VMware Communities : All Content - vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)

ghettoVCBg2 - Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!)

lamw — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:36:49 GMT

Description:

This tool is the follow up release of the ghettoVCB backup utility which allows users to perform backups of virtual machines residing on ESX(i) 3.5+/4.0+ servers using methodology similar to VMware's VCB tool. By incorporating highly constructive feedback from the VMware community and utilizing the existing VI API, ghettoVCB’s framework was completely rewritten to be harder, better, faster, stronger.

The primary motivation for ghettoVCBg2 was to provide ESXi users with access to the utility without relying on unlocking and utilizing the unsupported console. To satisfy this requirement, the rebuilt framework takes advantage of the VI Perl Toolkit/vSphere SDK for Perl which is present in the VIMA/vMA virtual appliance provided by VMware. As a result, ghettoVCBg2 provides a more proper backup solution that administrators can utilize in their virtual infrastructure.

As it stands, it is a requirement that ghettoVCB be invoked directly on each of the ESX servers hosting virtual machines in need of a backup. By taking advantage of VIMA/vMA, the entire backup process becomes centralized in turn eliminating the abovementioned requirement. Additionally, by leveraging the vi-fastpass library, unattended authentication between VIMA/vMA and target ESX servers is made possible. This alleviates the need to continually pass in credentials for each ESX server.

By centralizing the backup process, individual virtual machine backup lists pertaining to their respective ESX(i) servers are no longer required. ghettoVCBg2 has the ability to identify virtual machines and their respective hosts, potentially eliminating any past confusion associated with maintaining multiple lists.

In its current configuration, the script will allow up to 3 unique backups of the Virtual Machine before it will overwrite the previous backups; this however, can be modified to fit procedures if need be. Please be diligent in running the script in a test or staging environment before using it on production live Virtual Machines; this script functions well within our environment but there is a chance that it may not fit well into other environments.

Features

Support for logging (normal & verbose)
Single VM backup list across multiple ESX/ESXi host(s)
Credential-less backups (so long as host(s) are being managed by VIMA/vMA)
Online back up of VM(s)
Only valid VMDKs presented to the VM will be backed up
Support for multiple VMDK backup per VM
Preserve original powerState of VM(s)
Ability to shutdown guestOS, initiate backup process and power on VM afterwards with the option of hardpower timeout
Ensure that snapshot removal process completes prior to continuing the backup process
VM(s) that initially contain snapshots and Physical RDMs (raw device mapppings) will not be backed up
Support for VM(s) with Virtual RDMs
Ability to specify the number of backup rotations per VM
Output back up VMDKs in ZEROEDTHICK (default behavior), EAGERZEROEDTHICK, 2GB SPARSE or THIN format
Ouput backup VMDKs using either BUSLOGIC or LSILOGIC adapter type
Fully support VMDKs stored across multiple datastores
VM snapshot memory and quiesce options
Individual VM backup policy (supported on ESX(i) 3.5u2+ & ESX(i) 4.x+)
Email logs (Experimental Support) NEW!
Ability to include/exclude specific VMDK(s) per VM (requires individual VM backup policy setup) NEW!
Independent disk aware (will ignore VMDK) NEW!
Additional debugging information including dry run execution NEW!

Requirements:

VMs running on ESX(i) 3.5u2+ or ESX(i) 4.x+
VMware VIMA 1.0 or VMware vMA 4.0

ESX/ESXi Version Support Table

Version	Support	Alternative
ESX 3.5u2	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB
ESX 3.5u3	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB
ESX 3.5u4	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB
ESXi 3.5u2	Works for free	ghettoVCB
ESXi 3.5u3	Works for free	ghettoVCB
ESXi 3.5u4	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB
ESX 4.0	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB
ESXi 4.0	Requires at least Foundation/Essentials license	ghettoVCB

Setup:

1) Download ghettoVCBg2.pl to your VIMA 1.0/vMA 4.0 system

2) Change the permissions on the script to ensure it can be executed:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ chmod +x ghettoVCBg2.pl

Addings ESX/ESXi host(s) to VIMA/vMA

Prior to starting, ensure that the VMware VIMA/vMA host is managing the appropriate ESX(i) 3.5u2/4.x+ host(s)

1. Add ESXi hosts to VIMA/vMA managment using vifp

A password prompt for the vi-admin account and root password to the pertinent ESXi host(s) will be presented.

[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries ~]$ sudo vifp addserver olga.resnet.ucsb.edu
root@olga.resnet.ucsb.edu's password:
[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries ~]$

2. Verify that the appropriate hosts are being managed by VIMA/vMA

[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries ~]$ sudo vifp listservers
olga.resnet.ucsb.edu
himalaya.primp-industries.com

Configurations

The following variables (similar to that of ghettoVCB) need to be defined within the script prior to execution.

Defining the datastore in which the backups are stored:

my $VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = "dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups";

Defining the name of folder that will contain backups (if folder does not exist, it will automatically be created):

my $VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = "WILLIAM_BACKUPS";

Defining the backup rotation per VM:

my $VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = "3";

Defining the backup disk format (zeroedthick, eagerzeroedthick, thin, and 2gbsparse are available):

my $DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = "zeroedthick";

Defining the adapter type for backed up VMDK (buslogic, and lsilogic are available):

my $ADAPTER_FORMAT = "buslogic";

Defining whether the VM is powered down or not prior to backup (1 = enable, 0 = disable):

Note: VM(s) that are powered off will not require snapshoting

my $POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = "0";

Defining whether virtual machine memory is snapped and if quiescing is enabled (1 = enable, 0 = disable):

Note: By default both are disabled

my $VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = "0";
my $VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = "0";

Defining the detail of logging (verbose or normal):

my $LOG_LEVEL = "normal";

*Defining VMDK(s) to backup from a particular VM either a list of vmdks or "all"

VM_VMDK_FILES="myvmdk.vmdk"

Experimental Support Configs:

Note: Port 25 by default

my $SEND_MAIL = "no";
my $EMAIL_HOST = "emailserver";
my $EMAIL_DOMAIN = "localhost.localdomain";
my $EMAIL_TO = 'William Lam <william@primp-industries.com.com>';
my $EMAIL_FROM = 'ghettoVCBg2 <ghettoVCBg2@primp-industries.com.com>';

Ensure that you do not edit past this section:

########################## DO NOT MODIFY PAST THIS LINE ##########################

Usage:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ghettoVCBg2.pl
Required command option 'vmlist' not specified.

Synopsis: ./ghettoVCBg2.pl OPTIONS


Command-specific options:
   --config_dir
      Name of directory containing VM(s) backup configurations
   --dryrun (default '0')
      Set to 1 to enable dryrun mode (default 0)
   --output (default '/tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log')
      Full path to output log (default /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log)
   --vmlist (required)
      A file containing a list of virtual machine(s) to be backed up on host

Common VI options:
   --config (variable VI_CONFIG)
      Location of the VI Perl configuration file
   --credstore (variable VI_CREDSTORE)
      Name of the credential store file defaults to <HOME>/.vmware/credstore/vicredentials.xml on Linux and <APPDATA>/VMware/credstore/vicredentials.xml on Windows
   --encoding (variable VI_ENCODING, default 'utf8')
      Encoding: utf8, cp936 (Simplified Chinese), iso-8859-1 (German), shiftjis (Japanese)
   --help
      Display usage information for the script
   --passthroughauth (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTH)
      Attempt to use pass-through authentication
   --passthroughauthpackage (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTHPACKAGE, default 'Negotiate')
      Pass-through authentication negotiation package
   --password (variable VI_PASSWORD)
      Password
   --portnumber (variable VI_PORTNUMBER)
      Port used to connect to server
   --protocol (variable VI_PROTOCOL, default 'https')
      Protocol used to connect to server
   --savesessionfile (variable VI_SAVESESSIONFILE)
      File to save session ID/cookie to utilize
   --server (variable VI_SERVER, default 'localhost')
      VI server to connect to. Required if url is not present
   --servicepath (variable VI_SERVICEPATH, default '/sdk/webService')
      Service path used to connect to server
   --sessionfile (variable VI_SESSIONFILE)
      File containing session ID/cookie to utilize
   --url (variable VI_URL)
      VI SDK URL to connect to. Required if server is not present
   --username (variable VI_USERNAME)
      Username
   --verbose (variable VI_VERBOSE)
      Display additional debugging information
   --version
      Display version information for the script

Note: There are some additional command line arguments that can be provided upon runtime: --debug, --output and --vmlist. --vmlist is the only parameter required. The rest will have defaults if not explicitly defined.

--dryrun

Dry run information will be written to the log and no backup will take place

--output

Name of the output log, if the same log is used, it will automatically append (ensure you provide full path e.g. /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log)

--config_dir

This directory will contain the individual VM backup policy files. If a virtual machine has an associated policy file, the global configuration will be ignored for that backup instance.

The input to this script is a file that contains the display name of the virtual machine(s) separated by a newline. When creating this file on a non-Linux/UNIX system, you may introduce a ^M character which may cause the script to misbehave. To ensure that this does not occur, please create the file on the ESX/ESXi host.

Provided is a sample of what the file should contain:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ cat virtual_machine_backup_list
VIMA
vMA-2

Sample Execution

Backup VMs located in a list
Backup VMs based on individual VM backup policies
Debug Mode
Dry run Mode

Backup VMs located in a list

Log verbosity: info (default)
Log output: /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log (default)

DISK_FORMAT	2gbsparse
ADAPTER_FORMAT	buslogic
LOG_LEVEL	info
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY	0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE	0
VMS_TO_BACKUP	(VIMA,vMA-2)

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ghettoVCBg2.pl --vmlist virtual_machine_backup_list

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ cat /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG START ==============================
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = WILLIAM_BACKUPS
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = 2gbsparse
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = buslogic
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = NO
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = NO
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = NO
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2009-11-13
        11-13-2009 23:34:53 --  info: CONFIG - VM_VMDK_FILES = all

        11-13-2009 23:34:58 --  info: Initiate backup for VIMA found on himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-13-2009 23:35:18 --  info: VIMA has 1 VMDK(s)
        11-13-2009 23:37:37 --  info: Backup completed for VIMA!

        11-13-2009 23:37:37 --  info: Initiate backup for vMA-2 found on himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-13-2009 23:37:47 --  info: vMA-2 has 1 VMDK(s)
        11-13-2009 23:40:07 --  info: Backup completed for vMA-2!

        11-13-2009 23:40:10 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG END ==============================

Backup VMs based on individual VM backup policies and log output to /tmp/ghettoVCB.log

Log verbosity: info (default)
Log output: /tmp/ghettoVCB.log (default)

VIMA

VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE	dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY	WILLIAM_BACKUPS
DISK_FORMAT	zeroedthick
ADAPTER_FORMAT	buslogic
LOG_LEVEL	debug
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY	1
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE	1
VM_VMDK_FILES	VIMA_1.vmdk

vMA-2

VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE	dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY	vGHETTO_BACKUPS
DISK_FORMAT	thin
ADAPTER_FORMAT	lsilogic
LOG_LEVEL	info
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY	0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE	0
VM_VMDK_FILES	all

1. Create folder to hold individual VM backup policies (can be named anything):

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ mkdir backup_config

2. Create individual VM backup policies for each VM and ensure each file is named exactly as the display name of the VM being backed up (use provided template to create duplicates):

[vi-admin@scofield backup_config]$ cp ghettoVCBg2-vm_backup_configuration_template VIMA
[vi-admin@scofield backup_config]$ cp ghettoVCBg2-vm_backup_configuration_template vMA-2

4. Using a preferred editor (nano or vi), edit each VM backup policy file

Listing of VM backup policy within backup configuration directory

[vi-admin@scofield backup_config]$ ls
ghettoVCBg2-vm_backup_configuration_template  VIMA  vMA-2

5. Pass in the value, backup_config, into the --config_dir parameter

(e.g.)
--config_dir backupConfigs

Example of two distinct VM backup policies will be applied to VIMA and vMA-2

Backup policy for "VIMA" (backup only 1 specific VMDKs)

[vi-admin@scofield backup_config]$ cat VIMA
VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = "dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups"
VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = "WILLIAM_BACKUPS"
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = "3"
DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = "zeroedthick"
ADAPTER_FORMAT = "buslogic"
POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = "0"
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = "1"
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = "1"
LOG_LEVEL = "debug"
VM_VMDK_FILES = "VIMA_1.vmdk"

Backup policy for VM "vMA-2" (backup all VMDKs found)

VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = "dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups"
VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = "vGHETTO_BACKUPS"
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = "3"
DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = "thin"
ADAPTER_FORMAT = "lsilogic"
POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = "0"
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = "0"
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = "0"
LOG_LEVEL = "info"
VM_VMDK_FILES = "all"

The following is an output of the script when utilizing the new --config_dir parameter with debug mode enabled.

Note: --vmlist is still a required parameter with the exception that backup policy files must exist for each VM in the list else the VM will be ignored in the backup process.

Execution of backup

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ghettoVCBg2.pl --config_dir backup_config --vmlist virtual_machine_backup_list

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ cat /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:18:41 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG START ==============================
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = VIMA
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = WILLIAM_BACKUPS
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = zeroedthick
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = buslogic
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = NO
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = YES
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = YES
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: CONFIG - VM_VMDK_FILES = VIMA_1.vmdk

        11-14-2009 00:18:45 --  info: Initiate backup for VIMA found on himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-14-2009 00:18:55 --  debug: VIMA original powerState: poweredOn
        11-14-2009 00:18:55 --  debug: Creating Snapshot "ghettoVCBg2-snapshot-2009-11-14" for VIMA
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  info: VIMA has 2 VMDK(s)
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: findVMDKFile: Found VMDK File: VIMA_1.vmdk
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: backupVMDK: Backing up "[http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio] VIMA/VIMA_1.vmdk" to "[http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] WILLIAM_BACKUPS/VIMA/VIMA-2009-11-14/VIMA_1.vmdk"
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: backupVMDK: Signal copyThread to start
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: backupVMDK: Backup progress: Elapsed time 0 min
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: copyTask: Wake up and follow the white rabbit, with status: doCopy
        11-14-2009 00:19:45 --  debug: CopyThread: Start backing up VMDK(s) ...
        11-14-2009 00:19:52 --  debug: copyTask: send copySuccess message ...
        11-14-2009 00:19:52 --  debug: copyTask: waiting for next job and sleep ...
        11-14-2009 00:20:46 --  debug: backupVMDK: Successfully completed backup for [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio] VIMA/VIMA_1.vmdk Elapsed time: 1 min
        11-14-2009 00:20:49 --  debug: Removing Snapshot "ghettoVCBg2-snapshot-2009-11-14" for VIMA
        11-14-2009 00:20:51 --  debug: checkVMBackupRotation: Starting ...
        11-14-2009 00:20:57 --  debug: Purging [http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] WILLIAM_BACKUPS/VIMA/VIMA-2009-11-13--3 due to rotation max
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: Backup completed for VIMA!

        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  debug: reConfigureBackupParams: VM - vMA-2
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = vMA-2
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = vGHETTO_BACKUPS
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = lsilogic
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = NO
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = NO
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = NO
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: CONFIG - VM_VMDK_FILES = all

        11-14-2009 00:21:05 --  info: Initiate backup for vMA-2 found on himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-14-2009 00:21:15 --  info: vMA-2 has 1 VMDK(s)
        11-14-2009 00:23:22 --  info: Backup completed for vMA-2!

        11-14-2009 00:23:25 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG END ==============================

Dry run Mode (no backup will take place)

Log verbosity: drymode
Log output: /tmp/ghettoVCB.log (default)

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ghettoVCBg2.pl --config_dir backup_config --vmlist virtual_machine_backup_list --dryrun 1

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ cat /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:26:29 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG START ==============================
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = VIMA
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = WILLIAM_BACKUPS
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = zeroedthick
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = buslogic
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = NO
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = YES
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = YES
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_VMDK_FILES = VIMA_1.vmdk

        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: ---------- DRYRUN DEBUG INFO VIMA ----------
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Host Build: VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-164009
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Host: himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Virtual Machine: VIMA
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VM ConfigPath: [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio] VIMA/VIMA.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VMX File: VIMA.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - BackupConfigPath: [http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] WILLIAM_BACKUPS/VIMA/VIMA-2009-11-14/VIMA.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - BackupPath: [http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] WILLIAM_BACKUPS/VIMA/VIMA-2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VM Datastore: himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VMDK(s):
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio] VIMA/VIMA.vmdk
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Savvio] VIMA/VIMA_1.vmdk
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: ---------- DRYRUN DEBUG INFO VIMA ----------

        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  debug: reConfigureBackupParams: VM - vMA-2
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = vMA-2
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCBg2.log
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DATASTORE = dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIRECTORY = vGHETTO_BACKUPS
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - ADAPTER_FORMAT = lsilogic
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = NO
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = NO
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = NO
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: CONFIG - VM_VMDK_FILES = all

        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: ---------- DRYRUN DEBUG INFO vMA-2 ----------
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Host Build: VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-164009
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Host: himalaya.primp-industries.com
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - Virtual Machine: vMA-2
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VM ConfigPath: [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Constellation|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Constellation] vMA-2/vMA-2.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VMX File: vMA-2.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - BackupConfigPath: [http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] vGHETTO_BACKUPS/vMA-2/vMA-2-2009-11-14/vMA-2.vmx
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - BackupPath: [http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups|http://dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups] vGHETTO_BACKUPS/vMA-2/vMA-2-2009-11-14
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VM Datastore: himalaya-local-SAS.Constellation
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - VMDK(s):
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: DEBUG - [http://himalaya-local-SAS.Constellation|http://himalaya-local-SAS.Constellation] vMA-2/vMA-2.vmdk
        11-14-2009 00:26:34 --  info: ---------- DRYRUN DEBUG INFO vMA-2 ----------

        11-14-2009 00:26:37 --  info: ============================== ghettoVCBg2 LOG END ==============================

FAQ

1Q: I have a VM listed in my backup file but no backup of that VM took place. The log stated that the VM could not be found. How could this be? I know that it’s running on host X…
1A Ensure the ESX/ESXi host is being managed by VMware VIMA/vMA ( sudo vifp listservers to verify)

2Q: I'm getting error X when using the script or I'm not getting any errors, the backup didn’t even take place. Oh what could be wrong?
2A: Please provide the entire output of a manual execution (debug & dry run mode) or if you're logging the output withing \{code\} tags, a short description of your environment and the type of VM(s) you're trying to backup—I will try to provide some assistance.

3Q: Can I schedule backups to take place hourly, daily, monthly, yearly?
3A: Yes, do a search online for crontab.

4Q: I want to schedule my backup on Windows, how do I do this?
4A: Do a search for plink. Make sure you have paired SSH keys setup between your Windows system and VIMA/vMA.

5Q: Do I have to use VMware VIMA/vMA to initiate the backup?
5A: Yes, vi-fastpass is being used and only VIMA/vMA provides this capability. However, you can kickoff the process from another host (*nix/win)

6Q: I only have a single ESXi host. I want to take backups and store them somewhere else. The problem is: I don't have NFS, iSCSI nor FC SAN. What can I do?
6A: You can use local storage to store your backups assuming that you have enough space on the destination datastore. Afterwards, you can use scp (WinSCP/FastSCP) or vifs (vCLI) to transfer the backups from the ESXi host to your local desktop.

7Q: I’m pissed; the backup is taking too long. My datastore is of type X?
7A: YMMV, take a look at your storage configuration and make sure it is optimized.

8Q: I noticed that the backup rotation is occurring after a backup. I don't have enough local storage space, can the process be changed?
8A: This is primarily done to ensure that you have at least one good backup in case the new backup fails. If you would like to modify the script, you're more than welcome to do so.

9Q: What is the best storage configuration for datastore type X?
9A: Search the VMTN forums; there are various configurations for the different type of storage/etc.

10Q: I want to setup NFS Server to run my backups. Which is the best and should it be virtual or physical?
10A: Please refer to answer 7A. From experience, we’ve seen physical instances of NFS servers to be faster than their virtual counterparts. As always, YMMV.

11Q: When I try to use the script I get an error stating: "restricted version". What the heck is this?
11A: Please take a look at the ESX/ESXi Version Support Table in this document. The reason is explained here.

12Q: I'm getting error X when using the script or I'm not getting any errors, the backup didn’t even take place. Oh what could be wrong?
12A: First, you'll want to check the log (default /tmp/ghettoVCBg2) and see if there are any obvious errors. If not, please provide the entire output of the log, a short description of your environment and the type of VM(s) you're trying to backup—I will try to provide some assistance.

13Q: I have VMs that have snapshots. I want to back these things up but the script doesn’t let me do it. How do I fix that?
13A: VM snapshots are not meant to be kept for long durations. When backing up a VM that contains a snapshot, you should ensure all snapshots have been committed prior to running a backup. No exceptions will be made…ever.

14Q: I would like to restore from backup, what is the best method?
14A: The restore process will be unique for each environment and should be determined by your backup/recovery plans. At a high level you have the option of mounting the backup datastore and registering the VM in question or copy the VM from the backup datastore to the ESX/ESXi host. The latter is recommended so that you're not running a VM living on the backup datastore or inadvertently modifying your backup VM(s).

15Q: When using the experimental feature: Individual VM backup policy, if I don't have a policy will it use the default configurations defined in the script?
15A: No, this use case will not be supported, ever. If you decide to use the per VM policy, then the global configuration in the script is ignored. If a VM policy config is not found, the VM will not be backed up even if it's in the –-vmlist.

16Q: In vMA 4.0, vCenter target will be supported, can I just add vCenter target and assume this will work?
16A: At the moment, this is not a supported feature. You will need to add each ESX/ESXi host for the vi-fastpass library to be able to locate the host(s).

17Q: When I try to run the script I get: "-bash: ./ghettoVCBg2.pl: Permission denied", what is wrong?
17A: You need to change the permission on the script to be executable, chmod +x ghettoVCBg2.pl

18Q: Where can I download the latest version of the script?
18A: The latest version is available on this page at the bottom. To get the version of the script run ./ghettoVCBg2.pl --version

Change Log

11/18/09 - New variable "EMAIL_DOMAIN" was added for email log functionality as email domain must be defined or left as default "localhost.localdomain". Thanks to adrian888 for finding this bug

my $EMAIL_DOMAIN = "localhost.localdomain";

11/17/09 - The following enhancements and fixes have been implemented in this release of ghettoVCBg2. Special thanks goes out to Gerhard Ostermann for assisting with some of the logic in the ghettoVCBg2 script and the rest of the ghettoVCBg2 BETA testers. Thanks for everyones time and comments to make this script better!

Enhancements:

Email log support
Include/exclude specific VMDK(s)
Additional logging + dry run mode

Fixes:

Independent disk aware
Large VMDK backups

convert Fusion disk to ESXi using vMA

lamw — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:54:40 GMT

You'll want to take a look at using VMware Converter, there are no tools in vMA that'll convert and upload a VM running on Fusion to your ESXi host.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
Twitter: @lamw
vGhetto Script Repository
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Can't Install VMa

Zigmo — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:58:49 GMT

Thanks for the amazing info.

I downloaded the CPU identification tool, but it looks like I have to reboot my chasis to use it. At this time, that's not something I can do.

I've been following another thread that discusses ways to determine if your CPU is 64 compatible. Unfortunately, they all require console access, which is why I was trying to install vMA in the first place.

I did manage to install vCLI on a Linux machine of mine. I'm running Karmic Koala so the updated fix helped. The last test command didn't work, but I assume that's because I'm runnnig a stand-alone machine with no external data store. I'm still reading through the commands, but is there a command that will either open a console for me or allow me to send a console command to my Host? If I can do that, I can test out some of the commands that were mentioned in the other thread.

Slow Performance with RCLI Scripts

vmscrappy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:20:03 GMT

Do you have a date when the next version of the RCLI is coming out? The performance is painful. Also any idea why only https works and not http? I want to understand whether its a configuration issue on my end

esxcfg-scsidevs -l -protocol http
Error: Server version unavailable at 'http://dvsimenane06.sim.nane.netapp.com:443/sdk/vimService.wsdl'

How to reset IP / hostname info in vMA appliance?

lamw — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:10:24 GMT

You can always manually reconfigure your networking information (no need for GUI), take a look at this tutorial for the steps: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/rhel-centos-fedoracore-linux-network-card-configuration/

You might be able to use system-config-network-tui but I'm not sure if that exists on vMA, I don't have access to a vMA system to verify. Though I think it's much faster to just manually configure it and step #3 provides you the instructions

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

How to retrieve target ESXi4 license from vMA?

mtee — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:37:24 GMT

Thanks William. I am trying out your v1.2 script.

Can you use ghettoVCBg2 for Lab Manager?

lamw — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:24:21 GMT

It might/should work, but you'll want to test to verify ... but if you're trying to backup Linked Clones in LM, you'll need to look at alternative due to the way Linked Clones are implemented in LM. For all other VM/Templates, you can probably backup through your traditional VM backup whether that is in guest or even with VCB/Veeam type of solution.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Failed Adding Target Servers (hosts! not guests...) to VIMA with sudo vifp addserver

lamw — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:48:34 GMT

There is something wrong with the way your hosts are configured, if both VIMA and vMA can't add the targets. You may want to file an SR with VMware support if you have SnS

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)
Getting Started with the vSphere SDK for Perl
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Need dynamic updates on VM's Status... is vMA right for me?

davidsulock — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:39:59 GMT

Thanks!

inquiry about vmware-vilogd (vilogger daemon)

tren — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:43:55 GMT

As mentioned above, you can always up the # vCPU + vMem on vMA so that you get higher performance.

Regarding the "strange" behavior on vilogd, I would suggest you check if var partition is filled up: vMA behavior might become unpredictable when var partition fills up.

can't remove ESX hosts from vMA

russ_givens — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:50:58 GMT

The vMA documentation doesn't seem to mention that. It's more than just the directory it was still collection the logs. What I ended up having to do is to add the targets backin then disable the logging and then remove them again. Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.

esxcli command does not work as expected

RenateKa — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:20:13 GMT

This will be fixed in the next release. Apologies for the confusion.

Using VIMA to shut down an EqualLogic PS5000E SAN

ManInTheMiddle — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:33:32 GMT

Hi dsnowden,

Could you please post your script here if you see my message ?

Thank you.

Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)

lamw — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:06:35 GMT

Author: William Lam
Twitter: @lamw
Website: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

Getting started with Documentation:

Visit the vMA Home Page:

VMware vMA

vMA Forum:

VMware vSphere™ Management Assistant (vMA)

You will find latest Downloads, Reference Documentation and Community Discussions and links to resources.

Downloads:

VIMA 1.0 Download - Supports ESX(i) 3.5u2+
vMA 4.0 Download - Supports ESX(i) 3.5u2/4.0 and vCenter 2.5/4.0

Examples

Examples of vMA/VIMA usage:

http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/#vmware_vima

Scripts and Tools

New tools and scripts to add/manage ESX(i) and vCenter targets on vMA 4.0:

http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/#vmware_vma

vMA Compatible Agent/Scripts(Third Party) Community List:

vMA Compatible Agent/Scripts(Third Party) Community List

Health check reports on your VMware environment:

VMware vSphere Health Check Report v1.3 - vMA 4.0
VMware Health Check Report v0.9.4 - VIMA 1.0

Taking screenshots of your VM using vMA 4.0:

takeVMScreenshot.pl using vMA 4.0

Host and VM shutdown with UPS integration using vMA:

ESX/ESXi APC/APCUPSD Host Shutdown VI Perl Toolkit Script (ghettoShutdown.pl/upsVIShutdown.pl)

Backup VMs using vMA:

ghettoVCBg2 - Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!)

Utilize vi-fastpass On vMA to run Perl script without clear text password:

useVIFastpassOnvMAToRunPerlScriptWithoutClearTextPassword.pl

Tweaks

Hot add memory to vMA or other supported Linux guestOSes using vSphere ESX(i) 4.0:

Hot add memory to vMA or other supported Linux guestOSes using vSphere ESX(i) 4.0

How to increase/resize vMA Disks:

How to increase/resize vMA Disks

Offline patching of vMA 4.0:

Update vMA without internet access

How to install VMware VDDK on vMA:

How to install VDDK 1.1 on vMA 4.0 (libfuse.so.2 fix)

Enable root account:

Edit /etc/passwd

sudo vi /etc/passwd

Change

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/sbin/nologin

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Help us improve our document, provide additional useful information and share with a friend.

Update vMA without internet access

lamw — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:55:00 GMT

Thanks for the update, I'm quite surprised that VMware told you in which the process to patch vMA 4.0 w/o internet access or proxy acess (which is already out) is under NDA! I'll follow up with the vMA PM to see if this is the case, though I think having the process documented and readily available for customers that have this type of network/ACL restrictions would be quite useful and required.

Thanks again

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Add vcenter- should i see all esx hosts too?

TobiasKracht — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:13:39 GMT

You indicate that user can add them manually or via script... (which is what I said...you just went ahead and mentioned the script) if user does a vifp listservers and does not see any servers how can he manage them? I think lamw second paragraph says is it all, add them manually or use a script....

StarWind Software R&D

vMA corrupt, stuck in fsck boot-loop (how do I get in as "root"?)

vancod — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:15:30 GMT

Also note -

sudo vi /etc/passwd

change root's shell from /sbin/nologin to /bin/bash - poof! root can log in fully.

For anyone interested - I've gotten Webmin installed and punched holes in the filerwall as required - I plan to use my vMA as a cache device since it really has no full-time job and apperciable free space. The vMA is not that much different from any minimally installed RHEL server.

Use of uninitialized value in string eq at /usr/bin/vmware-cmd line 392 error?

lamw — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:19:11 GMT

I woudl just recommend going directly to the host if you're trying to query the state of the VM, since already know which host you're trying to execute it against. I don't really use the -H -T options with vmware-cmd

If you're using vi-fastpass, then just initiate with vifpinit and then run:

[vi-admin@scofield ~][http://himalaya.primp-industries.com|http://himalaya.primp-industries.com]$ vmware-cmd --server himalaya.primp-industries.com /vmfs/volumes/4a48004d-f9af7fa0-5bbf-003048d9586b/winXP-base/winXP-base.vmx getstate
getstate() = off

There are also other utilities that are bundled with the vSphere SDK for Perl found on vMA, take a look at these other Perl scripts for other operations you can perform against ESX(i) or vCenter hosts: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/viperltoolkit/viperl40/doc/vsperl_util_index.html

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

vMA 4.0 + Patch1 Still Vulnerable

preetham — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:58:11 GMT

Thanks paetecsfb for the list of what you found. I spoke to our security team and they had already identified
several of them. They are scheduled for a future patch (or update release) to vMA. But I shall send them your
list as well just in case they missed any.

vMA RCLI

lamw — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:18:57 GMT

Yes, it's called vCLI now and the latest version can be found at: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/ and there is no longer a vCLI/RCLI virtual appliance, if you're looking for one that you can just import, take a look at vMA

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Problem with vdiskcreate.pl

ii00907 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:44:36 GMT

Ok,

for simple vmdk but for create a rdm ?

Maybe I'm wrong syntax. I use vsphere4, can you help?
I do not understand, on 'option --filename, what should I put.

I tried

perl vdiskcreate.pl --server 133.22.11.211 --username root --password passw0rd --vmname Test_IVAN --filename vml.02000000006006016055351f00506decc0459cde11524149442035 --backingtype rdm

Error; Incompatible device backing specified for device.

perl vdiskcreate.pl --server 172.23.42.211 --username root --password passw0rd --vmname Test_IVAN --filename /vmfs/devices/disks/vml.02000100006006016055351f00516decc0459cde11524149442035 --backingtype rdm

Error; Incompatible device backing specified for device.

I do not know what to do, help!

ESXi 4 - vGhettoLinkedClone - Agent Error

lamw — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:37:16 GMT

Cloning is a functionality of vCenter, you need to run this against a vCenter 4.0 instance.

http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/vGhettoLinkedClone.html

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Noob... haha. Need help understanding...

a2alpha — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:01:17 GMT

Yes, I mean't to put a link on that page back to the vi-toolkit and powershell downloads. I'll do that now. I normally get a yellow certificate error despite it being run on the vCenter server but not sure how to resolve that. Glad its working for you. Thanks,

Dan

vMA4 vima-update error

ii00907 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:14:25 GMT

Very thanks Lamw,

My problem was related to the lack of http:// when you put the proxy.

Thanks,

ii00907

ESX/ESXi APC/APCUPSD Host Shutdown VI Perl Toolkit Script (ghettoShutdown.pl/upsVIShutdown.pl)

lamw — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:51:14 GMT

Description

Many parties have looked for the possibility of monitoring power continuity and subsequently reacting to power outages with information supplied by a UPS agent installed in a virtual machine running on a free version of ESXi. Currently, one free solution How to configure ESXi to shutdown using an APC SmartUPS created by Joseph Holland facilitates shutdown/suspend procedures for online virtual machines in the event of a power outage given that there is some type of physical UPS system in place to provide backup power to the ESXi server. Joseph’s solution utilizes VMware VIMA and the open source utility apcupsd however, one needs to enable the unsupported SSH console in ESXi and setup paired SSH keys between VIMA and host to utilize it. Enabling the unsupported SSH console may not be the preferred method for some end users with respect to their support contracts held with VMware.

The following solution outlined in this document is similar to Joseph’s work although it will not necessitate enabling the unsupported SSH console on the ESXi hosts. This is made possible by utilizing the VI Perl Toolkit to communicate with the ESXi hosts. The only possible drawback however is that next revision of ESXi may disallow write operations and require that the user purchase ESXi license(s) to make full use of the VI API (read/write).

It must be pointed out that this implementation is built on top of initial findings made by Joseph Holland (APC VIOPS documentation) and Andrew Sullivan (VMware VIMA VI Fastpass disection). Please do visit Andrew’s blog at get-admin. Thanks to Duncan Epping for nudging the challenge via Twitter ...

Note: Please ensure proper testing has been performed in a staging or development environment prior to implementing this solution in a production environment.

Requirements

ESX/ESXi 3.5+
VMware VIMA
VI Perl Toolkit (included in VIMA)
APC SmartUPS or other "smart" UPS (may require another monitoring utility)
apcupsd-3.14.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm (VMware VIMA is 64bit RHEL VM)

Usage

[vi-admin@vima-ups-dev ~]$ ./ghettoShutdown.pl
Required command option 'ups_vm' not specified.

Synopsis: ./ghettoShutdown.pl OPTIONS


Command-specific options:
   --sleep
      The amount of time (secs) to wait after a guestOS shutdown (default 15 secs)
   --ups_vm (required)
      The name of VM that is monitoring your UPS

Common VI options:
   --config (variable VI_CONFIG)
      Location of the VI Perl configuration file
   --encoding (variable VI_ENCODING, default 'utf8')
      Encoding: utf8, cp936 (Simplified Chinese), iso-8859-1 (German), shiftjis (Japanese)
   --help
      Display usage information for the script
   --passthroughauth (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTH)
      Attempt to use pass-through authentication
   --passthroughauthpackage (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTHPACKAGE, default 'Negotiate')
      Pass-through authentication negotiation package
   --password (variable VI_PASSWORD)
      Password
   --portnumber (variable VI_PORTNUMBER)
      Port used to connect to server
   --protocol (variable VI_PROTOCOL, default 'https')
      Protocol used to connect to server
   --savesessionfile (variable VI_SAVESESSIONFILE)
      File to save session ID/cookie to utilize
   --server (variable VI_SERVER, default 'localhost')
      VI server to connect to. Required if url is not present
   --servicepath (variable VI_SERVICEPATH, default '/sdk/webService')
      Service path used to connect to server
   --sessionfile (variable VI_SESSIONFILE)
      File containing session ID/cookie to utilize
   --url (variable VI_URL)
      VI SDK URL to connect to. Required if server is not present
   --username (variable VI_USERNAME)
      Username
   --verbose (variable VI_VERBOSE)
      Display additional debugging information
   --version
      Display version information for the script

Overview of the scripts:

ghettoShutdown.pl - This script initiates the shutdown of all VM(s) within an ESX/ESXi host excluding the virtual machine that's monitoring the UPS device and then shutdowns the host. It accepts two commandline parameters: --sleep the duration in seconds to wait after a VM has initiated the shutdown before moving onto the next VM (shutdownVM() is non-blocking function) and --ups_vm the name of the displayName of your VM that is monotiring the UPS device [more details to come later].

upsVIShutdown.pl - This script is a wrapper which will hold the configurations of the order of hosts to shutdown. It may be used inconjunction with other UPS monitoring utility, though with our example, it'll be placed in the apccontrol script to execute upon a power interuption.

Scenario

2 ESXi 3.5u3 (free unlicensed edition):

superion.primp-industries.com
SQL-PROD-01	Powered On
Quentin	Powered Off
air_raid	Powered On
skydive	Suspended
fireflight	Powered Off
slingshot	Powered On

devastator.primp-industries.com
VIMA-UPS-DEV	Powered On
bonecrusher	Powered Off
master_mix	Suspended
quickMigrate-X	Powered Off
scavenger	Suspended
hook	Powered On
long_haul	Powered On

Simulate a power interuption and initiate shutdown of superion and it's VM(s) then devastator and its VM(s) using VMware VIMA: VIMA-UPS-DEV. (note, due to the lack of our UPS being configured, this will be a simulation of the UPS utility initiate the shutdown)

Since the script is written using the VI Perl Toolkit, this potentially could function on a Windows VM installed with the VI Perl Toolkit but you will not able to use VI Fastpass for authentication and credentials will need to be passed to ghettoShutdown.pl via the execution.

Setup

1. Ensure your ESX/ESXi host(s) are being managed by VMware VIMA

2. Download ghettoShutdown.pl and save to /home/vi-admin and make sure it has executable permissions set (chmod +x ghettoShutdown.pl)

3. Download upsVIShutdown.pl and save to /home/vi-admin and make sure it has executable permissions set (chmod +x upsVIShutdown.pl)

4. Edit the following sections in upsVIShutdown.pl:

A) Insert your ESX/ESXi host(s), use the hostname that you used to add to VIMA managment interface, if you're unsure run sudo vifp listservers

Remember to make sure the host that is running your VIMA VM is listed as the last entry.

my @hosts = ("superion.primp-industries.com","devastator.primp-industries.com");B) Modify the logoutput of the shutdown process if you like, default will go to /tmp/upsShutdown.log

my $log_output = "/tmp/upsShutdown.log";C) Insert the displayName of VIMA or VM that is monitoring your UPS device (case sensitive)

Very important step else you could end up shutting down the VM that is executing this script, we wouldn't want that

my $ups_vm_name = "VIMA-UPS-DEV";D) Insert the number of seconds to delay after a guestOS has initiated to be shutdown, this will vary depending on the type of applications the VM(s) may be running, tweak this value as needed.

Note, the shutdownVM() is a non-blocking function, if you set the delay to be too short the host could be powered down before the VM(s) have completed powering off (default 15 secs)

my $sec_to_sleep = 15;Next, you'll want to install the apcupsd client on your VMware VIMA host with the following command:

sudo rpm -ivh apcupsd-3.14.5-1.el5.x86_64.rpm

You'll then need to configure your apcupsd.conf and you use the following document

Next, instead of setting up a SSH paired keys and inserting the ssh command in /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol, you'll be appending the following:

doshutdown)
	echo "UPS ${2} initiated Shutdown Sequence" | ${WALL}
	/home/vi-admin/upsVIShutdown.pl 
	${SHUTDOWN} -h now "apcupsd UPS ${2} initiated shutdown"
;;

I don't think the 3rd line is really ncessary since the VM will be on the same host that'll be shutting down.

Sample output

1. We'll now manually initate the upsVIShutdown.pl script as if a power interuption was detected by apcupsd client.

[vi-admin@vima-ups-dev ~]$ ./upsVIShutdown.pl

2. As you can see from above...nothing too fancy, though the process has been kicked off and both host(s) and their VM(s) have been powered down in the order of our configuration file. To verify the output, we will power on our hosts, log into VIMA-UPS-DEV (the VM that initiated the shutdown process) and inspect the logs containing the shutdown process at /tmp/upsShutdown.log.

[vi-admin@vima-ups-dev ~]$ cat /tmp/upsShutdown.log
04-25-2008 11:17:52 -- Found ESX/ESXi host: superion.primp-industries.com!
        04-25-2008 11:17:52 -- Begin shutdown process ...
        04-25-2008 11:18:07 -- VM: slingshot shutdown succssfully.
        04-25-2008 11:18:22 -- VM: air_raid shutdown succssfully.
        04-25-2008 11:18:37 -- VM: silverbolt shutdown succssfully.
        04-25-2008 11:18:37 -- VM: skydive is already suspended.
        04-25-2008 11:18:37 -- VM: fireflight is already off.
        04-25-2008 11:18:44 -- VM: SQL-PROD-01 hard poweroff succssful (No VMware Tools, bad admin).
        04-25-2008 11:18:44 -- VM: Quentin is already off.
        04-25-2008 11:18:44 -- HOST: superion.primp-industries.com is shutting down!

04-25-2008 11:18:49 -- Found ESX/ESXi host: devastator.primp-industries.com!
        04-25-2008 11:18:49 -- Begin shutdown process ...
        04-25-2008 11:18:49 -- VM: scavenger is already suspended.
        04-25-2008 11:18:49 -- VM: bonecrusher is already off.
        04-25-2008 11:18:49 -- VM: master_mix is already suspended.
        04-25-2008 11:18:56 -- VM: scrapper hard poweroff succssful (No VMware Tools, bad admin).
        04-25-2008 11:19:04 -- VM: long_haul hard poweroff succssful (No VMware Tools, bad admin).
        04-25-2008 11:19:11 -- VM: hook hard poweroff succssful (No VMware Tools, bad admin).
        04-25-2008 11:19:11 -- VM: quickMigrate-X is already off.
        04-25-2008 11:19:12 -- Shutting down final host: devastator.primp-industries.com and UPS VM: VIMA-UPS-DEV!
==============================================================================================

Change Keyboard Layout in vMA

lamw — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:30:33 GMT

As mentioned, edit /etc/sysconfig/keyboard and replace KEYTABLE=“us“ by KEYTABLE=“de-latin1″ save and reboot for the changes to take effect. You'll probably need to 'sudo' to modify the configuration

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

How to install VDDK 1.1 on vMA 4.0 (libfuse.so.2 fix)

iben — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:32:58 GMT

Thanks for the tip William.

I agree with you on the "challanges" vmware has with their linux appliances at this time. At VMworld vExpert session this year Steve Herrod said they are taking steps to address this.

Why not use CentOS and publish these tools (VIX, VDDK, etc) to the VMware YUM Repo?

<code>baseurl=http://packages.vmware.com/tools/</code>

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/198161

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/osp_install_guide.pdf

I b e n

cron + vifpinit

lamw — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:38:01 GMT

Yes but you miss the point, the limitation is in vifpinit implementation of vi-fastpass and not what vi-fastpass can do. If you utilize the Perl script or any other programming/scripting language that makes use of the vi-fastpass lib, the password is not exposed as an environmental shell variable.

In any case, good luck with the script.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
VMware Developer Comuunity
Twitter: @lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

vMA Compatible Agent/Scripts(Third Party) Community List

heyitspablo — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:57:33 GMT

Folks,

The intention of this document is to list third party agents / scripts that work with vSphere Management Assistant.

If you are a third party software vendor, or anyone with an interesting script that you have tested on vSphere Management Assitant, please add to the list below. The benefit is that the community will be able to determine and quickly see if your agent runs on vMA. This is very much a community effort and look for your help in maintaining this list.

Product Name	Owner	Link	vMA Compatible Version
VMware Health Check Report v0.9.4	William Lam	VMware Health Check Report v0.9.4	VIMA 1.0
VMware vSphere Health Check Report v1.2	William Lam	VMware vSphere Health Check Report v1.3	vMA 4.0
ghettoShutdown.pl/upsVIShutdown.pl	William Lam	ESX/ESXi APC/APCUPSD Host Shutdown VI Perl Toolkit Script (ghettoShutdown.pl/upsVIShutdown.pl)	VIMA 1.0
ghettoVCBg2	William Lam	ghettoVCBg2 - Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!)	vMA 4.0

Can't run VMa 64 bit compatability confusion

Mintz — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:19:30 GMT

Yes. That was the problem. Thanks.

Obvious really, I suppose. Doh.

When I booted theRed Hat Linux it said something about memory range not suitable for crash kernel or something. Is this anything to worry about?

Sorry I'm a total noob at this.

VMA concept overview question.

AlbertWT — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:03:34 GMT

OK, great thanks for the answer man !

I was thinking that VMA is the freeware version of vCenter Mgmt Server 4, more like ESXi compared to ESX

Cheers.

Kind Regards,
AWT

Transferring Script Files to vMA

sammyvm — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:36:04 GMT

Sorry for the trouble but I found the only place I could SCP a file to was under /home/vi-admin which did work. From there I was able to move the files to whichver directory I required from the console.

problems updating VIMA

lamw — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:30:23 GMT

Yea pretty much, it's sooo easy to deploy that you don't need to really backup your VIMA, minus the custom scripts you may have written. You'll want to deploy the new vMA 4.0 and copy over any existing scripts/etc. and you'll need to re-add all your targets since there are no configs to export. With vMA 4.0, you now have the option of adding a vCenter target which allows you to access all hosts under vCenter w/o manually adding each host, but if you so wish, you can still add each target and there is a script that allows you to add a list of servers and type in the password once w/o having to do it over and over again if you have a lot of ESX(i) hosts. Take a look at here for some of the new features in vMA 4.0 including some new paths to the tools. http://engr.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/#vmware_vma

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Technology Exchange Developer Day - Learn about vMA as a platform for deploying scripts and agents

navadavuluri — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:08:38 GMT

Hello,

We are happy to announce about our demo at Technology Exchange Developer Day 2009, Learn about vMA as a platform for deploying scripts and agents

Presenter: Ashwath Seshadri
{youtube}http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtLStlCK-Q{youtube}

Demo ID: DS-23

Time: 5:45 - 6:45 PM

Abstract:

VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) is a prepackaged Linux virtual machine in which
administrators can deploy scripts and select third-party agents to manage ESX and ESXi systems.
Software included in vMA includes vSphere CLI, an authentication component that supports
non-interactive login, and a log collection component. Learn about the features provided vCLI and vMA and how you can integrate with your vSphere environment.

vilogger vs syslog

spig777 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:39:11 GMT

Yes it's easy to set up, but it's not as easy as simply setting syslog.local.datastorepath to a datastore. I have all 3 methods running now anyway - just in case!

compatible with "apcupsd-multimon"

lhimin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:19:28 GMT

Thanks lamw! Please do keep me up to date. Enjoyed your script by the way!!!

takeVMScreenshot.pl using vMA 4.0

lamw — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:30:33 GMT

Ever run into issues with your VMs where you have some debugging information logged to the console and you want to take a screenshot of it using vSphere API?

Requirement
ESX(i) 4.0 (must execute against individual ESX(i) host and not vCenter)
vMA 4.0

Sample Execution:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./takeVMScreenshot.pl --server himalaya.primp-industries.com --username root --vmname William-XP
Enter password:

Initiating screenshot of William-XP ...
Successfully capture screenshot from William-XP!
Downloading "William-XP-screenshot-0.png" to "vm_screenshots/William-XP-screenshot-0.png"
Removing screenshot "William-XP-screenshot-0.png" from ESX(i) host ...

Here is what William-XP-screenshot-0.png looks like:

Installing VM like Vima.

SKP02IN — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:28:15 GMT

I have a AMD Athlon X2, but still does not seem to work, iam using sun virtual box 3.0.4 to import the the VIMA OVF.

Regards,

skp02inatyahoo.com

Learn about vSphere vMA @ Developer - Video

heyitspablo — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:27:31 GMT

Folks, Ashwath will be presenting on vMA @ upcoming Tech Ex - Developer Day

Event is August 31st, 2009 Monday @ VMworld 2009
More info http://communities.vmware.com/community/developer/techexchange

{youtube}http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtLStlCK-Q{youtube}

Hot add memory to vMA or other supported Linux guestOSes using vSphere ESX(i) 4.0

lamw — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:47:36 GMT

Summary

This document will demonstrate how to hot add memory to a live running vMA (RHEL5) VM using vSphere ESX(i) 4.0, this feature is only supported on certain guestOSes, check vSphere documentation for more information.

Resources

http://adaptivethinking.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/vsphere-esx4-hot-add-memory-for-linux-guests/

Requirements

ESX(i) 4.0
vMA 4.0 or other supported Linux guestOSes

Instructions

1. Hot add memory requires a VM to be running hardware version 7 and since vMA 4.0 by default is distributed as HW4, you'll need to first right click on the VM and upgrade to hardware 7 before powering on the VM. You will also need to enable hot add memory which is a new configuration item once you've upgraded to HW7 under OPTIONS->Memory/CPU Hotplug and just select 'enable'

2. Power on vMA

3. Let's verify the default memory available within vMA (this can be done using free,/proc/meminfo,top,etc)

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           498        178        320          0          6         98
-/+ buffers/cache:         73        425
Swap:         1023          0       1023

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ cat /proc/meminfo m
MemTotal:       510668 kB
MemFree:        327696 kB
Buffers:          6740 kB
Cached:         101200 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         110392 kB
Inactive:        43864 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       510668 kB
LowFree:        327696 kB
SwapTotal:     1048568 kB
SwapFree:      1048568 kB
Dirty:              24 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
AnonPages:       46340 kB
Mapped:          43704 kB
Slab:            12584 kB
PageTables:       2408 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
CommitLimit:   1303900 kB
Committed_AS:   222648 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:    263328 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359474423 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
HugePages_Rsvd:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB

Default installation of vMA 4.0 is 512mb of memory, we'll increase this to 1gb

4. You will now use the vSphere Client and edit the vMA's memory and change it from 512mb to 1gb

5. Download and copy online_hotplug_memory.sh to vMA

[root@vMa-resize ~]# chmod +x online_hotplug_memory.sh

6. Execute the script which will find any new memory allocated to vMA and online the memory

[root@vMa-resize ~]# sudo ./online_hotplug_memory.sh
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory0" ...
        memory0 already online
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory1" ...
        memory1 already online
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory2" ...
        memory2 already online
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory3" ...
        memory3 already online
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory4" ...
        memory4 is new memory, onlining memory ...
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory5" ...
        memory5 is new memory, onlining memory ...
Found sparsemem: "/sys/devices/system/memory/memory7" ...
        memory7 is new memory, onlining memory ...

As you can see from the script output memory0-3 was already allocated and split up but memory4-7 was the newly added memory which needed to be brought online before the OS can use it.

7. Let's verify the new memory that has been allocated while the VM was running

[root@vMa-resize ~]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           882        188        694          0          7        100
-/+ buffers/cache:         80        802
Swap:         1023          0       1023

[root@vMa-resize ~]# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       903884 kB
MemFree:        711128 kB
Buffers:          7644 kB
Cached:         102612 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         111996 kB
Inactive:        45060 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       903884 kB
LowFree:        711128 kB
SwapTotal:     1048568 kB
SwapFree:      1048568 kB
Dirty:              36 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
AnonPages:       46836 kB
Mapped:          43708 kB
Slab:            12748 kB
PageTables:       2460 kB
NFS_Unstable:        0 kB
Bounce:              0 kB
CommitLimit:   1500508 kB
Committed_AS:   224736 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:    263628 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359474423 kB
HugePages_Total:     0
HugePages_Free:      0
HugePages_Rsvd:      0
Hugepagesize:     2048 kB

vGhettoLinkedClone script and additional documentation

lamw — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:08:10 GMT

This script is based on VMware's vmclone.pl which is stored by default in vMA: /usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/vm, it expects to find the schema for cloning one directory up. You'll need to provide the additional param of --schema and pass in /usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/schema/vmclone.xsd and that should work.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

How to increase/resize vMA Disks

lamw — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:46:54 GMT

Summary:

If you're extensively using vMA's vi-logger functionality or storing lots of content on the default 5gb VMDK, you can easily fill up the disks. This document will provide the steps in resizing and increasing the disk sizes using LVM.

Environment:

vMA 4.0 or VIMA 1.0 (not testing on VIMA 1.0, but steps should be exactly the same)
SSH and/or vSphere Client console access

Operation:

Increase /var/log from 500MB to 10GB

Steps:

1. Here is a default vanilla installation of vMA

Last login: Sat Aug  8 15:00:31 2009 from 172.30.0.225

Welcome to vMA
run 'vma-help' or see http://www.vmware.com/go/vma4 for more details.

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ cat /etc/vima-release | head -1
vMA 4.0.0 BUILD-161992

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-root
                      3.3G  1.5G  1.7G  48% /
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-var
                      496M   19M  452M   4% /var/log
/dev/sda1              99M   16M   79M  17% /boot
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm

2. Notice /var/log has total of 452MB free and I will attempt to fill it up to 98%

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/log/big_ass_file bs=1M count=440
440+0 records in
440+0 records out
461373440 bytes (461 MB) copied, 9.64461 seconds, 47.8 MB/s

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-root
                      3.3G  1.5G  1.7G  48% /
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-var
                      496M  461M  9.9M  98% /var/log
/dev/sda1              99M   16M   79M  17% /boot
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm

OH NO! /var/log is full, what to do! Let's increase the size of /var/log to 10GB, that should be plenty for logs.

3. Shutdown the vMA and edit the VM configurations and change the disk from 5gb to 15GB (increase of 10GB)

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo shutdown -h now

4. Power back on vMA

5. As you can see we've grown the virtual disk from 5gb to 16gb

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo fdisk -l
Password:

Disk /dev/sda: 16.1 GB, 16106127360 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1958 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14         652     5132767+  8e  Linux LVM

6. Next we'll be creating a new partition with the new space

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1958.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): n
Command action
   e   extended
   p   primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 3
First cylinder (653-1958, default 653):
Using default value 653
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (653-1958, default 1958):
Using default value 1958

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 3
Hex code (type L to list codes): 8e
Changed system type of partition 3 to 8e (Linux LVM)

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

Note: The options were: n,p,3,<enter>,t,3,8e,w

7. We now verify the new partition has been created:

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 16.1 GB, 16106127360 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1958 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14         652     5132767+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda3             653        1958    10490445   8e  Linux LVM

/dev/sda3 is our new partition which has been formatted with LVM, we now need to reboot vMA before continuing.

vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo reboot

8. We need to add a physical volume before LVM can access the partition

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo pvcreate /dev/sda3
  Physical volume "/dev/sda3" successfully created

9. Now we need to extend the existing volume group to the physical volume which was found by doing (df -h)

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda3
  /dev/hda: open failed: No medium found
  Volume group "VolGroup00" successfully extended

10. Now we'll want to extend the logical volume into the new space, but we want to make sure how much the system will give us in terms of free space

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo vgdisplay | grep -i free
  Free  PE / Size       320 / 10.00 GB

As you can see, that is the additional 10GB we've added on top of the already existing 5GB

11. Now we extend the LV to /var and not to another mount point and we'll increase that to 10GB

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo lvextend -L+10G /dev/VolGroup00/var
  Extending logical volume var to 10.50 GB
  Logical volume var successfully resized

12. Last step is to make this space available to the OS, on general RHEL systems you have access to ext2online but since vMA is a stripped down version of RHEL, that is not available. We'll make uses of resize2fs to accomplish the same task

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ sudo resize2fs -p /dev/VolGroup00/var
resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/VolGroup00/var is mounted on /var/log; on-line resizing required
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/VolGroup00/var to 11010048 (1k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/VolGroup00/var is now 11010048 blocks long.

Note: This task can take a few minutes depending on the disk size increase

13. Now we verify the new disk increase for /var/log for 10GB

[vi-admin@vMa-resize ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-root
                      3.3G  1.5G  1.7G  48% /
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-var
                       11G  462M  9.2G   5% /var/log
/dev/sda1              99M   16M   79M  17% /boot
tmpfs                 250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm

voilà! you've just increased the disk space on the default installation of vMA.

Resizing the vMA disk

lamw — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:47:34 GMT

Take a look at this document for the instructions: How to increase/resize vMA Disks

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

How to get any VM's hostname using Remote CLI [ESX Server] ?

lamw — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:38:12 GMT

So first off, if you're new to vCLI/RCLI, you should first off go through the documentation to get an understanding on how it works: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/ You should never rush into a new technology without fully understanding what its capable of.

Next up, you're posting in the vMA forum, are you actually executing this from either vMA 4.0 or VIMA 1.0? Are you just using the vCLI/RCLI on a Windows or Linux system? High level, vMA is just a virtual appliance that has some management tools which also include vCLI or RCLI depending on the version you're running. I will assume you be using the vCLI/RCLI to accomplish this task and that you want to extract all VMs guestOS hostname from a given ESX(i) system. Note this information is ONLY available if your VMs have their VMware Tools installed.

Take a look at this quick script I wrote that will accomplish the task you're looking for, retrieving both VM displayName and guestOS Hostname (if known): getAllVMGuestHostname.pl

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Vima 1.0 setup Help

lamw — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:09:41 GMT

First off, always read over the documentation provided by VMware, 99.9% it'll answer all your questions. http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/

You'll get information on how to setup vi-fastpass and how to actually use it.

You can also find examples at my site:
http://engr.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/#vmware_vima

Finally, you'll want to take a look at: VMware Health Check Report v0.9.4

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

vMA CPU long mode error

cookieme — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:25:14 GMT

Thanks I had a look at that link and posted a question on your ghettoVCB thread.

I am still putting all the pieces together, so with regards to this thread..the summary is that my processor support long mode otherwise I would not be able to run ESXi 4 or any other native x64 OS. However, since my CPU does not support VT, I am unable to run 64 bit virtual machines such as VIMA and vMA.

I am looking at alternative solutions.

Thanks for now!

Changes to the ESX Service Console for ESX 4.0

navadavuluri — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:36:02 GMT

Please check out the attched document for this information

This technical paper discusses incompatibilities between the ESX 3.5 service
console and the ESX 4.0 service console. Included are suggestions of what you might do to upgrade your
existing environments that depend on the ESX service console. This document also discusses how you might
bridge the gap to support ESXi, which does not include a service console. And finally, if you are currently
writing applications that run in the ESX service console, this document suggests some possible options you
have for transitioning away from it.

OVF won't register

lamw — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:17:07 GMT

Are you trying to download vMA 4.0 and importing into vCenter 4.0 OR using the OVF URL at: http://www.vmware.com/go/importvma/vma4.ovf

Try both the opposite and see if you get different result, both should work and I've done this a few times

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Need Help in Cloning VMs

lamw — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:50:48 GMT

You need to use url in the following manner: https://vc-server/sdk There are examples within the documentation but in general you can just do something like the following:

some_command.pl --server <vc_server> --username <some_username>

You'll be prompted for a password, but you can also specify --password on the commandline if you choose, I would not recommend it. You also have the option of using a configuration file that contains the server name, username and password that way you don't need to type it in each time. This is all documented in the pdfs

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

How to exit a target environment?

tren — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 06:02:37 GMT

Yes, it make sence to have "un-initialize" supported, and you can expect having the feature in the next vMA release.

In vMA 4.0, you can only un-initialize target environment by logoff. But if you just want to change the environment, please run "vifpinit <another-server>": then <another-server> can be initialized.

ESXi shutdown via vMA and apcupsd. ssh issue.

sim0 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:28:13 GMT

I have got this to work. Thanks to those who read my post and to Joseph Holland for his how to, not being able to do a UPS initiated safe shutdown would have been a showstopper for our virtualisation project.

The issue was that in the doshutdown section of /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol I was using the FQDN of esxihost, so the line read like this:

ssh -i /home/vi-admin/.ssh/id_rsa ~~root@esxihost.domain.local~~ "/ups_shutdown.sh" &

When it should have been like this:

ssh -i /home/vi-admin/.ssh/id_rsa ~~root@esxihost~~ "/ups_shutdown.sh" &

For anyone else having this issue here is what I did :

Follow jhollands guide on ccrating ssh keys in esxi using the dropbear ssh client.
Copy the id_rsa.ssh file to /home/vi-admin/.ssh on your vima or vMA VM.
Rename id_rsa.ssh to id_rsa.
Edit the doshutdown section of /etc/apcupsd/apccontrol like so:

doshutdown)
echo "UPS ${2} initiated Shutdown Sequence" | ${WALL}
ssh -i /home/vi-admin/.ssh/id_rsa ~~root@esxihost~~ "/ups_shutdown.sh" &
${SHUTDOWN} -h now "apcupsd UPS ${2} initiated shutdown"
;;

Cheers'

Simon

differnces between vMA to vSphere CLI

Itzikr — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:39:13 GMT

many many thanks!

Itzik Reich

Solutions Architect

VCP,VTSP,MCTS,MCITP,MCSE,CCA,CCNA

EMC²

where Information Lives

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

continuous "BrowseDiagnosticMessages" in ESXi Tasks

ThorstenT — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:02:37 GMT

In that case, I guess I'll wait.

Thanks for your assistance.

Regards,

Thorsten

How to resize VIMA console?

tsugliani — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:22:55 GMT

I think the easiest and proper way would be to leave the "console" alone, and just SSH to the vima appliance

You won't have the vga "physical default console" limitation, and it will be much faster.

Secure way to transfer files to VIMA?

AdminMHNZ — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:21:50 GMT

I need to enable root so i can ssh into this using a script and send a shutdown in a poweroutage witthout any human interaction,

seems easier then trying to get powerchute to work anyway, after much googling the bit that dosent seem to be out there is of course to do

sudo nano /etc/passwd and change the shell to bash.. did this and bingo direct ssh using root..

Configuring automatic startup with perl in VIMA

dsnowden — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:32:49 GMT

Thankfully power is not being lost, but as this is a new installation I just need to make sure that if this does happen then the environmetn shuts down gracefully.

vGhetto linked clone script in vMA : Can't locate AppUtil/VMUtil.pm in @INC

lamw — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:47:44 GMT

Ah thanks, I think the reason for this was when I wrote the script it was located in the /usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps/vm where I knew the path of AppUtil

Instead of adding a symlink, you can just include this at the top of the script:

use lib "/usr/lib/vmware-vcli/apps";

I'll update the script on the download page.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

New VIMA release announced: vMA (vSphere Management Assistant) 4.0

JMills — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:39:04 GMT

halcabes wrote:

vMA 4.0 is now available at www.vmware.com/go/vma

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

And if you want to deploy vMA 4.0 directly using the OVF 0.9 bundle:

VMware vSphere 4 Client
-> File
-> Deploy OVF Template...
-> (*) Deploy from URL:
http://www.vmware.com/go/importvma/vma4.ovf

Be aware that the vSphere 4 Client uses MS Internet Explorer HTTP proxy information in order to reach the target URL.

Also be aware of the fact that if deployed via a VMware vCenter 4 Server, vApp properties are preserved for that virtual machine -- deploying directly to a VMware ESX / ESXi 3.5 or ESX / ESXi 4 host discards vApp properties.

Sending e-mail from VIMA

francs — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:09:27 GMT

I just figured this one out and logged on the VIMA to post my solution and saw this question.

1. Download nail email client (Remember it's 64-bit..... I didn't)

ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el5/en/x86_64/dag/RPMS/nail-12.3-4.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

2. scp or winscp it to your vima vm

3. Install it using rpm:

sudo rpm -ivh ./nail-12.3-4.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm

4. Setup the /etc/nail.rc file to point to your smtp server by adding the following lines:

set smtp=smtp://smtp.isdsl.net
set from="vi-admin@client.com"

5. Run the healthcheck script and attach the html file to your email e.g.

date | nail -v -s "Healthcheck report" -a ./vmware_health_report.html administrator@gmail.com

Error mounting CDROM from VIMA client

wnp1 — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:30:19 GMT

Thank you for the reply.

The mount point /mnt/cdrom had been created and I did chmod 777 on the dir to be sure that could not be an issue

I did add the -o or to the command but still nothing.

I mounted the CD on another linux system so the iso file system is ok

What I found is via the VMware IInfrastructure Client with the vima-ovrf-##### slected I click on the connect CD / DVD tab and run the mount command I get the error whether there is a CD in the drive or not. If I click disconnect the CD / DVD and run the mount command I get no medium found.

help with health scripts running using vima

lamw — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:13:05 GMT

Nope, please create a cluster.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Maximum number of target servers?

BillR4 — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:29:32 GMT

We have 32 ESX servers, and using VIMA would be great for our environment! The company name is Molina Healthcare.

vima error when using ghettoClone.sh

lamw — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:27:21 GMT

Unfortunately no, you'll need to purchase at least Foundation license to be able to get full r/w access to the VI API, the only potential workaround is to use ESXi 3.5u2/u3. You an always unlock the unsupported SSH console and write a quick bash script to automate the clone process, just remember it's not supported by VMware.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

cannot ssh to vima

lamw — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:53:44 GMT

Can you ping the IP Address for your VIMA host?

I don't recall if SSH was disable by default, I think it is, but you can login to the console through the VI Client to verify.

verify sshd service is running

[vi-admin@vima ~]$ service sshd status
sshd (pid  2003) is running...

You'll also want to login using vi-admin and not the traditional root account, by default root is disabled.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
vGhetto Script Repository
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

VIMA esxcfg-mpath -a bug

halcabes — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:13:13 GMT

lamw wrote:

Not sure if this was caught before or internally, but in the next release of vMA, the --a option is not longer available with esxcfg-mpath and you'll see some different format output which makes things easier to read. I know some other bugs there were found may not get fixed in 1.0 release and its been recommended that when vMA 4.0 is out, to just upgrade.

That sounds right.

Please try it with vSphere CLI 4.0 which will be included in vMA 4.0 (available later this month). If you encounter problems with that version please post them here. Thanks.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

Agents running in VIMA

Project951 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:12:35 GMT

Thanks William,

That does clear things up! Thanks again for all your help!! I think that line may have been left over from when ssh was needed to run the script....

RCLI 3.5u2 new?

lamw — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:07:24 GMT

Gotcha, thanks.

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/
http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

VI Remote CLI 3.5 Update 2

halcabes — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:45:25 GMT

Remote CLI commands allow you to perform many of the operations you might currently perform using the ESX 3 service console. You can use Remote CLI commands in scripts that run on ESXi 3.5 and ESX 3.5 hosts. Remote CLI commands are especially useful for an ESXi host because ESXi does not include a service console.

Links for VMware Infrastructure Remote Command‐Line Interface (Remote CLI) version 3.5 Update 2:

Network issue with VIMA appliance

sis9014 — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:28:54 GMT

This is what I will recommend if nothing else work

1. Shutdown VIMA, remove the VM NIC, and re-add the NIC.

2. Once you re-power on it should create another "nic file" ifcfg-eth01.

3. Delete the original ifcfg-eth0 and rename ifcfg-eth01 to ifcfg-eth0 (make sure the ip information is correct if not set the ip)

4. Do a network restart or reboot

Hope it help

Simon

Password for VIMA?

halcabes — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:53:13 GMT

When you first opened the VIMA VM you should have been prompted to provide a password for the vi-admin account. Please login using the password that you provided.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

VIMA viconfig.xml now invalid.

Carrie_Yang — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:34:26 GMT

Hi William,

Do you have detailed steps to reproduce this issue?

And do you mind sharing your vMA ip with me, then I can login to have a look at it? Thanks!

VIMA : cannot add server with 'wifp addserver' command

flavien — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:53:22 GMT

Thanks for your answer

Now I understand better why I could not get connected.

I'm going to check the link provided.

Thanks again

VIMA update

lamw — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:15:48 GMT

As Harvey as stated, the update file does not exists hence you'll get an error. You can verify this by pointing your browser to .zip file and the server will reply with no file found

[vi-admin@vima-dev ~]$ sudo vima-update
Unable to lookup depot url http://www.vmware.com/go/vima1/update/vmw-VIMA-1.0.0-metadata.zip: [Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>.

Problem with VIMA and APCUPSD

llyubenov — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:41:30 GMT

Did you stop VIMA's firewall? Maybe this is causing you the problem.

Read the updated version of Joe's document!

Lyubomir

RPM install in VIMA?

barber50701 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:13:37 GMT

I was able to get VIMA installed and apcupsd installed. I config'd my apcupsd.conf file just like it showed in the document,
When I run the apcaccess it say that communication has been lost. Has anybody else seen this.. I have very little experiance with linux..does anybody have a virtual appliance that is working that could download and make my change to? I am just really confused and any help would be great.

My config is
1 esxi server
4 VM's on this box
1 APC with the Smart card in it APC has a static IP and MY VIMA VM has a static IP.

Nick

PCNS v2.2.3 with VIMA

PhatFly — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:24:05 GMT

This setup is a combination of a previously posted 2.2.1 setup and some tweaking for VMWare ESX3.5 and my own trial and error

VMWare PCNS 2.2.3 setup

All these commands are performed at the command line on the console or by using a SSH client (using SSH client allows some nice copy and paste action) as root. If you need to mount the CD-ROM then do
mount /dev/cdrom
cd /mnt/cdrom

Open the firewall ports
esxcfg-firewall -o 80,tcp,out,"APC PowerChute"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,tcp,in,"APC PowerChute"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,out,"APC PowerChute"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,in,"APC PowerChute"
esxcfg-firewall -o 6547,tcp,in,"APC PowerChute"

Run the install script
cd /mnt/cdrom
./install.sh

Answer 1 to the number of instances

Press enter to choose the default installation directory (*/opt/APC/PowerChute)* for the PowerChute software, answer yes to confirm.

Provide the following directory for the java location since java is already installed on ESX 3.5 there is no reason to install the one provided by APC:
/usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/java/jre1.5.0_15

Run the PowerChute configuration script:
/opt/APC/PowerChute/group1/PCNSConfig.sh

Choose 1 for "Configure for a single APC UPS device" Enter the following information for the UPS management card:
Management Card IP: <apc ip address>
Management Card Port # (80): <enter>
Administrator User Name: <enter username>
Administrator Password: <enter password>
Authentication Phrase: <enter auth phrase>

Verify that the client registers itself successfully with the UPS unit.

Answer Yes to starting the service

Now you can configure the event actions etc by pointing your web browser to http://servername:3052/ or skip to the SSL at https://servername:6547/

IMPORTANT SETTING
logon to the web interface http://servername:6547/
Click the ComputerName link
Click the Configure Shutdown settings
UNTICK Turn off the UPS after the shutdown finishes.
Click Apply

This step is EXTREMELY important, otherwise once this server has shutdown it will power off the UPS regardless of other servers connected to the UPS.

Other commands
/etc/rc.d/init.d/PowerChute stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/PowerChute start

To uninstall, type rpm -e pcns

Apache Install on VIMA

tdimaggio — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:31:35 GMT

See boys and girls, that's why William is a vExpert!!!

I see what your saying...I saw a LAMP appliance not to long ago, probably use that or just build a Xubuntu VM with Apache

Thanks!

Can we execute commands in VM using VIMA?

lamw — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:25:51 GMT

You can use some of the default utilities provided by the VI Perl Toolkit, take a look at the list here: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/viperltoolkit/viperl15/doc/perl_toolkit_utilities_idx.html

vminfo.pl is a good one for some of the information you're looking for such as disk and IP Address and you'll want to ensure your guest have VMware Tools installed and running. For further granularity of information that may not be available using the default utilities, you can use the VI API and perl to extract the data you're looking for. You can check out the following for more info: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/viperltoolkit/doc/perl_toolkit_guide_idx.html

Also if you're using VIMA, you can check out this health report that provides some of the information you're looking for and much much more at: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9420

=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

VIMA can't connect to the network

vancod — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:51:11 GMT

Sorry - false alarm. For the second time I have been burned by a customer whose assured me their network was "in good order". It was a routing issue.

Yesterday I was told their VLANs were"all set" and the instant I moved one of the ESX hosts' service console to it - boom - dead server.

VIMA logging and log rotation - does it miss entries?

ewannema — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:06:50 GMT

As you indicate the logs are "close" to real time. What happens when the logs are rotated between polling intervals? I guess I will have to do some experimental investigation. That will tell me if the behavior is what I expect, but not how to work around it.

http://wannemacher.us

resxtop error

benma — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:57:18 GMT

My error

resxtop.sh is a better choice

vilogger and location of log files

russ_givens — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:44:19 GMT

guess I wasn't patient enough because I looked in that dir at first and there wasn't anything there, but there is now. Thanks for the clarification.

vima and firewall

russ_givens — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:36:22 GMT

just was looking through some information and found out how to disable the iptables. That addressed the issue, but I figure since it's enabled from the get go I'll try to work out how to get iptables working with the agent. I know the esxcfg-firewall commands to get the agent working so I know what I need I just got to figure the iptable commands out.

Thanks for the help

Setting PAM - Kerberos Auth in VIMA

halcabes — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:58:39 GMT

Mickkael -- Thanks for your feedback.

As noted above, RCLI installed on Windows can use Active Directory to authenticate to a vCenter server but RCLI on Linux currently cannot.

Neither VIMA 1.0 or our very next release will support Kerberos Auth or Active Directory.

We do consider this an extremely high priority feature request that will be considered for a subsequent release of VIMA.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

Scripting ESX(i) configurations in VIMA

lamw — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:35:38 GMT

You can utilize the RCLI which are the (vicfg-*,esxcfg-*) commands as you would have on the fat version of ESX w/SC to configure ESXi. In terms of using vimsh specifics, the default utilities that come pre-installed with VIMA does not include every functionality but all those options and more can be scripted by using the VI Perl Toolkit and the VI API.

It takes a little time understanding the managed object model but you can pretty much automate any task that you would do manually within a GUI using the VI Perl Toolkit, you can always browse the forums to see if there tasks that have been pre-written. If you're using the free unlicensed version of ESXi, know that in a future patch or release, the API will be locked back down and in readonly mode.

http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=115

If you're looking to automate some of the configurations using VIMA/RCLI, make sure you're not using the free license version, you'll need to pay to get that functionality. You always have the option of opening up the unsupported SSH mode and using vimsh, majority of the commands are the same but instead of vmware-vim-cmd, it's just vim-cmd.

=========================================================================
--William
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

"SNMP Get" Support with VIMA?

halcabes — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:28:39 GMT

The SNMP agent in VIMA 1.0 provides management of the VIMA virtual machine itself, not the target hosts.

SNMP in VIMA 1.0 supports SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3 protocols.

Polling the agent with (Get/next/bulk pdu) is available

getbulk is only available with V2c/V3 protocol

Configuration of notifications is available

this supports v1 trap, v2 trap, and v2 inform pdu formats

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

32-bit

halcabes — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:57:57 GMT

Sorry, but no, there is no 32-bit VIMA.

You could probably assemble something similar on your own, but then you'd need to take care of any maintenance (e..g OS security patches).

There is an older RCLI appliance that has a 32-bit OS, but it doesn't include all of the features of VIMA and it's not recommended for production use (in part because it will not be maintained or updated with any patches).

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
VIMA Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

HowTo set up agents (VCBn Insight...) ?

lamw — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:36:40 GMT

Again, I'm not aware of any 3rd party agents or VCB agent within VIMA. If you want to know what's currently supported or features, please take a look at: http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/

Remember, this is only 1.0, I'm sure more is to come.

Regarding VCB, it does support ESXi but the plugin is installed on either your vCenter or your VCB proxy server which today requires a Win2k3 Server. If you have more questions regarding VCB and ESXi, you can take a look at the release notes and configuration documents or post in the ESXi forum.

=========================================================================
--William
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

Cloned vima, now vifp doesn't work.

lamw — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:36:51 GMT

If you take a look at VIMA 1.0 release notes, there are list of known issues/workarounds, one of which is the following:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/vima10/vima10relnotes.html

Cannot clone VIMA

Description: Cloning the VIMA 1.0 virtual machine is not supported.

Workaround: No workaround.

I have not looked into how the appliance was built, but wondering if you can just backup some type of config. Since VIMA is a virtual appliance, you don't really need to backup. I would probably store any scripts you may have written, say on NFS and if there is a way to export the data such as the managed ESX/ESXi(s), that would probably be all you need.

EDIT:

With some poking around it looks like there are few configs you might be able to just backup, you would need to double check with VMware to see if there are other files you need or subset of files to restore from:

~~vi-admin@vima-primp-industries ~~~$ ls -l /etc/vmware/viconfig/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1635 Jan 9 15:36 viconfig.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 vi-admin root 429 Nov 1 11:35 vilogdefaults.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 vi-admin root 100 Nov 6 20:57 vilogpolicy.xml

Specifically "viconfig.xml" looks like it's holding all the manged ESX/ESXi hosts.

I would imagine in the next release, cloning or backups would be supported.

=========================================================================
--William
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

Having issues with "vmclone.pl" and "vmreconfig.pl"

lamw — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:08:43 GMT

I finally got some time to test this out, and you're right, --vmhost is whatever hostname or IP --server (or VC) in this case has the ESX Server listed. In our development environment, the server was added using it's IP Address, even though the VI-Fastpass has the server added using it's DNS name. Thanks for this information

Though I noticed a few things with the following commands, and I was wondering if this may be a bug or safety precaution in terms what % of free space is required or manual override by specifying --datastore to store the clones.

Here is the listing of VM to be cloned and where it's stored

[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries vm]$ ./vminfo.pl --server 172.30.0.64 --vmname UCSB-ENGINEERING

Information of Virtual Machine UCSB-ENGINEERING

Name:            UCSB-ENGINEERING
No. of CPU(s):           1
Memory Size:             2048
Virtual Disks:           1
Template:                0
vmPathName:              [http://dlgCore-FC-LUN200.Templates|http://dlgCore-FC-LUN200.Templates] UCSB-ENGINEERING/UCSB-ENGINEERING.vmx
Guest OS:                Not Known
guestId:                 Not Known
Host name:               Not Known
IP Address:              Not Known
VMware Tools:            VMware Tools is not running.
Cpu usage:               Not Known
Host memory usage:               Not Known
Guest memory usage:              Not Known
Overall Status:          The entity is OK
[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries vm]$

Here is list of steps that I took:

1. Tried to clone a VM that is sitting on FC SAN that is 10gb with 44gb free on the datastore (*assumption, not passing in the datastore will clone the VM within the same datastore ?*)

[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries vm]$ ./vmclone.pl --vmname UCSB-ENGINEERING --vmname_destination UCSB-ENGINEERING-CLONE-1 --vmhost 172.30.0.64 --server 172.30.0.60 --username primp
Enter password:

The free space available is less than the specified disksize or the host is not accessible.

2. Tried the same clone procedure but specifying the datastore flag and passing in the datastore in where the VM is stored (*expected this to fail, but it succeeded*)

[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries vm]$ ./vmclone.pl --vmname UCSB-ENGINEERING --vmname_destination UCSB-ENGINEERING-CLONE-1 --vmhost 172.30.0.64 --server 172.30.0.60 --username primp --datastore dlgCore-FC-LUN200.Templates
Enter password:

Cloning virtual machine 'UCSB-ENGINEERING' ...

Clone 'UCSB-ENGINEERING-CLONE-1' of virtual machine 'UCSB-ENGINEERING' successfully created.[vi-admin@vima-primp-industries vm]$

This actually succeeded to my surprised, so I was wondering is there certain % free the clone procedure requires?

btw, looks like the success message might require a newline break, as it's on the same line as the prompt.

=========================================================================
--William
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

ESXi logging limitations?

ralish — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:25:28 GMT

Thank you very much for the clarification, this cleans up the confusion for me entirely.

It might be worthwhile to amend the VIMA documentation to better reflect what exactly can be logged in ESX versus ESXi, as currently, it just provides a list of potential log files with no explanation as to expected availability.

running IBM ServeRaid agent in vima

halcabes — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:49:07 GMT

As John Noone, Product Manager at APC, posted elsewhere in the VIMA forum:

PowerChute Network Shutdown for VMware ESXi is currently under development and will be available in 2009.

That version will be fully compatible version with VIMA and ESXi.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

How to set timezone for VIMA appliance

halcabes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:04:01 GMT

Information on changing the time zone in VIMA can also be found in VMware Knowledge Base article 1007551which includes:

You can change the time zone from the VIMA Linux console, as follows:

1. Remove the existing localtime file.

# sudo rm /etc/localtime　

2. Make a symbolic link for the time zone that you want to use. For example, for Tokyo time:

# sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Tokyo /etc/localtime

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

How to set IP Addr for VIMA?

trusted@dvisor — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:40:14 GMT

Don't forget to run:

sudo service network restart

I was scratching my head for a while until I figured that one out. The system-config-network utility doesn't restart the network daemon for you apparently...

best regards,

Sean Clark - http://seanclark.us - http://twitter.com/vseanclark

Update syslog.conf

RobMokkink — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:48:04 GMT

Hi AshWath,

Thanks for your reply. But i already know that

I have my own powershell script to configure or reconfigure alle esx hosts in a farm.

64-bit Enterprise Linux

pgarousi — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:17:08 GMT

Yes, that answers my question.

Thanks halcabes!

Opteron processor compatibility

halcabes — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:47:05 GMT

I think this means we only need to upgrade the chips on those ESXi
hosts which must run a 64 bit guest, while we need not upgrade to
monitor the others running 32 bit guest Oses. Furthermore, the Opteron
Rev. E requirement is for running any 64 bit guest OS,
not just the VIMA appliance. Am I correct in this assumption?

Yes, you appear to understand it correctly.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

default login name

tregnabm — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:32:32 GMT

Great, thank you

VIMA for 64 bits

halcabes — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:26:38 GMT

The RCLI appliance can do many of the things that can be done with VIMA. You can run RCLI scripts in either; you can also install RCLI into your own Linux or Windows VM or physical machine.

Both the RCLI appliance and VIMA can be used to run RCLI & VI Perl Toolkit scripts.

Some of the features included in VIMA include but not in the RCLI Appliance include:

component for caching authentication

component for collecting ESX log files

VIMA is designed to host agents that will be released by some 3rd party developers

VIMA is supported for production use

VIMA includes a mechanism for VMware to provide updates, if needed

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

unable to update VIMA

halcabes — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:56:14 GMT

That's correct, no update so far.

If we do post an update we'll announce it to this VIMA community forum.

--Harvey

Harvey Alcabes
Product Manager
VMware, Inc.

VMware Communities : All Content - vSphere Management Assistant (vMA)

ghettoVCBg2 - Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!)

Table of Contents:

Description:

Features

Requirements:

ESX/ESXi Version Support Table

Setup:

Addings ESX/ESXi host(s) to VIMA/vMA

Configurations

Usage:

Sample Execution

Backup VMs located in a list

Backup VMs based on individual VM backup policies and log output to /tmp/ghettoVCB.log

Dry run Mode (no backup will take place)

FAQ

Change Log

convert Fusion disk to ESXi using vMA

Can't Install VMa

Slow Performance with RCLI Scripts

How to reset IP / hostname info in vMA appliance?

How to retrieve target ESXi4 license from vMA?

Can you use ghettoVCBg2 for Lab Manager?

Failed Adding Target Servers (hosts! not guests...) to VIMA with sudo vifp addserver

Need dynamic updates on VM's Status... is vMA right for me?

inquiry about vmware-vilogd (vilogger daemon)

can't remove ESX hosts from vMA

esxcli command does not work as expected

Using VIMA to shut down an EqualLogic PS5000E SAN

Getting Started with the vMA (tips/tricks)

Getting started with Documentation:

Examples

Scripts and Tools

Tweaks

Update vMA without internet access

Add vcenter- should i see all esx hosts too?

vMA corrupt, stuck in fsck boot-loop (how do I get in as "root"?)

Use of uninitialized value in string eq at /usr/bin/vmware-cmd line 392 error?

vMA 4.0 + Patch1 Still Vulnerable

vMA RCLI

Problem with vdiskcreate.pl

ESXi 4 - vGhettoLinkedClone - Agent Error

Noob... haha. Need help understanding...

vMA4 vima-update error

ESX/ESXi APC/APCUPSD Host Shutdown VI Perl Toolkit Script (ghettoShutdown.pl/upsVIShutdown.pl)

Description

Requirements

Usage

Overview of the scripts:

Scenario

Setup

Sample output

Change Keyboard Layout in vMA

How to install VDDK 1.1 on vMA 4.0 (libfuse.so.2 fix)

cron + vifpinit

vMA Compatible Agent/Scripts(Third Party) Community List

Can't run VMa 64 bit compatability confusion

VMA concept overview question.

Transferring Script Files to vMA

problems updating VIMA

Technology Exchange Developer Day - Learn about vMA as a platform for deploying scripts and agents

vilogger vs syslog

compatible with "apcupsd-multimon"

takeVMScreenshot.pl using vMA 4.0

Installing VM like Vima.

Learn about vSphere vMA @ Developer - Video

Hot add memory to vMA or other supported Linux guestOSes using vSphere ESX(i) 4.0

Summary

Resources

Requirements

Instructions

vGhettoLinkedClone script and additional documentation

How to increase/resize vMA Disks

Summary:

Environment:

Operation:

Steps:

Resizing the vMA disk

How to get any VM's hostname using Remote CLI [ESX Server] ?

Vima 1.0 setup Help