VMware ESX Console Commands :: esxcfg-info

VMware ESX has many commands on the console that you can use to get detailed information on the status or configuration of many elements of your installation. Recently I had an opportunity to run esxcfg-info on the console (or can be run in the same fashion over ssh) and really liked this information. This tool will give you basically everything about the ESX host, including an inventory and details of the virtual machines on the host.

Lots of Data in This File

I ran the following series of commands to make a place for these files on the ESX system:

cd /home
mkdir adminprofiles
esxcfg-info > esxcfg-info.export.12.7.2007.text

Yes, the name of the file is long - but that will come into play later. Don’t run this command interactively on the screen; way too much information is generated. On my single system with only nine virtual machines in the inventory, it was around 900KB. I really like this export as a documentation tool and benchmarking mechanism.

I will find myself running this command as part of my server documentation (kept locally in the \home\adminprofiles path or copied elsewhere), benchmarking, and baseline configuration information. I’ll also find this file beneficial for comparisons among systems within VMI.

Details Galore

Surely this is mainly as support tool for VMware, but there is really good information in here. I’ve taken out lines for simplicity, check out the following snippets of the output:

Network Configuration

\==+NetworkInfoImpl :
|—-Name…………………………………..vswif0
|—-Enabled………………………………..true
|—-Ip Address……………………………..172.16.25.117
|—-Ip Netmask……………………………..255.255.252.0
|—-Ip Broadcast……………………………172.16.26.255
|—-DHCP…………………………………..false
|—-MAC Address…………………………….00:50:56:4e:a3:0b
\==+DnsConfig :
|—-Hostname…………………………………….esxlive03
|—-Domain………………………………………rixco.net
|—-Primary Name Server…………………………..172.16.25.2
|—-Secondary Name Server…………………………172.16.25.3

Virtual Machine Guest Information\==+Virtual Machines:
|—-Config File……………………./vmfs/volumes/4713cb68-adaa0b06-f0fc-0015173ebba9/S-VMAPP001/S-VMAPP001.vmx
|—-UUID…………………………..50 01 42 0b e6 a9 6d fb-37 54 e9 b1 42 c2 3e ce
|—-Num Vcpus………………………2
\==+Memory Client Stats :
|—-Touched……………………..51.20 MB
|—-Current Size…………………512.00 MB
|—-Target Size………………….372.36 MB
\==+Memory Allocation :
|—-Valid……………………….true
|—-Minimum……………………..131072
|—-Min Limit……………………131072
|—-Maximum……………………..393216
|—-Shares………………………384
\==+CPU Allocation :
|—-Valid……………………….true
|—-Minimum……………………..100
|—-Min Limit……………………100
|—-Maximum……………………..1000
|—-Shares………………………875

Check out the tool on your ESX systems. How have you used some of the other esxcfg-… commands?