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Crackle
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vSphere Options Missing

Greetings,

I just setup ESX 4.0, installed a vm, installed the vSphere client on my PC. Can't find most of the options the Docs are mentioning.

For Example, the manual says to click Administration, Custom Attributes... and when I click Administration from the menu in vSphere the only sub option is "roles"

Example-2, manual says click View, Inventory, Search...all I see under View, Inventory is "inventory"

Example-3, to create a VM clone from the home page, click VMs and Templates... The home page has nothing like that, I have 3 icons "inventory", "roles" and "system logs".

I did not read any docs before the install as it all seemed simple enough, but I must have done something dumb to be missing all those options. I am logged into the zSphere Client using root.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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lamw
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All the features you're referring to are not available on a stand alone ESX or ESXi host. These are only made available when have vCenter managing your hosts and you'll get additional views as mentioned in the documents. Basically what you see when connecting directly to the vSphere Client are all the available options to you. Certain things like cloning, folders, custom attributes are features of vCenter which is a separate product that you would need to purchase to enable those and many other functionalities.

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

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lamw
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All the features you're referring to are not available on a stand alone ESX or ESXi host. These are only made available when have vCenter managing your hosts and you'll get additional views as mentioned in the documents. Basically what you see when connecting directly to the vSphere Client are all the available options to you. Certain things like cloning, folders, custom attributes are features of vCenter which is a separate product that you would need to purchase to enable those and many other functionalities.

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

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Crackle
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OK, thanks. I was suspecting it was tied to vCenter but I was lacking sufficient intellect to prove/disporove that theory. I tried to download and install that but as you mentioned, it is a seperate product and not something the salesman mentioned that I needed.

Oh well, it's just more money...

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lamw
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There is a 60day eval that you could try the product out and see if you like it. I would probably play with your ESX(i) host and see how you like that and once you're comfortable with it, give vCenter a try and you should see the added value, especially the consolidated view + all the additional functionality like cloning/etc. Though you really only need vCenter if you're managing > 3-5 hosts, else it can be pretty pricey for the product alone.

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Crackle
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Thanks again.

I am really new to this (only a few hours under my belt) so please excuse the ignorance. It was seeming that I can't do cloning with vSphere or the ESX box itself. So I figure I need vCenter to do the cloning?

I plan to only drop about a dozen vm's on 2 esx boxes for redundancy, maybe expand later. Most of the other servers (about 30) run apps that are not supported under vm, although I bet they would run under vm.

Question is: I guess without vCenter, I will have to manually install each VM rather than clone? Just wondering if there is some other secret esx client that allows cloning or maybe cloning through the command line. I will start reading the ESX manual now. I am the only IT guy here, so trying to learn this virtual stuff is a challenge…but it’s pretty cool too.

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lamw
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That's correct, cloning and deploying VMs from a template is a feature of vCenter. However, you can take a look at this script IF you're using a licensed version of ESX or ESXi and not the free license for ESXi to clone VMs.

You can also manually clone a VM from the CLI, it's a few steps and you follow this blog post for the steps: http://vmetc.com/2008/05/26/cloning-a-running-virtual-machine-using-the-service-console/

If you're just starting with ESX, another neat free tool by VMware is VMware Converter which allows you to convert and clone VMs, it's all GUI driven but if you need to deploy a few this would be another route. If not, then yes you would need to manually create the VM shells and then install either by loading your OS iso or mapping a local cdrom drive to install your OSes

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".