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Feb 15 2009   2:28AM GMT

VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant (VIMA)



Posted by: Raj Perumal
VMWare, VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant, VIMA, scripts, scripting, VMware remote command line, remote cli, VI Perl Toolkit, VI Remote CLI, William Lam, http://www.vmware.com/go/importvima/vima1.ovf, virtual appliance, lamw

Hi folks, I wanted to bring your attention to a VMware virtual appliance. This appliance is called VIMA, VMware Infrastructure Management Assistant. It is a virtual appliance running Red Hat Enterprise Linux from which you can run scripts and agents from.

There are many cool scripts out there that you can run from VIMA, especially some of the cool scripts from William Lam. Many scripts out there use VIMA as a launching pad.

To install and configure VIMA, just launch your VMware client and follow the simple instructions posted here.

After a while the import will finish and you will now  have a new virtual machine. At this point you can boot it up and set the IP address for the VIMA box. After you have done that you can mount an NFS share if you need one by modifying the /etc/fstab file just like you normally would in Red Hat Linux.

In future blogs I will write about some of the cool things you can do from within VIMA.

-RP

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Feb 6 2009   4:54PM GMT

Enabling SSH on a VMware ESXi Server



Posted by: Raj Perumal
VMware ESXi, Enable SSH, Enable SSH on ESXi, Enable SSH on VMware ESXi, shell access, BusyBox, Linux, /etc/inetd.conf, vi, #ssh, ESX, VMware ESX, script, scripts, scripting, unsupported

For those of you that are used to having service console access in VMware ESX server, you might find yourself in for a bit of surprise when you try and do this with ESXi. By default you do not have access. However there is a way to enable access to the console.

Why do you need access to the console? With access to the console this gives you the ability to troubleshoot larger support issues when things aren’t working the way they should and it also enables you to run some pretty cool scripts that are available out there on the Internet.

The ESXi console uses BusyBox so it is different from ESX even after you get console access. To enable SSH access to the shell, please do the following:

  • From the ESXi console hit Alt-F1
  • Type in the word unsupported and hit enter (you will not see the characters appear on the screen)
  • Type in your root password
  • Edit the /etc/inetd.conf file by typing in vi /etc/inetd.conf
  • Scroll through the file until you find the line that says #ssh and delete the # sign
  • Save the file
  • Now you can reboot the ESXi server and you will have shell access
  • Alternatively you can run the /sbin/services.sh restart command to restart the management services without rebooting the box.

-RP

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