Tag Archives: ESXi 5

Get the 3ware 9650SE working with ESXi 5.x

Posted by on May 23, 2013 No comments

At the office we recently built two white box, built it yourself servers (lego’s). I called them Lego’s due to the fact they are build your own types and not OEM. For each of these powerhouse systems we got 3ware 9650SE RAID controllers (3ware 9650SE-4LPML PCI Express Lanes: 4 SATA II Controller Card RAID Levels 0, 1, 5, 10, Single Disk, JBOD, KIT).

After getting ESXi 5.x installed to a USB Stick to boot from I encountered an issue where the 3ware controller was not recognized by the system. Well this could only be one thing. Drivers.

This is where installing of the controller driver fun begins.

I first navigated to the LSI website and their support page to download the drivers for these controllers. Where I was able to find drivers for VMware ESXi 5.0 update 1 driver for 9650SE/9690SA

After downloading the zip archive of the driver, I extracted and used WinSCP to upload the drivers to the /tmp directory of my ESXi 5.x hosts.

I then logged into the ESXi 5.x using SSH with Putty.

After changing my directory to /tmp I ran the following command:

esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/scsi-3w-9xxx-2.27.08.036-1OEM.500.0.0.472560.x86_64.vib

Soon after I got the following messages:

Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: LSI_bootbank_scsi-3w-9xxx_2.27.08.036-1OEM.500.0.0.472560
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:

After the install I followed the instruction to reboot and after the systems were up and running again I was able to see the controller and create my new datastores.

SSH into ESXi 5 host using public key authentication

Posted by on May 6, 2013 No comments

CLI

I do this with my other linux host over here @ jermsmit.com so why not with my ESXi 5 hosts. Using OpenSSH Public Key Authentication on ESXi 5 required a few things.

  1. You need to enable SSH
  2. You need an SSH client (I use putty)
  3. If you already have a authorized_keys file handy use it or make a new one
  4. And Filezilla or WinSCP handy will also help.

Now all you need to do is locate the following directory on your ESXi 5 host: /etc/ssh/keys-root and copy your authorized_keys file to this location. Unlike standard linux system where the file is located /.ssh/ ESXi has a different layout.

I used WinSCP to do my file copies to my system here, use whatever you feel is best for you. And that’s about it, you can now ssh into yourself w/o the need of entering your password.

Next I think I will attempt my hand at some scripting to automate some tasks; when I do, you will all be the first to know.

Feel free to leave jermsmit.com and head over to this link on Public-key cryptography. The more you know the better we all are

Enable SNMP on ESXi 5.

Posted by on December 13, 2012 No comments

So you want to enable SNMP on ESXi 5 and finding a lot on Google and Bing regarding using the vicfg- command run in the CLI, only to find out that the command doesn’t exist in your install of ESXi5? Well you have come to the right place. I enabled SNMP and this is how:

Prerequisite: Have SSH enabled on your server or local console access

Using Putty to connect to the ESXi 5 host, cd into the vmware folder /etc/vmware/. Listing the contents of the directory (ls) you will notice a file named snmp.xml

This is where you need to use the command vi to edit the file. By typing vi snmp.xml (vi /etc/vmware/snmp.xml) you will need to change the following areas:

Changing false to true and adding Public between the <communities></communities>. The end result should look something like this:

<config><snmpSettings><enable>true</enable><communities>public</communities><targets></targets></snmpSettings></config>

When completed you want to save this file and this is done by pressing Esc and typing :wq and hitting enter.

You will then need to restart the server or restart the services (services.sh restart) for this to start working.

- Enjoy

Enable SNMP on ESXi5

Posted by on August 29, 2012 No comments

Looking to enable SNMP to do some external monitoring on my ESXi Boxen. I took a quick dive into the CLI and found a way to do this.

Using our friend putty, I connected to my ESXi host via SSH. I then changed directory to the /etc/vmware/ folder: ~ # cd /etc/vmware/

ESXi 5 doesn’t have nano (best CLI editor on earth) so I use the original best ‘vi’. Simply type vi snamp.xml ( /etc/vmware # vi snmp.xml ) you will see the following:

<config><snmpSettings><enable>false</enable><communities></communities><targets></targets></snmpSettings></config>

At this point things should be obvious. Press ‘i’ to insert data and change all that is false to ‘true‘ and add Public between the <communities></communities> ( end result <communities>Public</communities> ) and you just need to press Esc followed by :wq to save and quit.

Lastly you need to restart some management services. This is done by typing: /etc/vmware # services.sh restart now you should be able to monitor your ESXi 5 boxen.

Good Luck to you…

- Jermal

Goodbye Configuration Issues Warning

Posted by on April 10, 2012 No comments

So you are running VMware ESXi 5 and enabled remote and local shell access.
What you have found by doing this is a nice warning screen like the screenshot below waiting for you each and every time you are logged in.

Getting rid of this is simple.

Go to your host, click the configuration tab, click “advanced settings”, go to UserVars” and scroll all the way down to “UserVars.SuppressShellWarning” change the value from 0 to 1.

 

Command-line + ESXi Fun

Posted by on April 10, 2012 No comments

I had some time to tinker after an upgrade of my system
Wanted to learn something new, and play I found some useful commands

The first useful command i could run is to list all registered guest on my host.

vim-cmd /vmsvc/getallvms

Get power state of a VM

vim-cmd /vmsvc/power.getstate <Vimid>

From the image above you see the power state of the vm named pms

… and here are a few more:

Unregister a VM
vim-cmd /vmsvc/unregister <Vmid>

Register a VM
vim-cmd /solo/register /path/to/file.vmx

Power off a VM
vim-cmd /vmsvc/power.off <Vmid>

Power on a VM
vim-cmd /vmsvc/power.on <Vmid>

 

Upgrade Install of ESXi 5.0 Update 1

Posted by on April 10, 2012 No comments

I wrote some steps on this in a previous post.  I am back again to take you for my ride in upgrading to update 1 for ESXi 5.

Direct download update link: https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/OFFLINE/release-328-20120312-212851/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update01.zip

Once you have the upgrade zip, you will wan to SCP this over to the ESXi 5 server.
I use my datastore as it has the most space aviable.
Issue the following command:
esxcli software vib update –depot=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/…  *path to zip file*
This may take a few minues to return some results.
When it does you will know and it may look something like this:
Reboot you server (just type reboot)
That’s it, you are done.

Updating ESXi 5 – How To

Posted by on February 21, 2012 No comments

So you are running ESXi5 standalone in my house or your office.  You have a need up patch this baby for the latest in driver support for guest and perhaps for Runing Windows 8 on vSphere 5

Here are a few things you might want to know and do to make this happen

 

Make sure you have ESXi Shell access on the ESXi 5 host.

Download the patch bundle directly from VMware Support. This download will be .zip file.  Do not extract it.

Upload the .zip file to a datastore that is accessible on the ESXi host you wish to update

Note:  In the examples below… Adjust accordingly.

Obtain local console access or ssh in.

Place your hose in maintenance mode and shutdown / pause all of your guest systems

To update the ESXi 5 host with the VIBs included in the depot, issue the following command:  esxcli software vib update --depot=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/somepath/ESXi500-201109001.zip

When the update is complete reboot the ESXi 5 host

I could have also included other steps like verification of what is installed before and after, but why?  You should know how to do that and well there is always Google.

As always, thank you for reading this and I hope this helps.

Useful Link:  http://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/download.portal

 

Windows 8 on vSphere 5

Posted by on February 21, 2012 No comments

So I have had this desire to run Windows 8 in VMware  vSphere 5 for a long time now.   Knowing I could run it in Workstation 8; I wanted to also run this on my ESXi 5 host, but could not… So I waiting waited for an update.  I wasn’t going to hack my way to what I wanted.  I did it the right , stable and supported way.

And well, here it is.

I/O Errors = Failing HD = ESX Server Issues

Posted by on December 25, 2011 No comments

Hello All,

Today I ran into some issues.  Merry Christmas!

My Laptop/ESXi 5 Server started giving me issues with my guest systems.  After trying to work out the issues with web-server I noticed that other machine were also having the same issues.  Oh no!  My hard drive is on its way out.  I quickly jumped into action shutting down my guest and moving them to a backup location.  I was able to swap the drive and move them back and get online…  I am glad to say there has been no data loss, but downtime to jermsmit.com and my other system used internally here at home.    I guess I will be building my mini SAN to host my systems.  I don’t want to deal with this again anytime soon.

- jermal