ESX deployment appliance v1.05

[brugh]

https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/products/esx-deployment-appliance-eda

ESX Deployment Appliance (EDA) is a small and easy to use appliance

that makes deploying ESX servers a breeze. It has a very intuitive

web-interface that can configure and deploy dozens of ESX servers in

minutes. It has a script-builder that will allow any admin to create

%post-scripts that will do most anything one needs to get the ESX hosts

up and running! Even if deploying with RDP/Altiris or the UDA, this

script-builder can help setting those up very quickly.

[hakimzc]

Hi Ronaldpj2,

Looks good!

I am trying to run the commands from Putty before putting them in the script,

to make sure they do what I want. I am going with your second method

(changing the number at the end of the IP address).

I am trying to do the following :-

Firstly I do this:-

VMip=10.10.10.61

I have done this because I do not think my host knows what ###HOSTIP### is

unless I am using the eda.

I am now trying this:-

SCStorage=\`echo \$VMip | awk -F. '{ printf("%d.%d.%d.%d\n",

\$1,\$2,\$3,\$4-30); }'\`

However, the host does not like it, I am sure it is to do with the syntax.

Putty just shows this (have have put some stars around it:-

*****************************************************************************

************

SCStorage=\`echo \$VMip | awk -F. '{ printf("%d.%d.%d.%d\n",

\$1,\$2,\$3,\$4-30); }'\`

*****************************************************************************

************

It just hang there and I have to do a Ctrl+c to get out of it.

I think it is something to do with the syntax because I remember that last

command you gave me (the one for sorting out the iSCSI WWN name) had a

backslash in it that I had to remove before it would work.

You gave me:-

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/storage/iscsi_set_name vmhba32

iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:\$HOSTNAME"

But I had to use:-

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/storage/iscsi_set_name vmhba32

iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:$HOSTNAME"

It's frustrating, I have had a look on the internet and have seen a bit about

awk (I trust it is part of esx4), so I can kind of see the logic.

Thanks again for taking some time to help me,

Hakimzc

[ronaldpj2]

Ah, sorry about that. The commands I posted where from the EDA. The "/ " in there are there to make sure that special characters are interpreted as special characters. The best way to emulate this within the SC is by doing what the EDA is doing as well:

You can create the script like this:

cat > /tmp/esxcfg.sh <<EOF1

After this you put in the commands you want to put in the EDA, and you end with:

EOF1

chmod +x /tmp/esxcfg.sh

Then you can view the script and you will see that most of the /'s have disappeared. If the command seems okay, you can run it by doing:

/tmp/esxcfg.sh

Otherwise, you need to strip the \ from the commands, and add them again after your done, that's a lot more difficult.

cheers,

ronald

[hakimzc]

Sorry Ronaldpj2,

I have updated the error, I copied the wrong thing between the stars first

time round, take another look below.

Thanks for this,

Cyrus

[hakimzc]

Oh right, I think I understand.

I will play with it and hopefully get it working.

I have managed to get the following working successfully in the ks script,

name=`hostname -s`

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/storage/iscsi_set_name vmhba33

iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:\$name"

I will now try and get the IP address sorted out!

Thanks for your tips, scripting in linux is new to me.

Cyrus

[JCV]

Curious if anyone has tried this guide in regards to stripping hba drivers from ESX 4.0 update 1 iso. If so any tips or suggestions? Have alot of upgrades to do and we plan on using eda to rebuild each host rather than preform upgrade from 3.5 to 4.

http://www.cfengine.org/manuals/cf3-tutorial.pdf

[JCV]

Ignore the link in my previous post please. I got a little cut n paste happy.

I attached the actual pdf file I am reffering to.

Thanks ahead for any info,

[JCV]

works pretty good, used the guide to make a new iso.

[77seb77]

Je suis absent jusqu'au 1er Mars 2010. Merci d'ecrire à

ServiceDesk-FR@eads.com.

I am out of the office until March, 1st 2010. Please write to

ServiceDesk-FR@eads.com.

Cordialement, Best Regards,

Sébastien BRIAND

Back Office Operations France / IMS431

EADS Defence and Security

MetaPole

1 Boulevard Jean Moulin

CS 40001

78996 ELANCOURT CEDEX

Tel : +33 (0)1 61 38 70 34

Fax: +33 (0)1 61 38 57 16

Email: sebastien.briand@eads.com

[dinny]

Hiya,

Even easier to use the script - as opposed to doing it manually.

Both published on the VIOPS site - under management:

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11951

Glad you found it useful.

Dinny

[JCV]

I would have but I used ubuntu to rebuild the iso and they do not have mkisofs in any repositories that I could find. Regardless great job and thanks for putting together the guide!

Jon

[larryl0099]

Brugh,

firstly, thanks if this does what it says on the tin (and from what i have read having scanned most of the thread it does. This will save me a lot of time over the various datacenters that i deal with.

secondly,

as a new user it would be helpful if the quick start guide was more advertised as most of the links that i have been able to find are no longer working (due to the change in hosting location that you have gone through) can i suggest that you update the link in the change log on the Vmware applicance directory (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/89313) as well as maybe adding a perminent link under the support tab.

It took me about 4 hours to read through to page 25-28 where i found the change in hosting informaiton posted, however had already seen several mentions of the guide.

Im sure that i will be back here to ask some questions but im just having a look at trying to get it up and working at the moment (my 1 issue has been resolved in the quick start guide with the information related to DHCP option 67

GOOD JOB, and thanks from me and the other guys here for saving us alot of time in the future (once we have it working)

Mark

[theholg]

Hello,

I receive a error message, when i try to install ESXi 4u1 over pxe with the eda v. 0.90. Fatal: Out of memory reading image.tgz.

Thanks for your support.

Regards Holger

[larryl0099]

Whlie im still looking into a couple of issues that we appear to be having here, ill put this out to the wider group

PXE is now working and booting to the pre-boot environment, however the installation never seems to finish.

it runs through installing various drivers or segments and then throws a message on the screen

"No COS NIC's added by user" and then goes to a Press enter to reboot screen.

it doesnt seem to progress past this and i cant seem to get my head round why, having taken a look a the rest of this thread it doesnt appear to be related to the disk partition part of the KS as ive set it to use autopart just to get it working.

i have setup the general esx host options and the DHCP options as PXE is working.

any suggestions?

On a separate note, the web gui looks really bad in Safari , it doesnt render quite right and the post installation box is part way over the General ESX Host Settings box, just a minor issue but being a Mac user i like to be able to use the tools i have at hand, lucky for such an occasion i have a XP VM , it also seems to work on firefox for the mac and pc

[dinny]

Hi Larry,

My build hung there yesterday (and that did turn out to be partition related) - sounds like yours is something else though.

If you Alt F2 (or Alt F3 - I forget which), then you can get access to a shell prompt and run some debugging commands from there - which may well give you some pointers as to what the actual problem is.

Dinny

[JCV]

If this is a rebuild with an earlier version of esx, you might need to add the -overwritevmfs switch to the clearpart command in the partitioning form.

[larryl0099]

Dinny,

cheers, ill try and take a look, just to make sure that im not being completely stupid, i have put the KS used into this message.

Where on the EDA server can i edit the KS directly, as i would like to change the Keyboard to UK rather than US, it might be helpful to add some of the file locations to the quick setup guide, as i have spent a while going through what is now a 37 page thread but not been able to find out file locations etc, which might not be a bad thing as my lines skills are limited

thanks in advance

KS file used

rootpw --iscrypted $1$kZzoE8kP$abUOwucRnktQd6a4kk.D8/

bootloader --location=mbr

auth --enableshadow --enablemd5

timezone UTC

install

keyboard us

reboot

firewall --disabled

network --bootproto=static --device=vmnic0 --ip=172.19.5.248 --netmask=255.255.255.0 --gateway=172.19.5.1 --nameserver=172.19.5.22 --hostname=testesx1.lab.synetrix.local

clearpart drives=onfirstdisk --overwritevmfs

autopart disk=onfirstdisk

1. OR:

2. part /boot --fstype=ext3 --size=250 --ondisk=/dev/sda

3. part cos --fstype=vmfs3 --size=14000 --ondisk=/dev/sda

4. part None --fstype=vmkcore --size=100 --ondisk=/dev/sda

5. virtualdisk vd1 --size=13000 --onvmfs=cos

6. part / --fstype=ext3 --size=5120 --onvirtualdisk=vd1

7. part swap --fstype=swap --size=1600 --onvirtualdisk=vd1

8. part /var --fstype=ext3 --size=4096 --onvirtualdisk=vd1

9. part /tmp --fstype=ext3 --size=2048 --onvirtualdisk=vd1

vmaccepteula

1. vmlicense --mode=server --server=27000@172.19.5.18 --edition=esxFull

%packages

1. @base

%post --interpreter=bash

cat > /root/esxcfg.sh <<EOF1

#!/bin/bash

esxcfg-firewall --allowOutGoing

myIP=172.19.5.248

esxcfg-vswitch -A DMZ vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -A RnD vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -A VRC vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -v 10 -p VRC vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -v 20 -p RnD vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -v 30 -p DMZ vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -A VMotion vSwitch0

1. Dont edit the next line! check ks link in table of ESX hosts for output

esxcfg-vmknic -a VMotion -i 172.19.5.249 -n 255.255.255.0

service mgmt-vmware restart

sleep 5

while ; do

sleep 5

echo Waiting for hostd to accept connections..

done

vimsh -n -e "hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set vmk0"

esxcfg-vswitch -A Internal0 vSwitch0

esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic1 vSwitch0

perl -pi -e "s/PermitRootLogin no/PermitRootLogin yes/" /etc/ssh/sshd_config

service sshd restart

esxcfg-firewall --blockOutgoing

EOF1

1. Make esxcfg.sh eXcutable

chmod +x /root/esxcfg.sh

1. Backup original rc.local file

cp /etc/rc.d/rc.local /etc/rc.d/rc.local.bak

1. Make esxcfg.sh run from rc.local and make rc.local reset itself

cat >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local <<EOF2

cd /root

/root/esxcfg.sh

mv -f /etc/rc.d/rc.local.bak /etc/rc.d/rc.local

EOF

[dinny]

Hiya,

Looks like you may be missing the /dev/sda in your clearpart statement?

clearpart drives=onfirstdisk --overwritevmfs

should be

clearpart --drives=/dev/sda --onfirstdisk --overwritevmfs

I'm afraid I mainly use UDA as opposed to EDA - so I can't help much re the actual location of the ks file

Dinny

[JCV]

Here is how we setup the partitioning:

clearpart --firstdisk --overwritevmfs

part '/boot' --fstype=ext3 --size=1100 --onfirstdisk

part 'none' --fstype=vmkcore --size=110 --onfirstdisk

part 'Storage1' --fstype=vmfs3 --size=29007 --grow --onfirstdisk

virtualdisk 'cos' --size=24007 --onvmfs='Storage1'

part '/var' --fstype=ext3 --size=5000 --maxsize=5000 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

part '/' --fstype=ext3 --size=10000 --maxsize=10000 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

part '/home' --fstype=ext3 --size=1000 --maxsize=1000 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

part '/tmp' --fstype=ext3 --size=3000 --maxsize=3000 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

part '/opt' --fstype=ext3 --size=3000 --maxsize=3000 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

part 'swap' --fstype=swap --size=1600 --maxsize=1600 --onvirtualdisk='cos'

The KS files start in /var/www/ks from there you should be able to track down what your looking for.

[andystapley]

Dinny and JVC,

thanks for the information, ill take a look again over the next few days when i can get back to ESX stuff.

Mark

[sbrad001]

My apologies if this has been asked before... didn't have the time to sift through all the posts... but is it possible to add drivers from an VMware driver CD to the install piece?

I've got a BL495G6 with Flex-10 NICs and the latest ESX 4 Update1 iso doesn't include them.. so have to use a VMware driver CD during the install. I am really hoping there is a whay to "slipstream" the drivers in..?