshots of the VM config screens and one of the console screen with a new menu:
I don’t have any invites left, sorry about that…
Kodiak 0.0.2 will be out in a few hours! I’m currently preparing my VM’s to check it out! And I will post a couple of screenshots tonight! For those that never heard of Kodiak(by Bluebear) before, read this blog entry, in short it’s a cross platform application with which you will be able to manage multiple hypervisors and management applications! The new features look promising!
Taken from the release notes:
New functionality:
We have added support for configuring existing virtual machines. All the expected functions are available. Configuration for a Virtual Machine is accessible via the configure button attached to a given VM object on the screen (Inspector Panels / Map)Configuration of all standard resources is available, e.g. Memory Size, CPU allocation/shares, virtual disks, virtual NICs, and removable devices.
Usage Notes
- Virtual disks are of the “preallocated/thick” type, support for all disk types will be available in the next release.
- ‘Host-device-backed’ virtual devices (e.g. floppy/cdrom/raw) are not supported, but will be available in a future release.
- ‘Remote-backed’ virtual devices (e.g. floppy/cdrom/ISO images on the client) are not supported, but will be available in a future release.
- VMs must be powered off for configuration. While it is possible to reconfigure a running VM, it may result in a host fault that will cause your changes to be discarded.
- If you make changes to a VM that you don’t want to commit, simply close the configure window and the changes will be discarded, (or hit the discard button).
- Support for VM Creation will be available in the next release.
Known Issues
- Untrusted certificates on windows may cause an authorization dialog to continually appear. The certificate must be added to the local store, please see this page for a work-around.
- License keycodes are case sensitive, please ensure you enter them exactly.
- VirtualCenter is not yet fully supported. While it might work, functionality is not guaranteed to give predictable results. We are currently adapting Kodiak’s back-end data model to more effectively handle VirtualCenter’s data structures.
Here you go, the new and improved version of RVTools. A while back Rob de Veij wrote an app called RVTools, what it did basically was check the VMware Tools version and status of each VM in a datacenter and report this in a nice GUI.
Rob probably had some spare time on his hands cause he added a lot of usefull tabs to his tool!
VM’s
The “VM’s” tab displays for each virtual machine the power state, Boot Time, number of cpu’s, cpu reservation, amount of memory, memory reservation, number of nics, configuration path, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.
Disk
The “Disk” tab displays for each virtual machine the virtual disks, total disk capacity, total free disk capacity, percentage free disk capacity, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.
Network
The “Network” tab displays for each virtual machine the virtual nics, powerstate, id, network name, connected value, Mac Address, IP Address, notes, ESX host name and operating system name.
CD
The “CD” tab displays for each virtual machine CD-Rom information like VM powerstate, label, connected value, startup value, summary, notes, ESX host name and operating system name. It’s possible to disconnect the CD-Rom from this screen.
Floppy
The “Floppy” tab displays for each virtual machine the floppy information like VM powerstate, label, connected value, startup value, summary, notes, ESX host name and operating system name. It’s possible to disconnect the Floppy from this screen.
VM Tools
Interacting with VirtualCenter 2.x or ESX 3.x, RVTools is able to list the current version of the VMware Tools installed inside each virtual machine. and update them to the latest version. Within the RVTools GUI, you can select and upgrade multiple hosts by clicking “Upgrade VMware Tools”. Within VirtualCenter, you’ll see an Upgrade VMware Tools task for each VM selected.
So visit Rob’s website and download this tool it’s definitely worth it, and provide Rob with feedback so he can make this tools even better.
I will start with the first few request: