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Script - ipmiConfig.pl

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There was a question on the VMTN community asking about automating the configuration of IPMI/iLO Settings for Power Management via kickstart. Unfortunately, this cannot be configured directly on an ESX/ESXi host, it requires vCenter server. This configuration is a prerequisite to VMware's DPM (Distributed Power Management) which is only available with vCenter and DRS enabled cluster.

Although this configuration can't be added to kickstart, you can create a script that is executed as part of the "post configurations". Before starting, make sure that you have IPMI enabled over LAN which is generally found within your iDRAC/iLO or other out-of-band management console.

Here are two posts on popular hardware (Dell/HP) for configuring IPMI/iLO settings:

Dell configuration
HP configuration

In general, the actual configuration for the host is the same but will differ based on the server vendor and out-of-band management console.

Here is a vSphere SDK for Perl script that allows you to configure IPMI/iLO settings for an ESX or ESXi host:

Download: ipmiConfig.pl

You'll need to provide the following variables:

  • vihost = ESX or ESXi host
  • ipaddress = IP Address of your iDRAC/iLO/etc.
  • macaddress = MAC Address of your iDRAC/iLO/etc. interface
  • bmcusername = Username to login to your iDRAC/iLO/etc.
  • bmcpassword = You'll be prompted to provide the password

Here is an example run:

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ipmiSettings.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com --username primp --vihost dev-esxi1.primp-industries.com --ipaddress 172.50.0.45 --macaddress 00:22:E8:71:C5:47 --bmcusername admin
Please enter your BMC Password:

Trying to configure IPMI/iLO Settings for Power Management on dev-esxi1.primp-industries.com ...

If you've entered everything correctly, the prompt should return right away. If it sits there for more than 20 seconds, then something went wrong and you may have entered something incorrectly. Due to the limitation of this API method, no tasks are returned back to properly handle these errors. You may want to manually configure this via the vSphere Client to double check your settings before re-using the script.


Here is an example of a bad run (entered wrong username + password):

[vi-admin@scofield ~]$ ./ipmiSettings.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com --username primp --vihost dev-esxi1.primp-industries.com --ipaddress 172.50.0.45 --macaddress 00:22:E8:71:C5:47 --bmcusername root
Please enter your BMC Password:

Trying to configure IPMI/iLO Settings for Power Management on dev-esxi1.primp-industries.com ...

Error: Unable to configure IPMI/iLO Settings: SOAP request error - possibly a protocol issue: 500 SSL read timeout:

virtuallyGhetto says hello to the blogosphere!

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We finally decided to move our content over from our ghetto web page (http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/) over to Google's free blogspot. This move not only helps us to organize our content and benefit from automatic RSS feeds, but it also makes the content searchable.

This site will still focus primarily on VMware automation using the various scripting APIs and SDKs. We hope you like the new layout and we look forward to sharing our scripts with the VMware community!

vSphere Tips and Tricks Part 1

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Disclaimer: Ensure these changes have been thoroughly tested and confirmed with VMware support prior to rolling out into production. Most of these changes and tips may be undocumented by VMware, test at your own risk!

Map Service Console/COS VMDK to specific ESX host (useful if you boot from SAN):

grep -i "hostname" /vmfs/volumes/[datastore]/[esxconsole-datastore-uuid]/logs/sysboot-vmkernel-late.log
[root@everest ~]# grep -i "hostname" /vmfs/volumes/everest-local-storage/esxconsole-49a095a4-204d-c7ba-9bb8-001f29c7b048/logs/sysboot-vmkernel-late.log
0:00:00:06.289 cpu1:4105)Config: 363: "HostName" = "everest.primp-industries.com", Old value: "localhost" (Status: 0x0)

Retrieve VmId from vmware-cmd similiar to that in vimsh/vmware-vim-cmd (only available on classic ESX, not sure why it's not in vCLI):

vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/[datastore]/[path_to_vm]/vm.vmx getid
[root@everest ~]# vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/d32c5a97-e039bdbf/vCenter-ESX4.02172009/vCenter-ESX4.02172009.vmx getid
getid() = 32

VMware FT statistics and debugging utility
Available after some patch set, generally 4.0u1+

[root@esx-5 ~]# ft-stats
Usage: ft-stats [-hvf] [-c ] [-l] [-n ] [-d ] [-s ] [-w ]
-h, --help Show this message
-v, --verbose verbose output
-f, --force Continue even if version check fails
-c, --cache Use VSI cache file
-l, --list list FT VMs
-n, --iterations Print stats for n iterations
-d, --delay Print stats every n secs (default:5)
-s, --snapshot Collect stats for n secs
-w, --world Print stats for worldID

Note: This tool is intended to assist in troubleshooting and should only be used
with direction by VMware support. All other use of this tool is unsupported.

esxupdate - Query for installed/retired packages with undocumented "--vib-view" option

esxupdate --vib-view query
[root@himalaya ~]# esxupdate --vib-view query
--------------------------------------VIB ID------------------------------------- Package State -----------Timestamp------------
rpm_vmware-esx-drivers-scsi-fnic_400.1.1.0.109.2vmw-2vmw.1.9.208167@x86_64 installed 2010-01-06T12:24:38.100201-05:00
rpm_acpid_1.0.4-9.el5_4.2@x86_64 installed 2010-04-02T17:09:44.566014+00:00
rpm_samba-client_3.0.33-3.15.el5_4.1@x86_64 installed 2010-04-02T17:09:44.171847+00:00
rpm_nss_3.12.3.99.3-1.2157.vmw@x86_64 installed 2010-04-02T17:09:41.148547+00:00
rpm_initscripts_8.45.19.EL-1.2442.vmw@x86_64 installed 2010-04-02T17:09:36.911452+00:00

Change default COW (copy on write) disk growth value
Query (Default is 16MB):

[root@himalaya ~]# esxcfg-advcfg -g /COW/COWDiskSizeIncrement
Value of COWDiskSizeIncrement is 32768

Set (e.g. 256MB):

[root@himalaya ~]# esxcfg-advcfg -s 524288 /COW/COWDiskSizeIncrement
Value of COWDiskSizeIncrement is 524288

The input value for changing COWDiskSizeIncrement is in sectors

UNIT SECTORS COW GROWTH SIZE
32768 16MB
65536 32MB
131072 64MB
262144 128MB
524288 256MB
2097152 1024MB
.... ....

Easy formula is (SIZE_IN_MB)*(1024)*(2) = SECTOR VALUE