Jonathan Marrott's VM Scripting Blog

Enable VMotion on VMKernel port

froboy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:32:00 GMT

This will enable VMotion on a VMKernel port. I am writing this one because it changed between verisons of ESX. This command uses the very useful vimsh.

ESX 3.0.x:
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set portgroup2"
portgroup# - Determined by the order of portgroup creation. The system automatically makes one to begin with.

ESX 3.5:
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set vmk0"
vmk# - Determined by the order of the VMKernel port creation. The first one created is '0'.

DNS - Set Servers (Updated)

froboy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:22:00 GMT

Simple script to set DNS servers. This sets muplitle DNS servers while kickstart by default only sets one.

Set DNS servers using vimsh:
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/net/dns_set --dns-addresses=192.168.0.1,192.168.0.2 --dns-searchdomain=yourdomain.com"

Set DNS servers by manually creating resolv.conf:
cat > /etc/resolv.conf << EOF1

search yourdomain.com
nameserver 192.168.0.4
nameserver 192.168.0.6

EOF1

Set Service Console Memory (Updated)

froboy — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:09:00 GMT

The service console memory should be increased if you are running apps other than the default install. This includes management agents, backups, etc. Here is a simple command that I ran across to accomplish this. It requires a reboot to take effect. I incorporate this in my kickstart script. Don't forget to set your swap partition to be 2x the Service Console memory.

See Current Setting:
The setting shown is in bytes (MB * 1024 * 1024)
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/memoryinfo"
serviceConsoleReserved - Current setting
serviceConsoleReservedCfg - Setting after next reboot

Set to 800MB with vimsh:
vimsh -n -e "/hostsvc/memoryinfo 838860800"

Set by manual edit of files:
mv -f /etc/vmware/esx.conf /tmp/esx.conf.bak
sed -e 's/boot\/memSize = \"272\"/boot\/memSize = \"512\"/g' /tmp/esx.conf.bak >> /etc/vmware/esx.conf

mv -f /boot/grub/grub.conf /tmp/grub.conf.bak
sed -e 's/uppermem 277504/uppermem 523264/g' -e 's/mem=272M/mem=512M/g' /tmp/grub.conf.bak >> /boot/grub/grub.conf

If you feel like setting it to the maximum of 800 MB.

mv -f /etc/vmware/esx.conf /tmp/esx.conf.bak
sed -e 's/boot\/memSize = \"272\"/boot\/memSize = \"800\"/g' /tmp/esx.conf.bak >> /etc/vmware/esx.conf

mv -f /boot/grub/grub.conf /tmp/grub.conf.bak
sed -e 's/uppermem 277504/uppermem 818176/g' -e 's/mem=272M/mem=800M/g' /tmp/grub.conf.bak >> /boot/grub/grub.conf