Remote Console dissapears when VM powers off

[tdyson]

Hi Folks,

I am used to working with the VM console app in the vSphere Client which stays open when the Virtual Machine powers off.

Now I am working on implementing vCloud Director and using the vCD Remote Console (vmware-vmrc.exe) . I notice the VMRC closes when the VM is powered off. If I wish to interrupt the boot process on a Linux VM, say to go to single user mode, then this is tricky with the VMRC as I can not open it in time after powering on the VM. To allow for this I need to increase the boot menu timeout in grub.conf to about 25 seconds.

Also there appears to be no way to interact with the VM BIOS as can be done with the vSphere Client console. This is useful when I have an OS installed in a VM but wish to PXE boot.

Is there any way to stop the VMRC window from closing when the VM powers off?

Is there a way to interact with the VM BIOS using VMRC?

TIA - Trevor

[admin]

VCD only allows you to open the console for powered on VMs, although I didn't realize the client closes upon power off. I'm not sure about the answers to your questions.

[admin]

Checked with some other folks. You can access the BIOS with VMRC as long as you can get the console open fast enough before it moves on to trying to boot your OS. If you can't get to it fast enough try doing a soft reset of the VM (which should not close the console).