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You are here: Home / vSphere 4.1 Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving

vSphere 4.1 Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving

07.23.2010 by William Lam // 3 Comments

While doing some testing on ghettoVCB earlier this week, I noticed a new command line argument to vmkfstools utility called "--fix" in vSphere 4.1. From the man pages for vmkfstool, it states the following:


-x, --fix -[check|repair]
This option will check and/or repair the virtual disk in case of an unclean shutdown.

Here is an example of running the command against a VM's VMDK:

[root@esx4-1 ~]# vmkfstools --fix check /vmfs/volumes/esx4-1-local-storage-1/dummy/dummy.vmdk
Disk is error free

What surprised me next while looking up this new parameter in the man pages, I discovered another new argument called "--miscop":


-J, --miscop [setuuid | getuuid]
´setuuid´ option creates a unique identifier (UUID) for the
virtual disk and stores the UUID in the descriptor file of the
virtual disk. If the descriptor file already contains a UUID,
it will be overwritten with a new one. Please make sure that the
virtual disk does not have a UUID before using this option.
´getuuid´ option displays the UUID of the virtual disk.

The "--miscop" command is listed in the man pages but is not displayed when running "vmkfstools --help".

At this point, I thought there might be more hidden commands that VMware is holding out on us. I decided to use a well known UNIX/Linux utility called "strings" which looks for printable string in files and apply that to the vmkfstools binary. After sifting through the massive output, I found the following additional command line parameters that are not documented:

  • dumpfs
  • numfiles
  • force
  • recursivelock
  • recover
  • vmfsscan
  • physicalmapping
  • logicalmapping
  • allocateblock
  • clearlazyzero
  • parseimage
  • createarro
  • createmirrordisks
  • createmultiextent
  • trackvdisk
  • activehosts

Here are some of the command syntax which I have been able to verify:

dumpfs can be used by specifying either "-D | --dumpfs" and specifying a VMFS volume, file or folder.


[root@esx4-1 ~]# vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/esx4-1-local-storage-1/

Lock [type 10c00001 offset 4292608 v 33, hb offset 3440640
gen 11, mode 0, owner 00000000-00000000-0000-000000000000 mtime 2509]
Addr <4, 0, 0>, gen 1, links 4, type dir, flags 0, uid 0, gid 0, mode 1755
len 1260, nb 1 tbz 0, cow 0, zla 1, bs 1048576

[root@esx4-1 ~]# vmkfstools --dumpfs /vmfs/volumes/esx4-1-local-storage-1/

Lock [type 10c00001 offset 4292608 v 33, hb offset 3440640
gen 11, mode 0, owner 00000000-00000000-0000-000000000000 mtime 2509]
Addr <4, 0, 0>, gen 1, links 4, type dir, flags 0, uid 0, gid 0, mode 1755
len 1260, nb 1 tbz 0, cow 0, zla 1, bs 1048576

activehosts can be used by specifying "--activehosts" and specifying a VMFS volume


[root@esx4-1 ~]# vmkfstools --activehosts /vmfs/volumes/esx4-1-local-storage-1/
Found 1 actively heartbeating hosts on volume '/vmfs/volumes/esx4-1-local-storage-1/'
(1): MAC address 00:50:56:92:3f:86

For the other parameters, I have not been able to figure out the additional arguments to make them work. If anyone or VMware has further insight into these other options, I would love to know what they are used for.

More from my site

  • How to automate vFRC configurations using the command-line in ESXi
  • Did you know that VMware Host Profile is extensible by 3rd Parties?
  • 2gbsparse Disk Format No Longer Working On ESXi 5.1
  • How to Create an SE Sparse (Space-Efficient) Disk in vSphere 5.1
  • Automating Dead Space Reclamation in ESXi 5.0u1

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // vmkfstools, vSphere 4.1

Comments

  1. *protectedAnonymous says

    07/25/2010 at 4:02 pm

    Cool! Thanks.

    Reply
  2. *protectedgeeksilver says

    08/03/2010 at 6:38 am

    Wow. That's a amazing you can do that.
    Thank you for your info.

    http://geeksilver.wordpress.com

    Reply
  3. *protectedThomas King says

    01/03/2018 at 9:51 am

    That just saved my bacon, thanks!

    Reply

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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