VMware Communities : Document List - Lab Manager

Lab Manager 4.0 Internal APIs

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:46:34 GMT

Lab Manager Best Practices

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:14:34 GMT

Unable to install software from a shared drive

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:12:34 GMT

Using VMware Lab Manager, I have set up a VM and can access it via Windows Remote desktop. I can access shared drives through the network in the VM and can see thier contents with no problem. However, when I try to install software via a shared drive or folder, it fails.

Are there any settings I need to configure to allow software installs from a shared, say, DVD drive? This is vital to my testing efforts.

Thanks in advance.

Automating Lab Manager with PowerShell

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:22:44 GMT

Hear and see VMware PowerShell guru Carter Shanklin describe how to use PowerShell to automate Lab Manager:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell
http://vimeo.com/2768903

LabManagerInternal API Documentation

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:17:15 GMT

Lab Manager's SOAP interface is split into internal and external APIs. Only the external APIs are officially supported-- they are the ones documented in the SOAP API guide found at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/labmanager_pubs.html.

The documentation for the internal API is attached here with the following conditions:

This is an unsupported interface. VMware engineering and tech support will not take SRs regarding methods not in the SOAP API guide
Methods that are not in the SOAP API Guide will change or be deleted without deprecation.
There is no guarantee of completeness of internal API functions or functionality. Use these methods at your own risk.
This documentation is provided AS IS. There may be differences between what is shipped and what is in this documentation.

Because of these conditions, you are heavily encouraged to use only external API functions in your code. We find that oftentimes when users are trying to use internal APIs they are using techniques that make things more difficult than they need to be. This forum can be a good place to vet techniques of using the SOAP API.

Steven

VMware Firewall Ports(v1.0).xls (including visio diagram)

Thu, 22 May 2008 20:56:27 GMT

LM Networking

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:30:29 GMT

Can a LabManager VM disk size be increased (extended)?

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:17:33 GMT

I need to increase the disk size for some of my templates in LabManager. I don't see a way to do this through the interface or through VIC. I tried the following commands on the host server but got an error that you cannot extend the disk you have to extend the parent.

Power off the VM

Go to the console of the VMWare host server that hosts the VM

Change directories to \vmfs\volumes\(san disk label)

Change directories to the directory name of the server you want to expand

Type in the command vmkfstools -X ##G (servername.vmdk) (example: vmkfstools -X 90G aa-chatter.vmdk). The ##G is the total size of the file in GB. So if you have a 20GB file and you want to add another 10GB you would enter the new file size as 30GB

Logout of the console

Power on the VM

Start, run, diskpart

List the volumes in diskpart with "list volume"

Select the volume to be expanded with the command "select volume #" (where # is the number of the volume from the list volume command)

Enter the command ‘extend' to extend the volume.

Exit diskpart

That is exaclty how I did it.

Just make sure you're accessing the right folder, and not a linked clone.

Watch out; I would be very careful here. Direct access to Lab Manager VMs is not supported and can break a lot of things fast.

Lab Manager templates can be-- and often are linked clones, and aw Yeowow mentions you can't do a `vmkfstools -X` on a COW disk.

In addition, doing this on a Lab Manager disk may just break all the linked clones on top of it.

Thanks for the responses. So is there a supported way to extend the disk with LabManager VMs? Do we have to rebuild templates from scratch to extend the disk? That's a lot of rework.

Thanks.

Try it like this.

Go to Templates area
Highlight required Template name, and select Consolidate
Wait for consolidation to complete (if it is needed)
Highlight requried Template name, and select Properties
Make note of "VM Directory ID"
Login via SSH or console to your ESX Host
Navigate to your storage server of that VM (/vmfs/volumes/Local-RAID/VM/$VMDirectoryID)
Make a backup of the disk file (vmkfstools -i nameofvmdk.vmdk DestinationOfBackup.vmdk)
Increase the original vmdk size (vmkfstools -X 30G nameofvmdk.vmdk)
Back in Lab Manager, go to properties for the Template, and you should see your increased disk size.

This has worked successfully for me multiple times

Thanks a lot, Yeowow. That worked.

It appeared that this worked, however, when I create a new config from the template or deploy the template itself the disk is still only at my original size of 8Gb. The properties of the template show the new size of 20G.

Is there another step I missed? I followed the steps in Yeowow's reply.

Thanks

The steps I listed only allowed you to grow the Virtual Disk.

You will still need to run a disk tool to utilise the new space available (fdisk/gparted/Partition Magic/etc)

This document was generated from the following thread: Can a LabManager VM disk size be increased (extended)?