Plain Virtualization

Export ESXi configuration file After you configured an ESXi host, you can back up the host configuration data. Always back up your host configuration after you change the configuration or upgrade the ESXi image. IMPORTANT The vicfg-cfgbackup command is available only for ESXi hosts. The command is not available for ESX hosts and is not available through a vCenter Server system connection. Requirements: VMware vSphere CLI installed on workstation Open VMware vSphere CLI Command Prompt Type vicfg-cfgbackup.pl -s [backup_file_name] -–server [server_name_or_ip] --username [user_id] e.g. vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –s c:\esx1_20082011.txt –-server 192.168.1.1 –-username root Restore configuration file After you configured an ESXi host, you can back up the host configuration data. Always back up your host configuration after you change the configuration or upgrade the ESXi image. IMPORTANT The vicfg-cfgbackup command is available only for ESXi host...

At time where you need to install update or install drivers on ESXi/ESX servers where new devices like Network cards or HBA drivers are not embedded in the base image. In vSphere 5 you can of cause recompile your own image.  However for existing servers, we would need to learn the commands. Here I have attached the screen shots with steps to do the installation using the VMware vCLI. Requirements: VMware vSphere CLI installed on your workstation which can be found here under VMware vSphere 4.0 CLI VMware vSphere 4.1 CLI VMware vSphere 5 CLI Open VMware vSphere  CLI Command Prompt on workstation.   Check the current Maintenance Mode of the ESXi server by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server   –-username e.g. vicfg-hostops.pl –operation info –-server 192.168.1.1 –-username root   Enter password when prompted. Put ESXi server into maintenance mode by using: vicfg-hostops.pl –operation enter -–server [server_name_o...

Here is a diagram of my home lab which I have done up. All machines are VMs other than the main ESX server is a physical. I will put up my specification used for my ESXi server at home in another post. This took me a few months as I was busy with work, exams and lots of other testing to have this working. I must admit I do not have a good network backup ground which was also one of the big reason I have a problem with Vyatta router setup. I have 3 LUNs on my ESXi server namely a 1 x 160GB, 2x 500GB. All 3 are sata hdd. Here we will not go through the setup for the vSphere environment which I believe if you are reading this you would know how to do it. We will start with View 4.6 setup straight away. A few guides that got me to successfully implement my View environment are as below: a step by step installation was helpful http://paulslager.com Kendrick provide me the idea how the event database is configured. http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/configurin...