ESXi 5.1

Another basic command, but essential for health monitoring of your hosts when using a Syslog Server. Here is a quick how-to. Connect to your host through SSH or open the DCUI. Setup the target Syslog Server and place logs in an unique subdirectory: # esxcli system syslog config set –logdir-unique true –loghost=udp://10.10.10.10:514 Open the ports for Syslog on the firewall: # esxcli network firewall ruleset set –e true –r syslog Apply the configuration with: # […]

This is really basics stuff, but here is a quick how to. Connect to your host through SSH or open the DCUI. Setup the target SNMP server, port and community string: # esxcli system snmp set –t <ip_or_fqdn>@/<community_string> Enable SNMP: # esxcli system snmp set –e yes Logout. Done! 🙂 Verify the snmpd service is running and check if the ports are open on the host though vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. Please note […]

Another quick post about ESXCLI basics. Here is a procedure how to quickly recover the Management Network functionality on your ESXi host. First, login through iLO or iDRAC or iRMC, whatever remote management solution your server is equipped with. Press F2 on Direct Console UI, provide the root password and enable ESXi Shell via Troubleshooting Options. Press ALT+F1 and log in. List vmkernel interfaces: # esxcli network ip interface list Remove vmkernel interface(s): # esxcli […]

A quick blog post on how to install a custom CIM provider on an ESXi 5.x host. Command reference can be found here. In this example I will use an Emulex vib CIM provider for ESXi which is necessary if you using Emulex OneCommand vCenter plug-in in your environment. Install custom CIM provider First, enable SSH on the host. Upload the vib to the tmp directory on the ESXi host. Login to host via SSH […]

Recently I upgraded my physical server to ESXi 5.1 and I have been running different VMs on it without any issues. Unfortunately, when I powered on my whole vCenter Site Recovery Manager infrastructure and tried to power on some x64-bit VMs, I received the following error message.  Checking all the settings didn’t reveal any misconfiguration or what so ever so this has to do with upgrade of my home lab server to ESXi 5.1. I […]

Here is a quick post about configuring the vSphere Dump Collector for your ESXi hosts. I’m not going to cover the installation process because it is really simple and straightforward. You can install the Dump Collector as stand-alone instance or integrated with vCenter Server. If you choose the last option you will have to provide the IP address, port and log in credentials for the vCenter Server. After the installation, you can configure the Dump […]