Hi Bug_juice,

I hope you'll find some information in that thread .

Regards

Franck

So I swear I was able to perform this option using just vimsh but once I got home, I've been unable to reproduce the results. I'm pretty sure it had worked, but perhaps it was too early in the morning ....

I'm assuming it was some type of advanced configuration to enable management interface, some of these advanced configurations are stored in /etc/vmware/esx.conf and if you've enabled vMotion or FT via vim-cmd, you'll notice entries in this configuration file. I took a look to see if there was anything related to the management interface and there is an entry called "/Net/ManagementIface" which by default is set to vmk0. I thought, perhaps this might be the correct entry and after giving it a try, I was able to enable the management interface for any valid vmkernel interface. I even created multiple interfaces and was able to enable without any issues. I'm not sure if it was a fluke or from other commands that some how made it work, as I said, I'm unable to reproduce the results.

Enable vMotion:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update Migrate.Vmknic string vmk1

Enable FT:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update FT.Vmknic string vmk1

Enable Management:

vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/update Net.ManagementIface string vmk1

Refresh networking:

vim-cmd hostsvc/net/refresh

I was looking to see if there was another method and I thought of one which is indirectly making a call to the API method which is used in my vSphere SDK for Perl script to enable the various vmkernel interfaces using the vSphere MOB. I actually remembered another blogger who created a python script on an ESXi host which allowed him to join his host to vCenter w/o the use of the external SDK's - http://geauxvirtual.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/automatically-add-esxi-to-vcenter-from-esxi/

I adapted his example and produced the following python script:

import sys,re,os,urllib,urllib2

# William Lam
# Python URL code based on http://geauxvirtual.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/automatically-add-esxi-to-vcenter-from-esxi/

# connection info to MOB
url = "https://localhost/mob/?moid=ha-vnic-mgr&method=selectVnic"
username = "root"
password = "password"

#nicType = (management,vmotion,faultToleranceLogging)
nictype=sys.argv[1]

#device = (vmkX)
device=sys.argv[2]

#auth
passman = urllib2.HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm()
passman.add_password(None,url,username,password)
authhandler = urllib2.HTTPBasicAuthHandler(passman)
opener = urllib2.build_opener(authhandler)
urllib2.install_opener(opener)

#execute method
params = {'nicType':nictype,'device':device}
e_params = urllib.urlencode(params)
req = urllib2.Request(url,e_params)
page = urllib2.urlopen(req).read()

You will need to edit the script and specify the local root password and then the rest can be passed via the commandline.

You will need to specify the nicType which can be one of the following management,vmotion,faultToleranceLogging and the device which is vmkX where X is one of your vmkernel interface which can be listed using esxcfg-vmknic -l

Here is an example of enabling the management on vmk1:

~ # python enableVmkInterface.py management vmk1
~ #

If it was successful, you will not see any output from the script as the API method is void if executed successfully. If you take a look at the vSphere Client, you should see the Management Traffic enabled for the given vmkernel interface. It's not ideal as you require an additional script to execute, but at least this allows you to enable it directly in Tech Support Mode. Ideally, you'll want to use the SDK's to perform all this work, makes all this much much easier.

Sorry I was not able to get it working using vimsh

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009,2010

VMware scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

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 Community

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