Ready-made script to back-up the VMs on ESXi.
Follow the instructions at http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760 and run the script.
For example, ./ghettoVCB.sh -m winpxet backups up the VM called winpxet.
Monthly Archives: January 2013
ESXi 5.0 – Shutdown script
In order to shut down the ESXi VMs and host from SSH without having to launch the vSphere client.
This is for ESXi 4.1 but still works on my ESXi 5.0.
http://blog.andrecardoso.eu/2011/09/gracefully-turn-off-an-esxi-host-and-vms/
Iscsi,Storage and ESXi – Part 2
Forgetting about Iscsi, I went to try to enable RSYNC to /from ESXi.
I enabled password-free SSH on the ESXi server and downloaded the self-contained rsync executable from http://computerpr0n.com/2011/04/esxi-remote-management-part-2/. I then created merged 2 rsync scripts, the one from the blog above and the one from http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html, in order to create one that runs without password-prompt to synchronize a local ISOs directory on a Ubuntu machine and the ISOs datastore on ESXi. It works perfect and allows me to have the files I need on ESXi for my VMs as well as a local backup. The final result looks something like this:
rsync -avr –delete -e “ssh -i /esxi-key/esxi” –rsync-path=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/Others/rsync /my/local/datastore/ISOs/ user@ESXiServer:/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ISOs/
WHERE
esxi-key/esxi is the path where the SSH keys shared with the ESXi server are hosted on the local machine
/vfms/volumes/datastore1/Others/rsync is the path on the ESXi server where to find the self-contained rsync executable
The rest should be pretty much self-explanatory after a standard RSYNC tutorial.
Enabling Virtualized Machines on an ESXi Virtual Machine
In order to run Vmware Player on a virtual machine. So far, I can’t get it to work. I have tried to add the vhv.allow=”TRUE” flag to the .vmx file but to no effect.
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/08/how-to-enable-nested-esxi-other.html
http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/09/having-difficulties-enabling-nested.html
Iscsi,Storage and ESXi – Part 1
I got annoyed at the datastore in ESXi being only accessible via winSCP. No Samba, or any option to share the ISOs. So I have started looking at enabling iSCSI storage on one of the VMs so I could easily share ISOs and back them up across the network.
To enable iSCSI on a standard Ubuntu 12.04 LTS install,I followed those instructions http://linhost.info/2012/05/configure-ubuntu-to-serve-as-an-iscsi-target/. Very detailled and well-written,only think that caught me is that in the target definition, ScsiId is an upper case i and not an l, stupid typo.
Target iqn.2012-05.local.mynet:storage.sys0
Lun 0 Path=/media/volume0/storlun0.bin,Type=fileio,ScsiId=lun0,ScsiSN=lun0
And what I realized is that when you add it as a datastore to ESXi,it gets formatted in vmfx format, which Windows doesn’t know what to do with! Dead end so…
