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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘ESXi5.5’ Category

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ESXi: specifying the ciphers used to serve the vSphere Client

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/14

You can specify the ESXi ciphers used to serve the vSphere Client. You can do this both ways: either extend them (make it less secure, but more compatible, for instance to server vSphere Client on Windows Server 2003 / Windows XP), or restrict them to make it more secure.

VMware recommends the cipherList ALL to make it more compatible: VMware KB: vSphere Client and vSphere PowerCLI may fail to connect to vCenter Server 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 due to a Handshake failure.

However, ALL  is far too wide to be secure. Since cipherList uses the standard cipher list format documented at ciphers – SSL cipher display and cipher list tool.

You can use the cipher lists from Strong SSL Security on nginx – Raymii.org:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, PowerCLI, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/08/14

Interesting: ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs.

Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Increasing your Windows NTFS disk size under VMware ESXi

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/04/03

A really long time I wrote about Increasing your Windows XP NTFS disk size under VMware Workstation 7.

I totally forgot that article also included a link to do the same on ESXi the old fashioned style. The tool you needed back then (and still works) there is vmkfstools (the ESXi version, not the vCLI version), and use it like this to extend the VMDK disk to 60 gigabyte:

vmkfstools --extendvirtualdisk 60G /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/vm_name/disk_name.vmdk

You can replace --extendvirtualdisk with -X.

However, nowadays you can do the same from the vSphere Client as explained by David Davis at How to Extend a vSphere Windows VM Disk Volume.

After that you follow the steps in the original article to increase the partition size inside Windows.

As of Windows Vista, this has become much easier, so there you go.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Fusion, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

ESXi Support for 2014 Apple Mac Mini 7,1 | virtuallyGhetto

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/12/01

Even though it is maxed out at 16 gigabytes of RAM, the other specs make it nice for a home lab server: ESXi Support for 2014 Apple Mac Mini 7,1 | virtuallyGhetto.

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, ESXi5.5, Mac, MacMini, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Accessing the ESXi Direct Console User Interface DCUI via SSH – Wahl Network

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/11/05

I just learned (thanks Chris Wahl!) about the dcui command: often easier to configure basic parameters than the other UIs.

The DCUI is normally available from the console after you login, for instance to enable SSH.

This was new to me:

DCUI is available over SSH.

Even more embarrassing: duic has been actually there since ESXi 4.1 (:

–jeroen

via: Accessing the ESXi Direct Console User Interface DCUI via SSH – Wahl Network.

Posted in *nix, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Windows 8.1 on VMware ESXi 5.1: Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons are invisible but functional

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/25

(Another one in the missed schedule list: this post was scheduled for this morning 06:00)

When you run a Windows 8.1 guest on VMware ESXi 5.1 with the VMware tools that belong to ESXi 5.1, the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons are invisible but functional.

It doesn’t matter how you access that VM:

  • Through an RDP session (from either the MS RDP client on Mac OS X or MSTSC on a Windows machine).
  • Through a Console Window from vSphere Client connected to the ESXi host (if that client does not run on Windows XP).
  • Through a Console Window from VMware Workstation connected to the ESXi host.

It is good to know that this is just a visual artefact, the Minimize/Maximixe/Close buttons still work:

I was having the same exact problem with my Windows 8.1 VM.  If you click the location where the buttons should be, it still works like they are there.

But he uses a solution that is not really the kind I like:

I opened Device Manager on the VM and then uninstalled the VMware Display Adaptor, including the software for the driver.  After doing that, I scanned for hardware changes and it reinstalled the display adaptor using a windows driver.

The youngest VMware Tools version it fails with on my system is this one: 9.6.1.1378637.

Uninstalling the driver from the device manager indeed solves the issue, but:   Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »

TinkerTry IT @ home | Download ESXi 5.5 Update 1 and the other vSphere Update 1a pieces to get your home lab started

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/20

Interesting:

This is a refresh of last month’s article, Download ESXi 5.5 Update 1 and the other vSphere pieces to get your home lab started, with new download links for the Heartbleed related vCenter Update 1a release that arrived today, April 19, 2014. It is a work in progress, and will updated frequently, throughout the next few days, as I test and retest the links and procedures. The hypervisor itself (the first download) appears to be unchanged, the same 5.5 Update 1 (not 1a) released back on Mar 11 2014. It appears the only thing that has changed has been a patch to SSL certificates to address Heartbleed, as described in the release notes.

–jeroen

via TinkerTry IT @ home | Download ESXi 5.5 Update 1 and the other vSphere Update 1a pieces to get your home lab started.

Posted in ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware | 2 Comments »

7zip on ESXi through p7zip

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/13

A while ago, I wrote about getting rsync on ESXi: ESXi 5.1 and rsync – damiendebin.net.

Now I needed [WayBack] 7zip on ESXi to make sure I could test unpack some 7zip archives.

This turned out much easier than I thought, thanks to [WayBack] 7Zip for ESXI | Vladimir Lukianov: Заметки who pointed me to the [WayBack] P7ZIP project. P7ZIP actually created three things:

  • p7zip (a POSIX 7zip),
  • J7ZIP (a Java port of 7zip)
  • java_lzma (the Java port of the [WayBack] 7zip lzma SDK which had the first implementation of [WayBack] lzma).

Here are the full steps to get 7zip on ESXi 5.x:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Linux, Power User, SuSE Linux, VMware, VMware ESXi | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/11

Interesting:

ESXi-Customizer is a user-friendly script that automates the process of customizing the ESXi install-ISO with drivers that are not originally included. Unlike other scripts and manuals that are available for this purpose ESXi-Customizer runs entirely on Windows and does not require any knowledge of or access to Linux.

Download latest version | Donate to support

Requirements:

  • The script runs on Windows XP or newer (both 32-bit and 64-bit) including the latest version Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2.
  • For customizing ESXi 4.1 Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit) or Windows Server 2008 R2 and administrative privileges are required.
  • You need to have a copy of the original VMware install-ISO. It is available at VMware (free registration required to download). The script currently supports ESXi version 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5.
  • For ESXi 4.1 you need to have a OEM.tgz file with a custom driver.
  • For ESXi 5.x you need to have a OEM.tgz, a VIB file or an Offline Bundle ZIP file.
  • A good source for ESXi 4.1 and 5.x community drivers is Dave Mishchenko’s vm-help.com site. See the ESXi 4.1 Whitebox HCL and the forums there.

–jeroen

via: VMware Front Experience: ESXi-Customizer.

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

VMware ESXi: renaming a VM and VMDK

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/09

This turned out to be much more manual work than I hoped: renaming a VM and the VMDK used by the VM in ESXi.

If you prefer to do all steps by hand on the command-line plus two vi sessions for the vmx* files and the main vmdk file: Just one more esxi-guy: How to Rename a Virtual Machine with the CLI in esxi 5.0.

If you have vCenter, you can do it from the guy. Note for Free ESXi users: vCenter is a payed product, but there is a trial of vCenter.

A bit less manual work, but a bit more scripting from the console (if you are comfortable with that) is at Howto: Rename a VM – Yellow Bricks to which you might want to add the script mentioned at Rename multiple files by replacing a particular pattern in the filenames using a shell script – Stack Overflow.

You can also script from vMA or vCLI: VMware KB: Renaming a virtual machine disk (VMDK) via the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) or vSphere CLI (vCLI).

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Power User, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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