Updating Vmware Server via esxi shell

November 6th, 2014

Here are the steps you need to follow to do an update to a ESXi5.5 server from the command line:

Taken from the following guide:

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc%2FGUID-E51C5DB6-F28E-42E8-ACA4-0EBDD11DF55D.html

Note:  You must run the following to enable https access for esxcli:

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

1. Find an update profile to use:

esxcli software sources profile list \ 
--depot=https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep 201410

The | is optional but you can grep for later versions.

2. Check with dryrun

esxcli software profile update --dry-run -d \
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml \
 -p ESXi-5.5.0-201410001001s-standard

Enter Maintenance mode:

To enter maintenance mode

 esxcli <conn_options> system maintenanceMode set --enable true 
to enter maintenance mode.

After all virtual machines on the host have been suspended or migrated, the host enters maintenance mode. You cannot deploy or power on a virtual machine on hosts in maintenance mode.

 esxcli <conn_options> system maintenanceMode set --enable false to have a host exit maintenance mode.

3. Use that profile to update:

esxcli software profile update -d /
https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml \
-p ESXi-5.5.0-201410001001s-standard

4. Review Event log – you should see an installation message like the following:

Successfully installed 17 VIB(s), removed 16 VIB(s). Please use 'esxcli software profile get' or see
 log for more detail about the transaction.

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Using storcli to create RAID50 arrays

October 29th, 2014

The storcli command line can be installed on linux, vmware, windows and macos to provide management of raid devices on booted ibm 3650.  The MegaRaid GUI provides a guided wizard for RAID50 disk creation, but the storcli command line options aren’t as clear.  It turns out that you must provided an arrangement for the disks in order to create a raid 50 group.  For example:

./storcli /c0 add vd r50 name=446SSDRaid50 drives=9:3-8 strip=128
Controller = 0
Status = Failure
Description = operation not possible for current RAID level, Invalid RAID level

The above fails because it is missing the pdperarray options, which tells storcli how to arrange the disks:

/opt/StorCLI # ./storcli /c0 add vd type=raid50 name=446SSDRaid50 drives=9:6-11  \
pdperarray=3 strip=128
Controller = 0
Status = Success
Description = Add VD Succeeded

Click  here
for some further examples of the storcli command.

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Late Oct to Mid Nov

October 29th, 2014

Here are some of things I’m working on now.

  • Adding disks arrays to our new ibm cluster via the storcli command line
  • Automating updates to vmware server from the ash command line in esxi 5.5 .
  • Testing Hyper-V fault tolerance, backups and High availability

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July 22nd to 26th

July 22nd, 2013

This week I’ll be continuing to test windows deployment server as well as doing account cleanup and maintenance.

  • owncloud and openstack tests
  • faculty laptop backup system tests

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Setting up Eclipse/Android in a multiuser environment

January 18th, 2012

Following the directions on-line for android and eclipse defaults to an installation which can be run by users in a limited permission environment. This is good, but also means that they the computer they use ends up with a copy of eclipse and the sdk for each user in their home directory space. As an alternative, I tried the following steps to allow students to use the same copy of the sdk and eclipse for development. The instructions below are for windows 7, but an installation on linux or mac os would probably be able to use some of the same steps.

To install the software:

  1. Download and install the latest version of Java from Java.com
  2. Install the android sdk
  3. Install the Classic version of Eclipse
  4. Install the ADT Plugin for Eclipse see developer.android.com for instructions.     (NOTE: You may need to install additional components for all of the adt plugin parts to install correctly. Adding http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo to the list of Software sources under Help -> Install New software fixed this.)
  5. You can choose the directory when eclipse starts.  It should point to the location of the installed sdk.  In my case that’s c:\Program Files (x86)\android\android-sdk .

 

To make available to other users:

 

  1. Move the eclipse directory to c:\Program Files\
  2. Copy the plugin directory from the user who set up ADT to c:\Program Files\Eclipse\dropins
  3. For windows 7, you can use an administrator level powershell to copy a shortcut to the eclipse executable to c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs so that users can access the Eclipse IDE from the Start Menu.
  4. To stop eclipse from prompting new users for the location of the android sdk, copy the c:\Users\username\.android directory from the first user above to c:\Users\currentuser .   A script could be set up to do this if the path variable in the ddms.cfg file is missing, or the .android directory isn’t present when a user logs in.

 

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Missing PPD files in Mac OS X Lion

September 22nd, 2011

I found that when installing Lion from a formatted drive, the ppd files for HP printers aren’t present. You can get them from the previous OS install disc (snow leopard), in the following location (it’s hidden, so use CMD-K in the finder to browse to it):

/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages/

In there you should find a set of all the printer drivers for various printers that could have been installed previously. I recommend using grep to determine which package has the driver you are looking for.

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Windows 7 and Vmware Server 1.0.10

September 16th, 2011

I found a neat trick on-line to get windows 7 to recognize the virtual network card it doesn’t have a default driver for in vmware server 1.0.10.  You add the following line to the end of the .vmx config file, and it sees it as an intel e1000 card and installs the correct driver.

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"


This is posted about in a few places, but here is a link to the one I found:


http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprohardware/thread/5c74d385-98f9-47c8-962f-b0cfc47abadf

				


				
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Stale NFS file handles on hydra

				May 13th, 2011 

				

					
Alan discovered that we can deal with a stale nfs file handle on zeus by using the following command:


umount -l directory


This performs a lazy unmount, which cleans up references to a filesystem after detaching it.



				


				
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Windows Clients choosing incorrect DNS server from DHCP

				April 12th, 2011 

				

					
Discovered an interesting problem with windows xp and 7 clients in an active directory domain(although this may happen to non-ad clients as well).  If  the dhcp server has several different DNS servers for different groups of clients, and a default is overridden by the others, the override doesn’t go into affect when a lease is acquired on reboot (only a manual renewal seems to get it).


The fix was to set up the dns options so that no “default” existed (i.e. the other groups each got the same entry placed inside a subgroup for them).  Then both the windows and other clients picked up their own dns options with no overrides.


Essentially, what I did was move


 option domain-name-servers 192.168.2.1


 into


 group ( ),


so that no default exists.

				


				
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Kernel updates on Rocks Cluster

				December 22nd, 2010 

				

					
Computers running rocks software that are receiving updates via yum or another method have a unique issue when it comes to kernel upgrades.  Part of the rocks system involves changing the grub.conf file at boot time depending on how the system was shut down.  If the computer is shut down properly, grub-orig.conf is copied over grub.conf.  If not, rocks.conf is used for the startup.

				


				
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