{"id":266,"date":"2010-09-28T10:34:24","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benincosa.com\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2014-11-19T11:25:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T17:25:59","slug":"esxi-4-1-command-line-awesomeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"ESXi 4.1 command line awesomeness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spend a lot of time on the command line of ESXi 4.1 due to my development duties at Sumavi.\u00a0 There are quite a few things you can do on the command line that make it pretty cool to work with.\u00a0 As such, in many instances I don’t install vSphere Server nor vSphere client.\u00a0 I just log in and do my duties.\u00a0 Notice that everything I post below you can do without vSphere Server nor vSphere client.\u00a0 Let me know if these are useful to you!<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Get a list of all VMs on the Hypervisor:<\/h2>\n
# vim-cmd vmsvc\/getallvms\r\nVmid\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Name\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 File\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Guest OS\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Version\u00a0\u00a0 Annotation\r\n16\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vcenter1\u00a0\u00a0 [Storage1-ESX01] Vcenter1\/Vcenter1.vmx\u00a0\u00a0 windows7Server64Guest\u00a0\u00a0 vmx-07\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\r\n32\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vcenter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Storage1-ESX01] Vcenter\/Vcenter.vmx\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 winLonghorn64Guest\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 vmx-07<\/pre>\n
Notice the vmid.\u00a0 That vmid is used in many commands that follow when you want to perform actions on individual VMs.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Check which Physical NICS are up<\/h2>\n
There are a few commands in the esxcfg-* family that are used to configure the hypervisor network.\u00a0 For example, if you want to see which NICs have network connections, you can use:<\/p>\n
~ # esxcfg-nics -l\r\nName\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 PCI\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Driver\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Link Speed\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Duplex MAC Address\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MTU\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Description\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\r\nvmnic0\u00a0 0000:02:00.00 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Up\u00a0\u00a0 1000Mbps\u00a0 Full\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:30 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic1\u00a0 0000:02:00.01 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:34 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic2\u00a0 0000:02:00.02 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Up\u00a0\u00a0 9000Mbps\u00a0 Full\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:31 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic3\u00a0 0000:02:00.03 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:35 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic4\u00a0 0000:02:00.04 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:32 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic5\u00a0 0000:02:00.05 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:36 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic6\u00a0 0000:02:00.06 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:33 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet\r\nvmnic7\u00a0 0000:02:00.07 bnx2x\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down 0Mbps\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Half\u00a0\u00a0 d8:d3:85:da:f8:37 1500\u00a0\u00a0 Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 57711E\/NC532i 10Gigabit Ethernet<\/pre>\n
Notice that only vmnic0 and vmnic2 are up.\u00a0 This mostly has to do with the way I configured my blades with the Flex-10 Virtual connect.\u00a0 (A feature of HP Blades).\u00a0 If I am now to configure the network, its best that I do only vmnic0 and vmnic2 since they’re the only ones that have a link.\u00a0 For you Linux masters out there, there’s no ‘service network status’ nor restart that you can do.\u00a0 It just always seems to be on.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 Creating a quick network connection<\/h2>\n
Since we know vmnic2 is up, let’s make a connection to it so that we can SSH into it, or at least ping out of it:<\/p>\n
# add vSwitch1\r\nesxcfg-vswitch-a vSwitch1\r\n# link vSwitch1 to vmnic2 as an uplink\r\nesxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic2 vSwitch1\r\n# add the DATA portgroup to this switch\r\nesxcfg-vswitch -A DATA vSwtich1\r\n# uplink DATA to vmnic2\r\nesxcfg-vswitch -M vmnic2 -p DATA vSwitch1\r\n# put DATA on VLAN70\r\nesxcfg-vswitch -v 70 -p DATA vSwitch1<\/pre>\n
4.\u00a0 Create a new vmdk and add to existing VM<\/h2>\n
Here we have a VM (vmid 32 ) that we want to add a 60GB vmdk to.\u00a0 We run:<\/p>\n
# create the 60GB hard drive in foo's directory\r\nvmkfstools -c 60G \/vmfs\/volumes\/datastore1\/foo\/newfoo.vmdk\r\n# add the disk to foo's inventory. (The 0 and 1 is the scsi ID numbers\r\nvim-cmd vmsvc\/device.diskaddexisting 32 \/vmfs\/volumes\/datastore1\/foo\/newfoo.vmdk 0 1<\/pre>\n
5.\u00a0 Check\/Toggle VM power stat<\/h2>\n
You can turn nodes off and on and check power status.\u00a0 You need to know the vmid as shown in #1 above:<\/p>\n
# get power stat\r\nvim-cmd vmsvc\/power.getstat 16\r\n# turn off\r\nvim-cmd vmsvc\/power.off 16\r\n# turn on\r\nvim-cmd vmsvc\/power.on 16<\/pre>\n
6.\u00a0 Add the Physical USB Device to a VM<\/h2>\n
If you want to add the USB device that’s plugged into the physical machine to the virtual machine with vmid 16 you can do this:<\/p>\n
#make sure usbarbitrator is started\r\n\/etc\/init.d\/usbarbitrator start\r\n# add to vmid 16\r\nvim-cmd vmsvc\/device.connusbdev 16 \"path:1\/0\/0 autoclean:1\"<\/pre>\n
Note that the VM should be powered off when you do this for best results.<\/p>\n
7.\u00a0 Register a VM to the Hypervisor<\/h2>\n
If you copied all the vmx and vmdk files to an ESXi 4.1 hypervisor you can simply register them with that hypervisor and turn them on:<\/p>\n
vim-cmd solo\/registervm \/vmfs\/volumes\/datastore1\/foo\/foo.vmx\r\n# then turn it on using the stuff in tip 5!<\/pre>\n
8.\u00a0 Enable SSH from the command line<\/h2>\n
This is an easy one:<\/p>\n
\/etc\/init.d\/TSM-SSH start<\/pre>\n
9.\u00a0 Add the license to the ESXi 4.1 hypervisor<\/h2>\n
This came\u00a0 up in a few places and I already documented it in this blog, but figured I’d do it again.\u00a0 If you have a license and you want to add it to your hypervisor because its about to expire in 1 day you can log in and just run:<\/p>\n
vim-cmd vimsvc\/license --set XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXX11<\/pre>\n
10.\u00a0 Writing output to main console<\/h2>\n
In your kickstart files, you may want to redirect output to the main console that people watch as an installation takes place.\u00a0 This is \/dev\/tty2.\u00a0 Therefore, if in your kickstart file you are cloning a vmdk using vmdkfstools, you can let people see how the progress is going by just piping it out.\u00a0 Here’s an example:<\/p>\n
vmkfstools -i $DATASTOREREMOTE\/stage\/stage.vmdk -d zeroedthick $DATASTOREOTHER\/new\/new.vmdk | tee -a \/dev\/tty2<\/pre>\n
This is cool in that you’ll see the percentage points pop up as you go along.\u00a0 The thing to remember is that you’ll have to send some carriage return escape sequences a la echo -e “\\r\\n” to line things up better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I spend a lot of time on the command line of ESXi 4.1 due to my development duties at Sumavi.\u00a0 There are quite a few things you can do on the command line that make it pretty cool to work with.\u00a0 As such, in many instances I don’t install vSphere Server nor vSphere client.\u00a0 I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[74,39],"tags":[97,98,87,13,981],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2809,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/2809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}