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WonderVM
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Take EXSi Hosts off domain for work externally.

Hi

We have built 2 ESXi 5.5 hosts and configured in a cluster.

Installed SQL Database Server and vCenter Server and connected to iSCSI SAN.

We created 6 server VMs and 6 workstation VMs on hosts.

We need to send the kit off site to have systems installed on the servers and the questions I have are:

1 - As everything was configured to our domain will the vCenter and Database server be OK to operate or could I run into issues.

2 - If it wont work off the domain and I don't activate the vcenter is there a way I can edit say network settings in VMs with VM tools 10...

Thanks for any help....

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1 Reply
tomtom901
Commander
Commander

A bit of a hassle, but you can revert the VM tools v10 back to vmx-9 which is editable via the vSphere client (no need for vCenter):

1) Open up a SSH connection to the host.

2) Go to the folder for the VM.

3) Edit the .vmx file with vi, i.e. vi MyVM.vmx.

4) Change virtualHW.version = "10" to virtualHW.version = "9".

5) Remove the VM from the inventory by right clicking it -> Remove from inventory. (Do not delete from disk!)

6) Open up the datastore browser (right click the datastore -> browse) and go to the folder for the VM.

7) Right click the .vmx file and choose add to directory.

😎 You can now edit the settings via the vSphere client and you do not need vCenter at this point.

Hope this helps,