PowerCLI and ESXi

[jpoling]

I am new to managing ESXi.  For several servers I am installing in our environment, I need to add NIC and HBA drivers.  I also need to get the latest update for ESXi 4.1 installed.  So far, I've used the vSphere CLI (vihostupdate.pl) to accomplish those things.  Is there an equivalent command(s) in PowerCLI to update drivers, etc. in ESXi?

Thanks!

Jeff

[Troy_Clavell]

thread moved from VMware ESXi™ 4 to VMware vSphere™ PowerCLI

[LucD]

Adding a vNIC to a host is done through the New-VMHostNetworkAdapter cmdlet.

For iSCSI HBA manipulation you can start with the Set-IScsiHbaTarget cmdlet.

For FC HBA you can use the Set-ScsiLun and Set-ScsiLunPath cmdlets.

Installing ESXi updates can be done with the cmdlets from the Update Manager snapin.

But perhaps you can be a bit more specific of what you actually want to do.

Or perhaps show the CLI commands you used till now.

[jpoling]

Sorry for the lack of specifics. . .here are the commands I used with the CLI:

For adding Intel NIC drivers:

vihostupdate.pl --server <IP address> -i -b c:\temp\vmware\INT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-3.1.17-offline_bundle-452075.zip

For adding Brocade HBA and CNA drivers:

vihostupdate.pl --server <IP Address> -i -b c:\temp\vmware\BRCD-bfa-2.1.1.1-00000-offline_bundle-285864.zip

For updating to 4.1 Update 1:

vihostupdate.pl --server <IP Address> -i -b c:\temp\vmware\update-from-esxi4.1-4.1_update01.zip

All of this is prep work before I add these new hosts to our cluster - getting them at the same level and configuration as the current hosts.

Thanks,

Jeff

[LucD · Accepted solution]

For the drivers you can use the Install-VMHostPatch cmdlet.

Have a look at Julian's excellent post called Updating Broadcom bnx2x Nic Drivers with PowerCLI for an example.

The procedure for upgrading to ESXi 4.1 Update 1 is discussed in the updating from esxi 4.1 to esxi 4.1 update 1 using powercli thread.

Note Vitali's comment at the end of the thread.