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Neat way of installing or updating any VIB using just the ESXi Embedded Host Client

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A couple of months back I had tossed out an idea on Twitter asking if others would like to see an automatic update mechanism built into the ESXi Embedded Host Client which would allow users to easily update to newer releases of the Fling versus the current method which requires copying the VIB and then running command in the ESXi Shell.

To no surprise, the feedback was an astounding yes! Literally within a couple of hours, Etienne Le Sueur, one of the two VMware Engineers working on the Fling shared a screenshot that demonstrated that this would possible. The first release of this feature would simply ask for the URL to the updated ESXi Embedded Host Client VIB and this was included in the v3 release of the Fling.

One additional tidbit that Etienne had shared was that the way this feature was implemented, it was not only limited to Embedded Host Client VIB but you could do this for any ESXi VIB. This is done by using the vSphere API and calling into the InstallHostPatchV2_Task() method which allows you to install or update an ESXi VIB from a URL source. Most recently, there a twitter conversation between myself, Etienne and Christian Mohn on how this capability could be further extended to include updating ESXi itself which can either be from an Image Profile or offline bundle. For those with a detailed eye, you may have noticed that the same API method can also support an offline bundle URL which would make this possible. As of right now, the feature is actually included in an internal build of the Embedded Host Client, but perhaps we will see this in a future update of the Embedded Host Client? 😉

Going back to the original topic of this blog post, to use the VIB install/update mechanism, you would need to first upload the ESXi VIB to an HTTP Server and then specify the URL. This is fine if you have an existing HTTP Server but if you do not, it is sort of a pain and though there are other methods like uploading directly to the ESXi's python based HTTP Server as mentioned by Christian, it would still require using something like SCP which is an additional step. My initial goal and hope was to be able to install or update an ESXi VIB or ESXi itself using purely the Embedded Host Client. This would keep things simple and not require things like SSH to be enabled on the ESXi host.

After a bit of brainstorming with Etienne, he actually found a super clever way of accomplishing this after our conversation. The idea I had was to make use of the ESXi Datastore to store the VIB which can be uploaded through the Embedded Host Client. By default, there is also an HTTP based interface to the datastore, however it requires authentication which would be a problem. The neat idea that was suggested was why not try to specify the local VMFS path to the ESXi VIB (e.g./vmfs/volumes/datastore1/my.vib)? It turns out that this actually works as well!

With just two easy steps, you can now upload an ESXi VIB and then install/update all using just the Embedded Host Client with no additional dependencies

Step 1 - Navigate to the Datastore section in the Embedded Host Client and then upload the ESXi VIB that you wish to install or update.

install-or-updating-vib-using-embedded-host-client-1
Step 2 - To install/update the VIB, click on Help in the upper right hand corner of the Embedded Host Client and select the "Update" option. Specify the local VMFS path to ESXi VIB and then click on Update to apply.

Note: A reboot may be required after applying a new VIB. It will be your responsibility to shutdown the VMs and reboot the ESXi host for changes to go into effect if required.

install-or-updating-vib-using-embedded-host-client-0
At this point, you should also see a task kicked off applying the VIB. If there are any errors thrown, they will be displayed else you should see a successful task completion. For educational purposes, here is a quick screenshot of /var/log/esxupdate.log showing the VIB being applied, this can be used for further troubleshooting if required.

install-or-updating-vib-using-embedded-host-client-2
Hope you enjoyed this neat little trick and with just two easy steps you can install or update any ESXi VIB using the Embedded Host Client without additional dependencies or enabling SSH on the ESXi host.

How to create a custom ESXi VIB to execute a script once?

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Earlier this week I received a question from a customer who was interested in creating a custom ESXi VIB that could execute a specific script within the payload as part of the installation and only running it once. This was a fairly common request that I have seen in the past and as far as I knew, this type of behavior was not possible. What was unique about this particular custom inquiry was that they mentioned they found some references on this being possible. Being the curious person I am, I decided to take another look and reach out to a few folks in Engineering.

After speaking with one of the Engineers familiar with our VIB specification, to my surprise I learned that this type of behavior was actually indeed possible but was not very well documented externally. The typical use case for this is usually to apply certain configurations which are not exposed through the traditional ESXi interfaces like the vSphere API/CLI which includes Host Profiles. One example that comes to mind is being able to deploy a VIB across several hundred ESXi hosts that could configure a specific ESXi Advanced Setting which might be marked hidden. Another example would be updating a configuration file like /etc/vmware/config or running a series of ESXi Shell commands which can not available in the vSphere API and require the use of SSH and the ESXi Shell. There are many other examples, but this should give you an idea of some of the common use cases that I have heard from customers.

Here is what is required to execute a specific script as part of the VIB installation:

  • Created an "init" script which needs to be stored under /etc/init.d as part of your VIB payload (e.g. /etc/init.d/lamw-special-vib)
  • You must ensure that the "live-install-allowed" param is set to true in your VIB's descriptor.xml file (this assumes the changes can be applied without requiring reboot to take affect)
  • The init script will need to parse special keywords passed as command-line arguments

Here is a table showing the pair of special keywords that are passed to the init script as command-line arguments during a VIB install, upgrade or remove:

Arg1 Arg2 VIB Operation
start install VIB install
start upgrade VIB upgrade
stop remove VIB removal

It is up to creator of the init script to handle the different VIB operations by parsing the command-line arguments which would then determine the operations that would get executed within the script. This not only allows you to control the commands that are executed during an installation of a VIB but it also allows you specify the commands to run upon the removal of a VIB which is quite handy for properly cleaning up an uninstall. In addition, since these special keywords are not passed as part of the ESXi boot up process, the commands within the script will not execute and ensures it only runs once during the install.

Here is very simple shell script (you could also do this in Python as well) which demonstrates how to handle the three different types of VIB operations and then uses the "logger" utility to write some output to syslog:

As you can see, this allows you to perform a variety of tasks through the use of a custom ESXi VIB which is a great way to be able to roll out a set of changes that may not be possible using either the vSphere API or Host Profiles for example. Best of all, this solution does not require the use of SSH which is great since many customers already disable this by default.

For more information on creating a custom VIB, be sure to check out my blog post here and you can even use this Docker image I created for building custom ESXi VIBs.

ghettoVCB VIB & offline bundle for ESXi

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It is still amazing to see that the number of contributions and suggestions from the community continues to grow for my free and simple VM backup solution called ghettoVCB. I created ghettoVCB almost 8 years ago which now has over 1.2 million views, pretty insane if you ask me! Although I am quite busy these days which includes a new born, I still try to find time to update the script as time permits. A couple of weeks back I received an email from one of my readers who came across ghettoVCB and was quite happy with the free solution. He also had some feedback asking why I did not provide an installable VIB for ghettoVCB?

A totally valid question and the answer was quite simple. When I had first created ghettoVCB back in the classic ESX 3.x days, the concept of a VIB had not existed yet. With the release of ESXi 5.0, the idea of the VIB was introduced but it was only recently in 2012 did VMware publish a method for customers to create custom VIBs for ESXi using the VIB Author Fling. I do have to admit at one point I did think about providing a VIB for ghettoVCB, but I guess I never went through with it for whatever reason. Looking back now, this was a no-brainer to provide a simplified user experience and not to mention the benefit of having ghettoVCB installed as a VIB is that it will automatically persist on ESXi after reboots which was a challenge for new users to ESXI.

So without further ado, here is ghettoVCB provided in either a VIB or offline bundle form:

To install the ghettoVCB VIB, you just need to download the VIB and run the following ESXCLI command and specifying the full path to the VIB:

esxcli software vib install -v /vghetto-ghettoVCB.vib -f

Once installed, you will find all ghettoVCB configuration files located in:

/etc/ghettovcb/ghettoVCB.conf
/etc/ghettovcb/ghettoVCB-restore_vm_restore_configuration_template
/etc/ghettovcb/ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template

Both ghettoVCB and ghettoVCB-restore scripts are located in:

/opt/ghettovcb/bin/ghettoVCB.sh
/opt/ghettovcb/bin/ghettoVCB-restore.sh

One additional thing I would like to point out is that you can also quickly tell which version of ghettoVCB is running by inspecting the installed VIB by using the following ESXCLI command:

esxcli software vib get -n ghettoVCB

If you look at the screenshot above, I have highlighted two important pieces of information in green. The first is the "Description" property which includes the Github commit hash of the particular revision of ghettoVCB and the "Creation Date" property which contains the date of that commit. This can be handy if you want to compare it to the latest ghettoVCB repository found on Github here. Thanks again Markus for the suggestion!

For those of you who are interested in the details for creating your own ghettoVCB VIB, the next section is specifically for you. Earlier this week I blogged about a Docker Container that I have created to help build custom ESXi VIBs and as you can see now, that was the basis for us to be able to quickly create ghettoVCB VIB based on the latest revision of the script.

Step 1 - Create a new Docker Machine following the steps outlined here.

Step 2 - Login to the Docker Machine and create a new Dockerfile which contains the following:

Step 3 -  Next we need to build our new Docker Container which will use the VIB Author Container by running the following command:

docker build -t lamw/ghettovcb .

Screen Shot 2015-05-26 at 2.14.52 PMThe output will be quite verbose, but what you will be looking for is text highlighted in green as shown in the screenshot above. You should see the successful build of both the VIB and offline bundle as well as Docker Container showing a successful build.

Step 4 - After a successful build of our Docker Container, we can now launch the container by running the following command:

docker run --rm -it lamw/ghettovcb

Screen Shot 2015-05-26 at 2.16.58 PM
Once logged into the Docker Container, you will see the generated VIB and the offline bundle for ghettoVCB as shown in the screenshot above.

If you wish to copy the VIB and offline bundle out of the Docker Container into the Docker Host, you can use Docker Volumes. I found this useful thread over on Stack overflow which I have modified to include the copying of the ghettoVCB VIB and offline bundle out to Docker Host by running the following command:

docker run -i -v ${PWD}/artifacts:/artifacts lamw/ghettovcb sh << COMMANDS
cp vghetto-ghettoVCB* /artifacts
COMMANDS

Finally, to copy the ghettoVCB VIB from the Docker Host to your desktop, we first need to identify the IP Address given to our Docker Machine by running the following command:

docker-machine ip osxdock

Currently, Docker Machine does not include a simple "scp" command so we will need to use regular scp command and specify the private SSH keys which you can find by running "docker-machine inspect [NAME-OF-DOCKER-HOST]" and connecting to our Docker Host to copy the ghettoVCB VIB by running the following command:

scp -i /Users/lamw/.docker/machine/machines/osxdock/id_rsa [email protected]:artifacts/vghetto-ghettoVCB.vib .