Instead of using the vSphere Client to mount VMware Tools ISO files, you can also use a repository provided by VMware to download the package. In my opinion, this is much more comfortable. You copy the installation package to your fileserver and install VMware Tools without having to use the vSphere Client.
For each powered-on virtual machine, a .vswp file is placed in the virtual machines directory on the datastore. This file is required by VMkernel to swap virtual machine memory to the disk in case of excessive overprovisioning. The swap file size can be calculated with the formula (.vswp File = Allocated Memory - Memory Reservation). As per default, the reservation is set to 0, so the .vswp file size is equal to the amount of virtual memory.
The new coredump file feature in vSphere ESXi 5.5 creates a file to extend the coredump partition. This usually happens when you upgrade from a previous version to ESXi 5.5, or you install ESXi to a USB drive or SD card. This coredump file is created on a random VMFS datastoore by using a smart selection algorithm. This random placement causes different kind of problems, for example when you want to delete a datastore. Another problem might occur in an EMC VPLEX deployment where you want to failover VMs to the secondary site in a PDL situation (VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL=1 / Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL=0). Datastores that had a coredump file configured can't get mounted back when the volume leaves the PDL state after a site failure has been fixed.
To workaround this issue you might want to permanently disable the coredump file. You can't just disable it, as it gets created automatically after a reboot.
Shell access to an ESXi host provides essential maintenance, configuration and troubleshooting commands. It can be used in cases that cannot be handled through the standard vSphere Client. In my case, I tend to have SSH activated by default. From a security perspective it is recommended to keep SSH disabled, but with the management network behind a firewall I feel secure.
If you are using SSH daily I am sure that you are familiar with the public key authentication. PKI is an authentication method that relies on a generated public/private keypair and enables the login without entering a password. This method is faster and more secure than entering a password manually because every administrator can have his own public/private keypair.
This post explains the methods how to enable and automate public key authentication with ESXi Hosts.
PowerCLI, a set of PowerShell extensions for vSphere, is a great tool for automating VMware configuration and management tasks. It allows you to change a lot of ESXi host and vCenter settings. One powerful cmdlet is Get-EsxCli which allows you to run ESXCLI tasks from your PowerCLI console. ESXCLI is the main configuration command on an ESXi host. This post explains how to use the Get-EsxCli cmdlet.
One of the most commonly problem in VMware migration projects is that the storage is undersized. When you want to size a new platform it is important to know the IO requirements. Unfortunately storage is often only sized for capacity, which is a great mistake. VMware offers tools you need to analyze and record workloads and replay them in the new platform. This post explains how to capture workloads with vscsiStats trace mode and replay them with I/O Analyzer.
During VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN) installation on old reused hardware I noticed that there was no eligible data disk available. I can't claim the disks for vSAN or create a disk group. There was no further information on why the data disks are not eligible. Thanks to the vSAN troubleshooting commands provided by RVC (Ruby vSphere Console) I could find and solve the reason quite quick.
Read More »Identify and solve ineligible disk problems in Virtual SAN
When testing various features in my Homelab I always try to keep things easy. One approach is to keep the number of virtual machines as low as possible. The vCenter Server Appliance can reduce the number of required VMs by running additional mandatory services. In this post I am going to describe how to use the VCSA as DNS Server.
Read More »Howto use vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) as DNS Server
The vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) becomes an alternative to the Windows-based vCenter more and more. There are several reasons to install additional software in the VCSA. When you want to implement additional services like DNS for your lab, or you want to monitor the Appliance via Nagios or SNMP, you need additional packages. The Appliance is based on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, so you can use YaST to install packages. In this post I am going to show how to configure the vCenter Server Appliance to enable the installation of additional packages.
Read More »Howto Install Additional Software in VCSA 5
Running an ESXi as Virtual Machine inside VMware Worksation or on another ESXi gets more and more useful for testing purposes. That installation, also called "Nested ESXi", is not officially supported by VMware but some VMware developers are willing to help in the VMware communities Nested Virtualization forum. Up to this point is was not possible to install VMware Tools on a nested ESXi, making the management a little bit cumbersome. During VMworld 2013 in Barcelona the news about an upcoming Fling called "VMware Tools for Nested ESXi" came out. The Fling contains a small vib package that can be installed on a virtual ESXi Host.
