Looking for a good ESXi command line book

[cyberfed2727]

Hey folks,

I am looking to purchase a book that does a deep dive of ESXi 5.5 (or 6.x) command line instructions. Ideally the same book would cover in depth the ESXi file system structure and how it is used by the operating system.

I'm not interested in KB's or PDF's I'm looking for a physical book to purchase. I want to get a better understanding of the ESXi's filesystem and what each directory does and all the different commands available to administrator at the command line. Not looking for a book that has one chapter on this but rather the entire book (or most of it) dedicated to the command line.

Thanks!!

[minor76]

I have a subscription to Safari books and most ESXi books cover both cli and GUI but more the GUI.  That is something I was also looking for and I ended up spending time going through several books and basically grabbing information and creating my own set of notes.   You will probably be better off looking for vSphere Powercli books and learning to create your own scripts which I found to be more practical in most environments I have been in.  I like "Learning Powercli (by:Robert van den Nieuwendijk) and PowerCLI Cookbook(by: Philip Sellers)".  There might be better ones but those worked well for me. 

[grasshopper]

Hi cyberfed2727,

This is a great question that made me consider that perhaps VMware really has quietly delivered on the 'appliance' nature of ESXi.  So much so that there isn't really even a market for discussing the local CLI.  Truly the API is king, so there is no shortage of excellent books.

On the PowerCLI side, and to add to the great recommendations from minor76, the most recently released Epic work of art is:

VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration 2nd Edition

Also, since at least one of the topics you were interested in is filesystem:

Storage Implementation in vSphere 5.0 (VMware Press)

Note:  Though the book is based on 5.0 it is still relevant.

Also, I recommend playing with the CLI (i.e. ssh to host) to understand the layout and available commands.  Keep in mind that each deployment may look a bit different  For example, if you install ESXi on a USB stick your layout may look a bit different than if you installed on localdisk or via Autodeply for example.

Once at the CLI, you should consider running a vm-support to see all the magic it does.  It will certainly give you an idea of commands to look at.  Also play around with esxcli and just keep hitting enter to dig deeper (it's very much like IOS or netsh).

Since there seems to be an absence of such a physical book (and I can't disagree with your desire to avoid PDF's), honestly there is no reason that you can't learn this though immersion while at the CLI.  You can of course deploy an ESXi host as a nested VM if you want a safe way to practice scenarios.

.  

[cyberfed2727]

Thanks guys, I kinda figured no such book existed after searching for it but I figured I would ask. I taught myself Powershell a few years ago and with PowerCLI I've used the two to automate tasks in VMware for some time now. I'm fortunate enough to have a test/dev where I can play around in. I'll check out the recommendations, that PowerCLI book looks good and I like that a new copy just came out.

Cheers mates!

[BenLiebowitz]

I've found the ESXi Reference Poster very handy...

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/vmware-posters.html#VMwareESXi5.1ReferencePoster

I have one hanging in my cubicle at work.