VMware Exam Cram

This is based on the admin guide for 2.1 downloadable from VMware’s website.
Further material highlighted in green is from the authorised courseware.

For every method to do something in windows – there’s a method in Linux. In the

end I decided to not document everything in Linux – otherwise these notes would
become excessively long – with how to do this n that in every possible guest OS

I do not accept any responsibility for any inaccuracies or misunderstanding by me

in this document. It is made available for free, as is, and without warranty.

If you do feel there are errors or something is not clear – then drop me an email,
and I will correct the original in due course
Chapter X: Installation
Starting the Installation (Boot from CD)
1. Insert ESX2.1 drive into the CD drive
2. Boot server

Note:
The server should boot from the CD-rom

3. At the Installation Prompt press [Enter]

Note:
You have the choice of GUI or text-mode installation. If you wait it
defaults to GUI

ESX will detect you host bus adapters (SCSI/SCSI Raid) and load the
appropriate driver to allow you to access the physical disk

Installation Type (Custom)

1. Click Next to the Welcome Screen
2. From the Installation Type screen choose © Custom

Note:
Do not use automatic. Under 2.1 the installation is Linux based, and
attempts allocate the large amounts of the disk space to a Linux swap
file. If the server has a lot of memory – which ESX boxes generally do –
this will consume large amount of disk space unnecessarily

Keyboard Configuration/Mouse
• Adjust to suit your preferences
• In my case choose
• Model generic 105 key
• United Kingdom as the Layout
• Generic 2 Button Mouse
• Dead Keys – appears to be enabled by default an allows special
keys/characters

License Agreement
1. Enable the X for I accept the terms in the license agreement

Note:
Apparently – it won’t boot if you don’t accept this!

Serial Numbers
Note:
• You can bypass inputting serial numbers at this stage – but you would
have to input them in the MUI
• If you did bypass them and add them later – you have to do a reboot!
• It is better type them in lower-case – as UPPERCASE tends to fill the edit
boxes, and it is hard to see if 0’s are O’s

Device Allocation
Note:
 • The amount of memory you reserve for the Service Console (default
192MG) has a direct relationship to the number of VM’s the VMkernal will
support -
• Options here will vary based on your hardware configuration. Normally,
defaults are fine.
• You made find it useful to make a note of the PCI Bus Device Function
numbers that it detects, this can help you in future troubleshooting
• System finds the first network card in the PCI bus and allocates to the
Service Console
• Any subsequent network cards are used by the Virtual Machines
• If you only have one onboard Host Bus Adapter – then X Shared with
service console must be enabled for it to be used for both Service Console
and storage of Virtual Disks on VMFS partitions
• As most servers only have one SCSI adapter or RAID controller card this is
a good default – unless you dealing with a system designed for a Disk
Duplex (fault tolerance on the controller card
• In my case the Dell PowerEdge 1650 has this configuration

Card Type Dedicated PCI Bus: Device:

to: Function
Intel 8254xT Service 1:2:0
Gigabit Console
Intel 8254xT Virtual 1.4.0
Gigabit Machines

Disk Partition Strategy

Note:
• System shows you the disks within the server. It labels them sdA and sdB
and so on depending how you have configured the disks within the Raid
controller configuration
• The system works along the lines of primary, extended, and logical
partitions
• The same rules exist for the number and type of these partitions in
Windows – 4 Primary. 3 Primary and one extended with logical partitions
within. 1 primary with an extended partition
• The format types supported are Linux based Journal Format (ext3), Swap,
Vfat
• And vkmcore and vmfsv2 which are formats that propriety to VMware
• Typical Issue to consider are:

o Boot (ext3)
Used to boot the system – 50MG is all that is required. No big files
are stored here – as you if you did you could flush the disk, and
stop the server from booting correctly

o Swap Partition Size (ext3)

Making sure the swap partition for the Service Console will be big
enough for future growth. Generally, VMware recommend 2x the
amount memory assigned to the Service Console in the previous
screen. However, partitions are difficult to expand and it might be
easier to full allocate the swap partition. That way if you add more
memory and cpu power you will be able to easily increase the
number of VM’s that you have accordingly

o Root Partition (Represented by / ext3)

 o Home (ext3)
Location for storage for Virtual Machine administrators – used to
store virtual machine files such as .vmx. Typically, these files are
quite small. Must do on ext3 format as VM’s require a directory
structure

o /tmp and /var

Optional partitions – since if you don’t create them the installer will
create them on the root / partition. TMP is used for tmp files, and
var contains variable data like system logging files, mail and printer
spool directories. If you intend to do "Scripted Installations" of ESX
the /Var partition must be larger than 500MG or reside as directory
on partition that has more than 500MG of Free Space.

o VMimages (ext3)
A storage point for you ISO’s and template disks, sometime
referred to as “Golden Masters”.

o Vmkcore (vmkcore)
The core dump partition where the Vmkernal puts memory dump
information in the event of a “purple screen of death” or a “kernel
panic”

o VMFS Partition (VMFSv2)

ESX native file system – used to store virtual disks. Can be created
now – or in later within the MUI

• Each time you use the partition tool to create a new partition – you
must select on which disk you would like it to be

Disk Partition Summary

There is an error in the screen dump later in this section – the usr dir should be
called tmp!

Note:
Below is what VMware recommends for partitioning strategy. Although a lot
depends on your disk capacity, of course. The size of VMimages is “Goldie Locks”
value – it depends on much space you want for your ISOs/Disk Templates.

To summarize:
Here we have 3 primary partitions, and one extended partition with 6 logical
partitions (/home, /tmp, /var, /vmimages, vmkcore, vmfs2)

Mount File Fixed Size Fill To Force

Point System Size MG Max Primary
/boot Ext3 X 50 X
Swap X 1024 X
/ Ext3 X 2048 X
/home Ext3 X 2048
/tmp Ext3 X 512
/var Ext X 1024
/vmimages Ext3 X 10240?
Vmkcore X 100
Vmfs2 X
Boot Partition (/boot, 50MG, Primary)

1. Choose Manual Partitioning (for reasons outlined earlier in this

document) and Next
2. Click /dev/sda and choose New

Warning:
Make sure you have the correct disk selected, each and every time you
create a partition

3. From the Mount Point pull-down menu choose /boot

4. Change the Size in MB, to be 50MG
5. Enable X Force to be a primary partition
6. Click OK

Swap Partition (Swap, 2xService Console Memory or 1024MG, Primary)

Note:
No need for a mount point.

1. Choose New
2. Change the File System type to be Swap
3. Change the Size in MG, to be 1024MG
4. Enable X Force to be a Primary Partition
5. Click OK

Root Partition (/ 2048MG, Primary)

1. Choose New
2. Change the mount point to be /
3. Change the Size in MG, to be 1800MG
4. Enable X Force to be Primary Partition
5. Click OK

Home Partition (/home, 2048, Don’t not make primary)

Note:
In this case we have created 3 primary partitions, this next partition will be a
logical drive in a extended partition

1. Choose New
2. Change the mount point to be /home
3. Change the Size in MG, to be 1800MG

Note:
Do not check off the option to force to be a primary partition

4. Choose OK

VMimages Partition (10GB?)

Note:
Not required, but recommended – name can be anything you like – but best to be
consistent – as this will assist you in copying files to and from ESX. VMimages is
the name given in the authorised courses from Vmware. The size is anything you
like – but remember if you storing your virtual disks locally (not on a SAN) you
will need give as much disk space to them. However, this location will store ISO
(less than 700MG) and also disk templates (which could be “large” starting at
1.5GB).
 1. Choose New
2. In the mount point edit box type: /vmimages
3. Change the size in MG to be 10000

Note:
Do not check off the option to force to be a primary partition

4. Choose OK

vmkcore (vmkcore type, 100MG)

Note:
This is the core dump partition, needs to be no bigger than 100MG and uses a
special format for saving the data

1. Choose New
2. From the File System type choose vmkcore
3. Change the Size in MG, to be 100

Note:
Do not check off the option to force to be a primary partition

4. Choose OK

VMFS Partition (vmfs2, Fill to be maximum allowable size)

Note:
In this case, now all the partitions for the system to function, the rest is pure
storage for virtual disks. By far the biggest files on ESX server. So, we shall use
the remainder of the disk for this….This is process optional. VMFS partitions can
be created later…

1. Choose New
2. From the File System Type choose VMFSv2
3. Enable © Fill to Maximum Allowable Size

Note:
Do not check off the option to force to be a primary partition

4. Choose OK

CAUTION:
Review you partitioning – get a colleague to check your configuration.
Before clicking Next

You configuration will looks something like this:

 This was screen dump taken from a VMware Workstation, doing a ESX
installation to it, hence the disk are referred to as (Model: Vmware,
VMware Virtual S1.o). Here the administrator has created separate
partitions for tmp and var. If you intend to do “Scripted Installations” of
ESX the /Var partition must be larger than 500MG or reside as directory
on partition that has more than 500MG of Free Space. Contains variable
data like system logging files, mail and printer spool directories.

Network Configuration
• Do not use DHCP – this can cause problems with virtual mac address
within VM’s
• Use static address at all times for ESX and VM’s within…
• As you enter an IP address, the installer will pre-fill some of the IP ranges
– some it might get right – such as Subnet Mask, others it gets wrong it
assumes your router is w.x.y.254 and your primary dns is w.x.y.1
• You must set a host name

1. hostname: esxinstructor1.education.vmw
2. I: 192.168.2.101
3. S: 255.255.255.0
4. G: 192.168.2.1
5. P: 217.79.96.163
6. S: 217.79.111.7
7. Choose Next

Time Zone Selection

Note:
Quite important as VM’s get their time from the ESX server…

1. Choose X System Clock uses UTC if you set your time via the BIOS
2. Select you location, in my case Europe/London
 3. Click the UTC Offset Tab
4. Click UTC (with no offset in my case)
5. and enable X System Clock uses UTC
6. Choose Next

Account Configuration
Note:
You must create a least one other account as well as ROOT. Never create VM’s
logged on as account as you will face ownership issues, beside which it’s a
security issue. You should be able to carry out most of your tasks as an ordinary
VM administrator with only occasionally needing to login as ROOT.

1. Set a password on ROOT

2. Click Add a user account for yourself

Confirm your settings and install

Note:
• The main gathering of install information is now over – check you have
carried out these tasks properly, and then click next to start the
installation
• System will copy the files
• Leave you with a finish button
• Eject the CD for you
• Reboot the Server
• If all goes well, you should be left with ESX Service Console Screen! 
• Before leaving the server room to do your post-install configuration – try a
ping of the Service Console to confirm you can communicate to it…

Post-Installation (MUI)
Note:
Post configuration is done by the Management User Interface (MUI) it’s a web-
page front-end powered by Apache running on the Service Console. Its also the
primary management front-end too. Beware of some pop-up stoppers – they can
stop some of the page transitions which occur when you logon to the MUI for the
very first time – and you miss your opportunity to be guided through the post-
configuration changes.

Note:
Unless you have DNS name resolution configured, it is recommend you configure
a host file with the name and IP address of your ESX server. Internet Explorer
can be slow to connect if you just use an IP address. Additionally, you can have
proxy server issues associated with just using IP address

Note:
The three main post-configuration tasks are:

• First-time-run settings with the MUI

• Creating a VMFS swap file for Virtual Machines
• Creating Virtual Switches and Assigning Network Cards

Login into the MUI for the First Time:

1. From a workstation open a web-browser and http://hostname (where
hostname is the name of you server set during the installation)
2. The system will prompt you with a certificate Security Alert Dialog box:
 3. Choose View Certificate and then Install Certificate. Next your way
through the dialog boxes to install the certificate to the default location on
your machine

Note:
This a built-in server certificate used to verify the identity of the server to
which you are connecting, and also encrypt any information sent from the
workstation to the MUI. You can use your own certificates or enrol with a
3rd Party Certificate Authority should you wish.

4. Choose Yes to connect to the MUI Login page

5. Login as ROOT with your password

Configuring the Swap File

Note:
You need a swap file to take advantage of advanced-memory management
features. Under release 2.1 of ESX occasional these messages reappear – this is a
browser/web-server issue. The swap and the switches are still there.

1. Click at the Reconfigure… link that reads

Warning: No swap space is configured or none is active. Reconfigure...

2. Click the Create… Link

Note:
System will create a swap file called swapfile.vsmp which is the same size
as the amount of RAM on the ESX server – this is recommendation. The
default to activate at start-up is a good default

3. Click OK
4. In the second window click Activate – this will save you from doing an
unnecessary reboot!

Note:
To see your volume label use “Manage Files”, select vmfs, select your
 disk (vmhbaW:X:Y:Z). It should be displayed like so:

SwapFile.vswp
r w - : 2047MB : Aug 5 09:45

Meaning of vmhbaA:T:L:V
Notes
• Each number refers to in turn
• A – is the Host Bus Adapter Controller in the Server – 0 for the first one, 1
for the second and so on
• T is the SCSI or SP target. Most SAN’s will have two controllers for fault
tolerances with HBA0 plugged into one Storage Port on the first controller
(0) and the HBA1 plugged into the second Storage Port on the SAN (1)
• L – is the LUN number (a area of Logical Free space comprising usually
more than DISK for RAID0, 1, 5 or a combination) this begins with 0,1,2,3
– some SAN’s reserve LUN0 as a “management LUN”
• V - is the Partition number for Primary or Logical Drives or for ESX VMFS
partition
• So vmhba1:1:7:1 would indicate the second hba connected to the second
controller on the SAN, using LUN 7 with Partition 1

Configuring the Virtual Ethernet Switches

Note:
This allows the Virtual Machines to communicate to the wider network. Switch can
be Outbound – where the switch is connected to a physical network card which
allows communication to the wider network. Alternatively, you can have Internal
switches which have no physical network cards attached them. This allows you to
have an networking happening internally to the ESX server for all manner of
purposes – one example is test firewall configurations or using ESX in test
deployment environment prior to going to the “live” network.

1. Click at the Reconfigure… Link that reads

Warning: No virtual Ethernet switches found. Reconfigure...

2. Scroll down the “Network Connections” Window

3. Choose the Click Here link
4. Change the Network Label to be Outbound
5. Enable X Outbound Adapter
6. Choose Create Switch
7. Click the Close link in the top left of the page

Note:
Post-configuration of the ESX server is now complete. We are now in a
position to consider creating virtual machines

Setting a Volume Label on a VMFS Partition

Note:
Like setting volume labels in Windows, volume labels help you identify the
partition you dealing with. They can useful to identify storage locations (Local as
opposed to SAN). The naming convention for locating VMFS partitions use PCI bus
information – based on the HBA settings, while understandable few people find
this naming convention “intuitive” (for example vmhba0:0:0:8)
 1. In the MUI, click at the Options tab
2. Choose Storage Management

Note:
At the top of this view the first 7 or so will be “system” partitions like boot,
root, home, vmimages and so on

3. Select the link that say Edit, next to Logical VMFS-2.11 Volume
4. In the Edit box type in a name such as: Internal

Note:
Volume labels are entirely configurable – set them to be what ever you
find useful

5. Choose OK
6. Choose Close

Note:
To see your volume label use “Manage Files”, select vmfs, select in the
case of this example “Local”

Changing Security Levels

Note:
In production environment there should be no need to change the security
settings. You can use a utility like PuTTY to make secure connections to the
Service Console directly (using SSH). You can use secure copy utility to copy files
such as Windows Secure Copy . These tools offer security where as Telnet and
FTP do not.

Please note the ROOT user cannot directly FTP or Telnet into a ESX server. You
can, however, telnet in as a VM administrator, and use the SU command to
switch user once connected

1. In the MUI, click the Options tab

2. Choose Security Settings
3. Choose © Medium

Note:
This lowers security to allow Telnet, FTP – it also starts the services for
you

4. Click OK
Chapter 1: Introduction to ESX
• Core Elements of Design:

Virtualisation Layer – Abstraction of Hardware from OS/VM

Resource Manager – manage allocations of CPU/Memory/Network BW/Disk
Hardware Interface Components – Hiding HW differences

• Virtualisation/Abstraction
o CPU – appears to have own CPU or multiple CPUs. Most non-
privileged instructions go direct to CPU, privileged ones go via the
Virtual Layer
o Memory – seen as contiguous – but underneath there is swapping
and non-contiguous areas of memory – Guest OS unaware of this
o Disk – Represented as SCSI drive connected to SCSI adapter
despite physical layer – which supports SCSI, RAID, SAN adapters
from QLogic and Emulux. Virtual Disk (VD) is portable to any
system regardless of hardware

By disk we mean the piece of metal – we allocate space to the

“disk” which then can be “partitioned” like any other “disk” using
the OS native tools

o Network – Four Virtual Network Cards/Per Machine, IP/MAC

address each – three main ways of addressing the network layer

1. Can be mapped to physical card know as VMnic

2. Multiple VM’s mapped to one network card
3. Virtual Network Adapter in memory called Personal
Virtual Ethernet Networks (VMnet)

You can use this to create a kind of virtual firewall

o Problems with applications rarely have anything to do with VMware

but with the underlining guest OS

• Service Console
o First installed component
o Runs the whole system with http/snmp/api interfaces
o Boots the installation – using a modified Linux distribution
o After booting the Service Console initialises the Virtual layer and
Resource Manager
o Components:

Server Daemon - vmserverd – actions based on web-console and

remote console

Authentication Daemon – wmauthd – handles authentication to

management consoles – also Pluggable Authentication Module
(PAM) which allows other external authentication mechanisms like
AD

SNMP Daemon (ucd-snmpd) – allows ESX to managed via SNMP

management tool

Other 3rd Tools/Services – you may have hardware specific tools

 such as HP Insight - these can be run on ESX as well

o Where is your admin stored – proc/vmware can be edited directly

or scripted
o You can delegate – root as FC over everything – but you can create
other mini-admins with few privileges
Chapter 2: Creating and Configuring Virtual
Machines
Creating VM’s
• VM name – ASCII only
• Recommend you check for any VMKernal Alerts before creating one
• Configuration Files (vmx used to be CFG on previous versions but still
accessible)) are put in the \Root\Vmware\Win2000Serv (Shortname for
OS)
• But disk (dsk) and swap files (swapfile.vswp) files are created in the VMFS
volume area…
• The VM Wizard:

o Standard Options – select OS, Display Name, Location for WMX

file
o VM Config – CPU & Memory

CPU 1 or 2 – must less than or equal to physical number

Some guest OS will not give you the choice – like NT4
2 CPU’s require VMware Virtual SMP License
Suggest workable value for Memory – can be modified later
Watch out for small disk size, and large memory – you run out of
disk space because of the size allocated to the swap file

o Disk – Blank, Existing, System LUN (Logical Unit Number)/Disk

Blank – a new virtual disk

Existing – You have one already
System LUN/Disk – Allocate a physical disk

 Blank

VMFS Volume - You select the VMFS volume you want to

store it on – if you just have one volume – you don’t get a
pull down list

File Name: Set DSK file name

Size: Sets a default 4000MG or 4GB, or less – if there is

less physical space

Virtual SCSI Node – Every virtual disk is regarded as SCSI

disk with its own adapter – to keep them separate they use
LUN numbers

o Disk Modes:

Persistant: Like a normal disk, all writes written permantly to disk

Non-Persistant: Power off VM – changes are discarded – demo
box
Undoable: Option of keeping or discarding changes
Append: Changes go to redo.log not to dsk – can rollback change
log – this redo file gets larger and large until you delete it or
convert to Undoable – to keep or discard
 o Virtual Machine is created ready for Guest OS to be installed

Installing the Remote Console

Note:
To install a guest OS – we need to be able to connect to the VM as opposed to
ESX directly.

• Three types of Rconsole – windows, linux (rpm) linux (tar.gz)

• Logon to web-console
• Click at the download link to run the installer appropriate to your platform
• Run it
• Complete logon screen like so:

• Select the VM machine to connect to

• The power up button will allow your start the vm

Installing Guest OS’s

• You need to install remote console – which allows you connect
remotely to the Guest OS
• Stick a bootable cd in the drive,
• In the Rconsole fire up virtual machine – which make should boot from
CD and start installation – you then install OS like you would any box –
formatting the virtual disk using the OS along the way

• OR Grab GSX (2.5 or higher) or Workstation (3.2 or higher)

• If it won’t boot from CD
o Check BIOS settings OR
o “Zero out the first 64KB” of the raw disk using dd (device-to-device
utility – or else use MS delpart or some other partitioning tool to
clear the existing MBR
• If CD is not bootable like my W2K3 Enterprise CD – then you
could…

o Boot from ISO files and floppy disks as well – on Rconsole you
would have to go into
o Settings, Configuration Editor, Floppy Drive and enable X
Connected, X Connected on Power Up – or in Floppy or CD –
specify a path to a ISO image
o Booting from a WIN98 Floppy worked in my Virtual Machine but not
on the physical hardware – GOOD OLD VMWARE!!!
o You can run fdisk in a VMware environment to partition up the DSK
o Alternatively, you could use PXE and use something like RIS from
Microsoft or the Rapid Deployment Pack from HP

• If you want over the network installs you would need to boot from a floppy
disk or ISO image to get network connections to start a network install…
 • You might get warnings about disk corruption – just Guest OS getting
confused about virtual disk – not to worry, code is written which
eventually makes it accepted
• Network Card appears as a single AMD Network Card – until you
switch to native networking using the Vmware Driver…

Post-Installation of Guest OS (VMware Tools)

• You can install VMware Tools two the virtual machine via Rconsole
• Two drivers which improve graphics/appearance mouse
• Allows you move the mouse in and out of the window – rather than it
being locked in the Rconsole….
• Until then you have to use Control+Alt to release it from Guest OS
• Control+Alt+INS – to send the Control+Alt+Del to Guest OS

• Other features of the Tools:

Adds in the Guest Operating System Service which allows:

Synchronise the Time

Power-Off and Reset a Machine
Excute commands when ESX requests the Guest Service to halt or
reboot
Pass a string from the Service Console to the Virtual Machine
Send a heartbeat – so ESX server knows the VM is still running
Tray-icon on VM allows you to open and changes settings

• With Windows 2003/2000/XP the drivers give “not signed off”

errors

• NT4 has special requirements

o In your using the Vmxnet driver then:

You need SP3 or higher

Add in a new network adapter though Control
Panel\Network\Adapters and Add
Browse to D:\vmnet
Add in the “VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter”
Configure IP address and so on

Note:
Without SP3 you get: “System Process — Driver Entry Point Not
Found; The \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vmxnet.sys device
driver could not locate the entry point
NdisGetFirstBufferFromPacket in driver NDIS.SYS.”

o If you have use Vlance, then everything is as it would normally be…

• Linux has a special installation:

Like NT4 if you using the VMxnet driver you have manually add it in…

logon as root
mount the CD
copy the installer file to tmp
unmount the cd

see below:
 su
mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt
cp /mnt/vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz /tmp
umount /dev/cdrom

Untar the VMware Tools tar file in /tmp and install it.

See below:

cd /tmp
tar zxf vmware-linux-tools.tar.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib
./vmware-install.pl

Note: When installing VMware Tools in some versions of Linux, the

installer will need to recompile VMware Tools. For this to work, you need
to have a C compiler installed in the guest. In some cases you may get
compiler warning messages during the VMware Tools installation.
However, the control panel and drivers still work correctly.

Follow the remaining steps. Choose directories for the various files.
Choose a display size for the virtual machine. Enter the number for the
choice and press Enter.

• If you wish, start X and your graphical environment and launch the
VMware Tools background application.vmware-toolbox &

Note: If you created this virtual machine using the vmxnet driver, you
now need to run netconfig or another network configuration utility in the
virtual machine to set up the virtual network adapter.

• Novell has it own special installation:

On Novell Console:

load cdrom
load cd9660.nss
vmwtools:\setup.ncf

When the installation finishes, the message VMware Tools for NetWare are
now running appears in the Logger Screen (NetWare 6.5 guests) or the
Console Screen (NetWare 5.1 guests).

Restart the guest operating system. In the system console, type: restart
server

After you install VMware Tools, make sure the VMware Tools virtual CD-
ROM image (netware.iso) is not attached to the virtual machine. If it is,
disconnect it. Right-click the CD-ROM icon in the status bar of the console
window and select Disconnect.

• On all OS the tools load automatically – except Linux. You have to make
vmware –toolbox in the start-up programs in the Gnome Control Center
(Linux)
• To configure options see /etc/vmware/vmware-guestd --help
Shutdown & Restarting a VM
• Stop, Go, Pause (suspends to a file) and Restart
• From the VMware Management Interface (Web)

All the machines from one interface can be stop/started/restarted

The little tv screen against each VM allows you a quick way of
running Rconsole – if running IE6, remove the warning about
downloading this file type…

• Or from Rconsole

Similar button on the Rconsole window…

• Or from Service Console using the vmware-cmd command

vmware-cmd <vm-cfg-path> stop <powerop_mode>

vmware-cmd <vm-cfg-path> reset <powerop_mode>

path to vmx file

powermode – allows hard, soft, and trysoft reboot methods
eg

vmware-cmd /root/vmware/win2000Serv/win2000Serv.vmx
reset trysoft

Note:
This stuff is case-sensitive I believe

• Sometimes it has to be done at Rconsole – some hard console

message needs acknowledging?

Using PXE
• Boot for PXE rather than cd/floppy/hd to:
o Remotely install OS – like a RisServer
o Deploy an image of a virtual disk to a server – using Ghost or Altris
o Boot Linux disklessly – and run it across the network
o Windows XP not supported in this method

• Requirements
o Make sure VM setup to use a virtual adapter
o Either vmxnet or vlance is supported
o Virtual Disk but no OS installed
o VM boots according to its “BIOS” settings
o They recommend putting PXE at the top of the list for the boot
order

Configure VM to use LSI Logic SCSI Adaptor

• MORAL: START OF WITH LSI – BECAUSE IT’S A BORE DOING AFTER
THE MACHINE HAS BEEN CONFIGURED

• Use a Virtual BusLogic and virtual LSI Logic SCSI

• W2K3 – Ships with LSI Logic Driver – should default to it…in VMware it will
use the vmxlsilogic bus driver instead – all over VM get the old
vmxbuslogic
• If its linux old than 2.4.18 then recommend you upgrade your linux kernel
 • Suse 8.1 has a driver – but its got an error – you have to setup on
BusLogic first, then switch to LSI afterwards!
• For new machine (NOT REQUIRED FOR W2K)
o Create the VM -
o But don’t start it up
o Edit the VMX file

scsi<n>.virtualDev = "vmxbuslogic"
to
scsi<n>.virtualDev = "vmxlsilogic"

o Save the File

o Power On machine and begin install
o Provide the LSI Driver went prompted using F6

If its an existing machine –

Edit the VMX file -

you add the adapter with more lines than above
windows recognises it –
and then you install the driver.
Once its there. Shutdown the VM,
And then edit the VMX for second time – clearing out the dead
entries you put in

o This process can cause a Guest OS wide re-scan of hardware

Importing, Upgrading and Exporting VM’s

• Configuring a VM to use more than one CPU
o Must be created in 2.1 doesn’t support upgrade from 1.51
o Nor can the VM come from Workstation or GSX
o You need a license for Virtual SMP
o Guest OS must support SMP
o VM cannot have more virtual CPU’s than there are physical ones
o By definition you need more than two!
o Windows 2003 – can be switched via web-console without any work
o Windows 2000 – can be switched but you have to update the HAL –
although I seemed to have no problem when I selected it and did a
clean install
o Linux – must be set when you configure the VM for the first time…
o Not all the Linux distributions supported SMP –
o include Red Hat
o Enterprise Linux 2.1, Red Hat Linux 9.0, SuSE Linux 8.2 and SuSE
Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8.
o You cannot downgrade from Multiprocessor to UniProcessor
• Migrating Old ESX Server Virtual Machines
o Can run it in a legacy/mixed/compatibility mode – but you stuck
with a single processor
o 1.0. 1.1 must be upgrade to 1.5 before being migrated
o You have to upgrade the “hardware” of the virtual machines – they
look like they need more disk space
o If you were running W2K3 on an older version – you have to
update the GuestOS configuration options
• Migrating/Importing Workstation/GSX VM
o Must have been configured with a virtual SCSI disk
 o GSX 2.0 or WS3.2 have to be upgrade to 1.5 first and then on to
2.1
 Import Virtual Disks/Redo Logs or “Snapshot” (.vmss file)
with WS4.0
 Create new VM in 2.1
 Make sure the VMFS volume has the capcity to hold the dsk
 ESX requires 2GB per VM - You can get bloat on the file size
as it converts it – as GSX/WS disk start off smaller and
expand to meet your requirements – where as ESX reserves
2GB minimum
 With the Redo – or “Snapshot” files you get import options:

Take must current disk + redo/snapshot (.vmss)

Take the base – ignoring re-do/snapshot
 You may need to set-up a new network driver
 WS/GSX can only be configured to use just one processor
o If VMDK is > 2GB, ftp across to ESX, and then use vmfstools to
import it
• Exporting ESX VM to Workstation4
o Must be uniprocessor
o If disks are “redo” – you have commit your changes from the
redo.log before exporting
o Cannot export to/or older ESX 1.5/GSX2.5/WS3.2
o You do the export with vmkstools

Preparing to use Remote Console

• VM’s must be “registered” – done automatically
• Held within /etc/vmware/vm-list
• If you setup a vm without the wizard you must register them
manually
o be sure the virtual machine is powered off
o Status Monitor page of the web management interface,
o point to the terminal icon for the virtual machine you want to
register and
o click Edit Configuration. Select Registered at the top of the Edit
Configuration page.
• Alternatively you can do it at the Service Console using:

vmware-cmd -s register /<configpath>/<configfile>.vmx

or unregister with:

vmware-cmd -s unregister /<configpath>/<configfile>.vmx

Third Party Software Compatibility

• If your run Metaframe you need FR1 or higher
• Hotfix XE102W014.
• Article 869 outlines performance changes you can make

Executing Scripts (Power Status)

• You can run scripts on change of power status – power up, down, suspend
• There are default scripts – they suspend networking on shutdown/suspend
and resumme it when started up again
• Must be BAT file for windows host –
• But can contain any language (Shell or Perl) for Linux
 • Requirements
o Guest Service to be running
o Lastest version of VMware tools
o Need a virtual network adapter
• If you reinstall or update VMware Tools the old defaults are over-written –
but your scripts are left alone

Configuring VM’s
• TO change hardware options on a machine – you must have the VM
stopped!
• One admin at time should change the settings
• Can edit VMX file directly
• Some scary stuff here I’m avoiding!
Chapter 3: Using the Management Interface (Web)
Note:
Most hardware or resource settings can only be configured when the VM is
shutdown…

General
• After login you get the “Status Monitor” page – high level view of the
servers
• Refresh every 90secs –
o you may still need to manual refreshes –
o especially if someone has used Rconsole to change the power
status of machine
• Timeout of the console is 60mins –
o You can change this by editing vmware_SESSION_LENGTH
o In the /home/vmware/mui/apache/conf/access.conf file
o Block access by making this entry 0 (zero)
o -1 sets an indefiniate duration for the session
• Basic Stats get updated every 20 seconds
o Can be set to 1-15 to even out any spikes in performance – cough
and splutters the VM’s make
o Can be changed in the access.conf file
o PerlSetEnv vmware_STATS_PERIOD 15
o Restart Apache to allow change to take effect with:
o /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware restart
• You can launch Rconsole Session from MI – but if you using IE 6.0
review security settings
o Change security options to: Do not save encrypted pages to disk
o Apparently your ssl connections can be cached and potentially
intercept by another
o Switching this on is deeply annoying – it doesn’t open Rconsole
directly
• Via Proxy Servers/Security
o In W2K3 – make Vmware IM page a “Trusted Site”
o In others – make sure X Bypass Proxy server is enabled
o Perhaps don’t use FQDN but Netbios – as they won’t get proxied…
o If no proxy – they recommend using FQDN
o First connection you get SSL errors until you had the certificate into
your store..
• Browsers Supported
o IE 5.5. or higher
o NN 7.0 or higher
o Mozilla 1.x or higher
o If using NN or Moz - you need JavaScript and Stylesheets enabled
o If clicking at the Icon to start a Rconsole session – then NN/Moz
will need mime types defined. IE on the other hand prompts for a
warning about downloading the . file

Using Status Monitor

• System Summary Tab
o Show no CPU/RAM and amount consumed by VM and Service
Console
o Over a 5min average
 o Shows you status of server – Started, Stopped, Suspended (Pause)
in the process of Suspending

An question or warning has been generate - Orange Triangle

Red circle – an error has occurred

o When running the Console show the ID number of the machine:

Powered on | PID 1219 | VMID 140
o Will also show if VMware Tools are installed or not
o If it states next to WM “Waiting for input” it means the VM is
waiting for a operator to interact with it!
o Icon reflect OS – Windows Logo, Penguin, N for Novell, Blank for
any other OS

• Options Tab – only appears to a “root” administrator

• Manage Files Link – allows you to remotely manage the ESX servers file
system

• VM machine can “disappear” if held on a NFS partition

o Root doesn’t automatically have access to root privileges
o You cannot see the virtual machines if the NFS directory is not
mounted.
• Obvious stuff about shutdown, and so on
o A restart closes all apps and logs of before restarting
• Suspending
o Used for stand-by fall over servers – quicker to get up running
o Two methods of Suspending
 Suspend at current position and resume, suspend
again, and resume from the same point… (default)
• Suspends to a VMSS file – which can be located on
different location
• Configure Option, Edit, Change Partition for Suspend
File
• The keep the VMSS file unique within a partition by
adding a suffix to the name
 Suspend and resume always from the same point (be
careful not change important settings otherwise it
WON’T resumme such as name, location/name of dsk
• You have change the type of dsk you are using
• Change Hardware, Virtual Disk, Edit, Click Here (if
it’s a boot device) Choose Non-Persistant disk
mode
• Then Configure Options, Choose the Verbose
Options - Add, then create an option called
resume.repeatable and set to be TRUE
• Power Up – configure using Rconsole to the state you
want the machine to be in…
• To set a new Repeatable point, shutdown VM and
delete the STD file or else edit resume.repeatable
with the FALSE flag

Creating Virtual Machines (Tabs on the Config of a Machine)

• Each VM has its own Status Monitor window which shows more detailed
stats
 • Tabs for controlling CPU/Memory/Disk/Network/Hardware
Generally/Delegation (Users & Groups)
• Heatbeat
o Requires VMtools
o Can be seen from System Monitor in Management Console
o Can be seen from System Monitor on VMtv
o Should be 100% but if its not don’t worry –
o if its 0 – then its considered an abnormal machine. Heartbeat sent
from Guest OS to VM

CPU Resources
• Tab shows
o Minimum – need to run machine – 0$
o Maximum - highest amount can be 200% if you have two cpu’s
and so on
o Shares
• represents a relative metric for allocating processor
capacity. The values low, normal, and high are compared to
the sum of all shares of all virtual machines on the server
and the service console. Share allocation symbolic values
can be used to configure their conversion into numeric
values.
o Isolated from Hyper-Threading
• represents the CPU operation state of the virtual machine.
Enabling this option prevents a virtual machine from sharing
a physical CPU with other virtual machines when Hyper-
Threading is enabled.

Note: Enabling this option prevents the virtual machine from

using the performance advantages of Hyper-Threading.
• Resource Settings - You can allocate a high/low % of CPU time –
• Scheduling Affinity - And also hard-code to VM to work from one or
more processors

Memory Resources
• Similar to CPU in your options
• Except you have memory affinity – which relates to “Memory Affinity — if
displayed, this represent the NUMA nodes on the ESX Server system to
which the virtual machine can be bound, when the ESX Server system a
NUMA system. “

Disk
• Read & Write bandwidth… you can reduce the Share number – but not do
allocations like you can with Memory or CPU
• This part of the admin guide became quite repetitive – and kept on
referring to later parts of the guide

Network – Traffic Shaping

• Outbound Traffic ONLY!
• Allows you to limit bandwidth – but not by Protocol or Port number
• Average – in Mbps – Long Term Sustainable Average
• Peak – Absolute maximum – Average + Peak…
• Burst – How much on top of the average you allow for bursts of Network
Traffic – WITHOUT EXCEEDING PEAK
Hardware
• Controls a whole host of hardware such as
o Virtual Disk
o Floppy
o CD/DVD
o Virtual Network Adapter
o Display Settings

• Floppy
o Only one VM can connect to the physical floppy at one time.
o Virtual Floppies can be loaded from a ISO image file!
o Options
 Connect – connects to the ESX servers floppy
 Connect on – connects to ESX server during start-up –
required to boot from floppy?
• CD-ROM
o Same as Floppy drive really
• CPUs
o It is possible for a single CPU system to emulate a 2-cpu system –
like hyper-threading would
• Memory
o Number assigned in multiple of 4
o 128/256/512/768/1024
• Virtual Adapter
o Choose which PHYSIC adapter to use
o Choose which DRIVER to use
 VMnic – connects to physical adapter – acts normally on the
network
 VMxnet – Virtual network which allows the other vm
machine to talk to each other
o Drivers called vlance – which installs automatically OR
o Vmxnet – provides better performance but only on Gigbit Ethernet
Card
o Vmxnet – requires VMtools to be installed to the Guest OS
• SCSI Adapter
o Virtual Device – As meantion earlier – Buslogic or LSI
o Bus Sharing:
 Physical – share disks with any virtual machines on any
server
 Virtual – share disks with VM within a server
 None – to stop sharing of disks
• V-Disks – nothing added here – beyond what was mentioned earlier
• Colour
o Increase network transfer between Rconsole and VM
o But might need to be increased due to app requirements such as
Citrix MC
• Virtual SCSI
o Possible to assign virtual scsi adapter
o If you move from default – 0:0 it warns you about possible boot
problems
• Add Device Wizard
o Allows you to configure more devices – looks straight forward
except for tape device
 o Located on the Hardware Page of a VM machine as a link at the
bottom – Add Device
o Check the SCSI ID via file manager
o /proc/vmware/vmhda<x>/<y>:<z>

X = HBA id
Y = scsi id
Z = scsi lun id

o Add in vdisk using the wizard

o Device field – you type vmhda:1:1:0 and the virtual scsi ID
• Removing hardware
o Er, click remove
o But you cant remove fundamentals such as processor, controller,
display
• General Options
o Oh suspend files must reside on VMFS partition

Start-Up options
• You set up ESX to start the VM machine automatically when it boots – by
default they don’t
• Shutdown – shutdown ESX defaults to shutting down the VM as well – can
set a delay…
• Appears to be unavailable in ESX2.0

Users & Groups Tab

• Shows your permissions
o View status of VM
o Modify config of VM
o Controlling VM – power off/on etc
• Shows who’s logged in by Rconsole
• Events
o Shows the last 15 events
o Reverse chronological
o Comes from a log file held in <homedir>/vmware/<guestOS>
o Red – Error
o Orange – some event occurred which requires intervention

Modifying Peripherals
• Stuff you can do!
o Adding more than 6 SCSI devices – as SCSI has been update to
work beyond 6 devices
o Using a Raw Disk – use if you need to access resources on a
physical disk – like my images partition? Nothing new here…
o Parallel Ports (for Dongles)
o Serial Ports
o Disk Modes…
• Some of this can only be done via the VMX file
• Parallel Port Set-up
o Only one OS at a time – only one VM machine at a time
o Reboot ESX, BIOS, set Parallel Port to be PS/2 or Bi-Directional
o Logon to Service Console as root, run these these commands:

/sbin/insmod parport
 /sbin/insmod parport_pc
/sbin/insmod ppdev

to the and add to /etc/rc.d/rc.local. file – to make them load

permanently

Confirm the modules are loaded using lsmod

o Properties of VM, edit the VMX file in Verbose Options and add
these lines

parallel0.present and set its value to true.

parallel0.fileName and set its value to “/dev/parport0”.
parallel0.bidirectional and set its value to true.

o Confirm that VM is using Virtual Hardware Version 6 by looking for

config.version = 6

o NOTE:
When the virtual machine starts after you update the virtual
hardware version, you see a dialog box with the message “The
CMOS of this virtual machine is incompatible with the current
version of VMware ESX Server. A new CMOS with default values will
be used instead.” Click OK.

o NOTE:
As you start the virtual machine, you may see a message warning
that the parallel port is starting disconnected. If you do, connect to
the virtual machine with a remote console and use the remote
console's Devices menu to connect the parallel port.

o As Guest OS boots it should detect the “new hardware” – install

software/drivers as appropriate

o Start Rconole and enter the VM virtual BIOs in Advanced I/O

Device – configure the parallel port to use bi-directional
• Serial Ports
o Similar to above – except no need to go into physical or virtual bios
o May need to capture the device in the Device Menu
o You use a number to indicate which serial to use 0 or 1 if you have
multiple serial ports on the ESX box

Deleting a VM
• Can only be done by:
o Root
o Creater/Owner of the VM
o If permissions have been set to allow you to do so
• Delete option appears in the pull down within the Web-Console
• Will ask you if you want to delete files as well…
• Choice of keeping the DSK file, while deleting the logs
• All files can be deleted except the Redo.log and Lock files
• DSK files NOT associated with any other Register VM can be deleted also
• Does not display DSK file associated with another VM
Managing ESX Resources
• This is main options page on the web-console…
• Only viewable by the root
• Logout button logs you out – clearing any cached credentials etc
• Web management console – runs under an apache services – these can be
stopped/started at the console
o /etc/init.d/httpd.vmware stop or start or restart

Editing a VM settings directly

• By the verbose options page
• Editing the VMX file with ascii edit – shutdown VM first, back up the file!
• Examples include turning on the LSI Buslogic Adapter for W2K/NT4 VM’s –
mentioned earlier
• You can change the ghost os within a VM – without having to make a new
VM

The VMware File Manager

• VM config file

• Ordinary File

• Virtual Disk File

• VMFS Volume
• Same as above with a collection of pages – is WS/GSX file
• VMFS allows for files larger than other File Systems – so if you copy DSK
file to another location – it will be CONVERTED and SPLIT into 2GB formats
–
• BEWARE IF YOU DO THIS. I DID IT BY ACCIDENT. IT FLUSHED THE DISK.
CRASHED THE BOX – AND I COULDN’T GET BACK IN!
• This is done by
• Always opens to /root/vmware within sub-dirs are created for VM which
contain the VMX files
• The DSK files are held on separate partition formatted with VMSF
• You sometimes find it can’t display certain files with in the manager – over
2GB – this stops some VM workstation files from being imported
• Can select multiple files/directories and set permissions
o Inherited File system
o R W X – read, write, execute
o – indicate setting is the same for all files – and nothing is granted
such as R W –
o A Black space indicates settings are NOT the same for all files
o R – to View the Virtual Machine (RConsole)
o W – To make changes to its configuration
o X – To change its power status
o RWX – Register and Un-register a machine
o These perms are used to control other peoples access…
• Permissions and Directories
o Previous versions – checked both FILE and DIR permission to the
VMX file
o Therefore you needed X on every directory to the file
o The remote console has this requirement still…
• Assigning Permissions – “Flagship User”
 o One account that has rights to all machines
o Not tied to a particular person – so control is maintain regardless of
holidays and or personnel changes
o Avoid problems with access privileges
o Can be quick way of assigning the X privileges

Registering and Un-registering Machines

• Happens automatically when you create a VM
• VM config file needs to be registered
• Maximum is 80 registered VM on one ESX server at any one time
• If you run more than 60 VM – you have to modify certain console settings
to allow this
• One way round this limit – if you want more than 80 machine – is to de-
register the ones you don’t use frequently or all the time
• Can be done by the Root – or by an user with the rights – and scripting
API
• How to Register:
o Browse to the file using the File Manager
o Open the VMX file
o Should come with a status of “not register” click at the hyperlink to
register it
• To De-Register
o Select the VM from the drop-down list
o Choose to De-Register Virtual Machine
• Doing this makes the VM – appear & disappear in the Web-Console

Running Many VMs in ESX (more than 60)

• If you go beyond 60 you have allocate more resources to the
service console for smooth operation
• To Summaries what you do is:
o Increase CPU resource to the console
o Increase RAM to Apache
o Increase Authentication time out
o Increase RAM to vmware-serverd
o Increase “shares”
o Increase RAM to Apache (Second Method)
• If you return to less than 60 – you invert the settings
o Change the Start-up Profile
o Increase to 512mg or to the maximum allowed which is
800mg
o If the systems is still too busy for you to connect you need to
adjust CPU resources
• Increasing CPU resource to the Service Console
o You find the process id for VMware and Httpd – and increase their
priority to 15

 Log in as the root user on the service console.

 Type ps auxw and find the process IDs of the httpd and
vmware-serverd processes.

If there are multiple httpd processes, then type top. Click

Shift-p (P) to sort the output by CPU usage. Remember the
process ID for the httpd process using the most CPU.
  Raise the vmware-serverd process priority to -15 so that it
can connect to all running virtual machines:

renice -15 -p <vmware-serverd_process_ID>

 Raise the httpd process priority to -15:

renice -15 -p <httpd_process_ID>

 Verify that you can log into the VMware Management

Interface and view correct information about the virtual
machines. Once this occurs, then continue with the next
step.

 Change the vmware-serverd process priority back to the

default of zero (0)

renice 0 -p <vmware-serverd_process_ID>

 Change the httpd process priority back to the default of zero

(0).

renice 0 -p <httpd_process_ID>

o Not sure why you have to put it back down to 0??? Wots the point
in that???
o Looks like a temporary change to gain access to start the VM’s off?
• Increasing memory resources to Apache Process
o Each VM gets 25MG from Apache to hold the VM’s data
o Sufficent for 80 VMs
o 200 is the maximum number of registered machines
o Apache may run out of memory
o You may get a “Panic out of memory” message in the
/usr/lib/vmware-mui/apache/logs/error_log file – and the Web
management interface closes down
o Solution – allocate more ram by:
 Edit the /etc/vmware/config file
 Add this line mui.vmdb.shmSize = “37748736” which 36MG
(36x1024 x 1024)
 Restart Apache with - /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd.vmware restart
o Could slow VM’s because its eaten up more RAM
• Increase Authentication Time Value – to give the system more
time to validate you
o Edit the /etc/vmware/config file
o Edit the value vmauthd.connectionSetupTimeout = 120 (default is
30sec upto 2mins)
• Increase Memory Allocation to vmware-serverd process
o Edit the /etc/vmware/config file
o vmserverd.limits.memory = “49152”
o vmserverd.limits.memhard = “65536”
o These changes raise the soft memory limit for the vmware-serverd
process to 48 MB (48 multiplied by 1024) and the hard memory
limit to 64 MB (64 multiplied by 1024).
o Reboot have these changes take effect or use killall -HUP vmware-
serverd
• Running Many Virtual Machine with a Significant CPU Load
 o Increase the number of “shares” to 10,000
o Options, Service Console Settings, click the CPU tab,

alternatively if you can’t gain access from the console:

Type cat /proc/vmware/sched/cpu at the console

From the list look for CONSOLE
echo 10000 > /proc/vmware/vm/125/cpu/shares. Where 125 is
unique vcpu value
• Avoiding Management Interface Failures when Many Virtual
Machines Are Registered
o Same scenario as before – this “panic out of memory”
o Repeated again? Why?

Backup Up VMs
• Tape or Network
o Recommend a second SCSI controller for the tape device
o Separate from consoles controller
• Backup within the VM
o Run a back up to tape or network within the VM’s OS
o If failure occurs you still have VM to recreate & load recovery
software to then restore the Guest OS you backed up
• Backup from the Console
o And the VMX and DSK files
o You loose the adv of above – the ability to restore files within the
Guest OS
o Use VMware Scripting API with conventional backup software to
o Works with many disk modes
• Hardware/Software Disk snapshots
o Backup/Clones from HW vendor
o Disk subsystem, File System, Volume Manager
• Network based replication tools
o Synchronous or Asychonous is supported
o But software remote mirroring can cause problems
 May not recognise VMFS
 Increase network load
 CPU load
 More common in Windows & Unix than in a Linux
environment
Chapter 4: Using Remote Console
• Upto 3 people can connect to the same VM within Rconsole at any one
time
• Start Rconsole from the telly icon in the Web Management Tool – or
running it individually – server admins get a choice of VM’s to connect to
on that ESX server
• In windows Rconsole is started from a shortcut once installed or in Linux
using:

vmware –console

• Power Settings
o Same Power Off, Power On, Suspend, Reset Buttons in Rconsole as
you see elsewhere
o With VMtools installed the restart options allow you to set scripts to
run
o Scripts work with – Power On, Suspend, Resume – BUT NO
OTHERS!
o RESET, Power Off – are not GRACEFUL shutdown – its like wacking
the power button!
o You should use “Shutdown Guest OS” or “Reset Guest OS” from the
pull down-lists in Rconsole
o Similar Options appear in the Web console
o I THINK VMWARE NEEDS TO REVIEW THESE DEFAULTS
• VMTools Settings
o Synch time –
 only if Guest OS is EARLIER than Service console
o Setup Device
 uch as floppy, cd, Ethernet –
 can also be done from Devices, and Settings, Configuration
Editor
o Set scripts –
 the default ones are named suspend-vm-default.bat –
 all that changes is the first part of filename – resume,
poweron, poweroff
 On the suspend does anything – it contains the command

vmip.exe –release
o Shink
 Export ESX disk to GSX using fewest no files
 Optional, not required
 In ESX the dsk allocation is total – not dynamic – it doesn’t
grow in size like a GSX disk does
 Shrinking process is meant to address this difference in the
way ESX and GSX treat their dsk files
 It could potentional split one big DSK file into multiple
smaller ones
 Do the export with File Manager or vmkstools command
 Second tab shows “unsupportable” partitions such as CD-
ROM and Floppy
o Cut and Paste
 Apparently you can between Rconsole and Workstation –
 Needs VMware Tools
 Wouldn’t work for me!
Chapter 5: Using the Service Console
General Stuff:
• Based on a modified Linux Red Hat 7.2 Distrubution
• So it can be managed by VMkernal
• Most services have been disabled esp network ones
• SSH is enabled for remote access
• Don’t run heavy loads on the console – as it takes resources away from
the VM’s
• Aviod DHCP – if you do you need Dynamic Update on the DNS server
• You can dedicate an Network Adapter to the Console – but if you share
with VM machines – you NEED a static IP to do this
• ALT+F2 at the Console to Logon…or SSH or Telnet in if your Security
Settings allow
• Most commands are the same as Linux ones – there are some specific to
Vmware
• They have their own help system based on “manuals” – you use the
command MAN plus the command you want help on to access them
• VMFS Volumes are automatically “mounted”
• Some Examples:
o Findnic – used to id network cards and observe LED’s flashing –
nice method!!!
o Vmfstoools – used to manipulate the file system – you specify
VMFS volume or SCSI id values
o Vmkload – loads device drivers, network shaper modules
o Vdf – shows capcity of all volumes replaces/supersedes df
• Common Linux commands
o Cd – change directories
o Cp – copy files
o Ln – create links or shortcuts
o Ls – to list files in the directory
o Mkdir – to make directories
o Mv – to move a file
o Pwd – show path to current working dir
o Rm – remove a file – delete
o Rmdir – remove a directory
o Cat – prints file to command like DOS command type
o Grep – search for text string in a filename
o Less – to show only a screens worth of data in a file at one time
o More – to pause the scrolling of data
o Apropro – to search for commands that contain a particular string
o Du – display size of a file/directory
o Fdformat – format a floppy disk
o GroupAdd – a group
o Hostname – show esx server name
o Ifconfig – Shows network configuration
o Insmod – load a loadable module into the kernel
o Kill – kill a process by its process number – kill -9 is the surest way
– but this doesn’t release editor buffers
o Lsmod – list all loaded modules
o Lspci – list all PCI devices –v does a verbose listing
o Mount - load a storage device at a specified location in the file
system
 o Unmount – inverse of above
o Passwd – change your password, root can change another persons
password
o Useradd – add a user to the system
o Who – show names of users logged on to the system
o Whoami – shows you who you have logged in as.
o Su – switch user…
o Exit – switches you back to your previous user name
o Ps – show names, process ids and other info –f and –e for full and
every process
o Shutdown – to shutdown computer – with a delay of 5mins
(shutdown –h 5) or immediately (shutdown –r now)
o Chmod – used to change permissions –
o Chown - change ownership
o Chgrp – change group setting for a file
• Some examples of these commands together
o man cat | less – to get help on the cat command with space to
scroll through and q to quit
• /Proc/vmware is a “directory” of files loaded into ram which provides the
virtualisation layer – it can be altered with the echo command – NOT
RECOMMENDED EXCEPT IN SUPPORT CALL

Authentication & Security

• Threemain areas:
o Authentication to the Web MI and Rconsole
o Network Traffic security
o TCP/IP ports opened for traffic – which may require firewall
revisions
• Authentication
o Uses PAM – Pluggable Authentication Modules
o Uses /etc/passwd authentication as its method as linux does
o Can be reconfigured to use LDAP, NIS, Kerberos
o Each logon – inetd spawn a vmware-authd process, user provides
credentials – and then sent on to the PAM – it’s the PAM which
does the authentication really
o Once authenticate – vmware-authd is given a path to a
configu/VMX file to open
o VMauthd closes as soon as the authentication process is complete..
• Permissions on Files
o User needs the following permission to the Config file to do the
following
o R
 To view it in the Web MI
 To connect via Service console with VMware Perl API’s
o RX
 To connect & control (start,stop,reset, suspend) a VM in
WEB MI, Rconsole or Sconsole
o RWX
 To load the configuration pages – and reconfig the VM
o Note: If you just give llist access you can get errors
o Default Permissions on VMX files
 Read, execute and write — for the user who created the
configuration file (the owner)
 Read and execute — for the owner’s group
  Read — for users other than the owner or a member of the
owner’s group
• Network Security
o If you choose High Security – ESX generates its own certificates
o Not signed by CA – and are not Trusted unless you add them to
your Cert Store
o You can create or liase your own from a trusted authority
o You store them in /etc/vmwaremui/ssl
o Two files are used – the certificate and the key – mui.crt and
mui.key
• TCP-IP Ports and Different Security Levels – the higher the security
the small the number of enabled ports – all have 902 (vmware-authd )
and 22 (SSH)
o High Security
 443 – HTTPS, used by the VMware Management Interface
 902 – vmware-authd, used when you connect with the
remote console
 22 – SSH, used for a secure shell connection to the service
console
o Medium Security
 443 – HTTPS, used by the VMware Management Interface
 902 – vmware-authd, used when you connect with the
remote console
 22 – SSH, used for a secure shell connection to the service
console
 23 – Telnet, used for an insecure shell connection to the
service console
 21 – FTP, used for transferring files to and from other
machines
 111 – portmap, used by the NFS client when mounting a
drive on a remote achine
o Low Security
 80 – HTTP, used by the VMware Management Interface
 902 – vmware-authd, used when you connect with the
remote console
 22 – SSH, used for a secure shell connection to the service
console
 23 – Telnet, used for an insecure shell connection to the
service console
 21 – FTP, used for transferring files to and from other
machines
 111 – portmap, used by the NFS client when mounting a
drive on a remote machine
o BY DEFAULT ROOT HAS NO ACCESS TO FTP/TELNET
o Must add your “User” account to the ROOT Group to allow access or
WEAKNEN SECURITY (Not recommended)

Using Devices in ESX

Note:
More info about how get device regnoised – it take it – they mean this time to
ESX rather the VM’s. Nope its about the Guest OS accessing HW directly

• vmkpcidivy – lists physical disk controllers found by the OS

• SCSI or RAID Array
Allowing users to View Guest OS with RConsole
• Users must have RX to do this
• Can do this without assigning permissions
• With a global policy settings
• Edit etc/vmware/config
• Add authd.policy.allowRCForRead = “TRUE”
• Effects ALL VM’s cannot do this with individual machine
Chapter 6: Administering ESX
• The Options tab in Web IM

The Start Up Profile

• If you ADD new hardware you will have to review the start up profile
• Such as extra scsi controllers, network adapters
• Specify such things as whether to allocate new hardware to
o VM’s
o Console
o Vmkernel
• Looks like if you have hyper-threading or ESK2.1 you get a hyper-
threading option in the Start-up folder
• Changes to the profile will need a reboot to take effect

Adapter Bindings
• Virtual Stuff
o Allows you to make virtual adapters/switches
o You give it a label – and attach it to genuine physical adapter
o Changing this label – can stop VM for starting up – as they fail to
find the adapter
o If you don’t attach to Physical Adapter – you end up a virtual
adapter that can only communicate
o Also supports Port Groups
 Extensions of networks – using Virtual LANs
 Requires a Vlan ID
 Goes via vmkernel – you can make it go straight to the
adapter and on to the wider network
 In the VMX verbose options
 Net.VlanTrunking to 0 which disables this process
• Physical Adapters
o Set their speed or auto-negiotate

Users & Groups

• View member ship and so on
• Create & delete users
• Add users to groups
• Create Groups
• Add your User account to the Root Group to give you access

Configuring the SNMP Agent

• Default is that doesn’t start automatically
• And is stopped
• Like windows service you need to change the start-up and START and SET
AUTOMATICALLY

Configuring SANs
• Make sure ONLY ONE ESX server has access to the SAN when your first
formatting the disk
• Set all partitions on the SAN for Public or Shared Access

Configuring Storage
• Create VMSF Paritions where ever you see Free Space
• Edit, Label, Remove, Change the Volume Label
• Span Partitions – like a volume set?
• You cannot alter any of the Linux partitions set up during the installation
• You create a core dump file – this should be stored on a local disk no
o Stores crash info
o Required for Debug and Support
• Rest of Partition stores the VM logs/dsk files
• You can convert from VMFS-1 to VMFS-2
o You have deactivate the swap file
o The metadata overhead is greater on a VMFSv2 volume so you
have to concern yourself with whether you have enough space for
the conversion
• Access Modes
o Public – default, recommended
 Multiple ESX servers access the same partition on the SAN
 With Version 1 – only one at a time!
 Version 2 – allows concurrent access
 Automatic “locking” systems to ensure file integrity
o Shared
 Used for fail-over clustering systems
 Turns OFF the software/kernel VMFS SCSI 2 Reservations
and allows physical SCSI 2 Reservations to be allowed by
Hardware – on the complete LUN
 Between two ESX server with a VM on each
 Or between a Physical Server and VM
• To convert from one mode to another – you have to “deactivate” the swap
file
• Default Maximum VM dsk size is 144MG
• Spanned Volumes – a single addressable space made of lots of volumes
o Each volume is referred to as an Extent
o You cannot alter the maximum file size
o Cannot be used to expand a drive that is getting full
o It deletes data when the Spanned Volume is being created
o Best done at the beginning or else backup and restore your VM’s
o If your volume is spanned you cannot simply remove it – there is a
procedure
• Adapter Bindings
o Allows you to see the SAN adapters
o Displays the WWW port names (?)
o View the Persistent Binding Status
o Assigns specific target ID’s to SCSI devices
o ID is retained at reboot
o Useful for RAW disk setups (dsk is mapped directly to hard-drive
not to a dsk file)
o
• Fail-over Path Locations
o Paths to multiple fibre cards for redundancy
o Shows paths and preferred path (marked as preferred)
o Last path used to access the LUN
o Three colour codes
 Green – Active and Data is being passed successfully
 Orange – Path is disabled and available for activation
 Red – Should be active, but system cannot connect to the
LUN
o Fail-over Policies
 Choose how adapters will be selected
  Two options
 Fixed – always use preferred path where possible
 Most Recently Used -

Configuring a Swap File

• Web IM can only handle on swap file
• Vmkfstools can handle 8
• Do not placed on SAN – ESX can become unstable!
• Default name is swapfile.vswp
• Capcity set in MG
• Usually the swap file is the size as available RAM
• Changes in size – require a reboot
• If from here you can “Deactivate” the swap file – while you reconfigure the
disks
• You can use vmkfstools –w to reactivate the swap file

Changing Advanced Settings

• Here you can set preferences for the Kernel
• Only changes these under guidance from support OR if you really know
what you are doing

Configuring the Service Console

• Allocate a % of CPU to the Service Console
o Shares value represents a relative metric for allocating processor
capacity, where this value is compared to the sum of all shares of
all virtual machines on the server and the service console.
o From the manual:

” For example, a virtual machine is stored on the same drive as the

service console and has a minimum CPU percentage of 20%, and a
maximum CPU percentage of 50%. Meanwhile, the service console
has a minimum percentage of 30% and no specified maximum
percentage. You then decide to give the virtual machine 3000 CPU
shares and the service console 1000 CPU shares.

ESX Server interprets this allocation so that the virtual machine

never has less than 20% of the total physical CPU resources, while
the service console never has less than 30% of the total physical
CPU resources, in any situation.

However, if other virtual machines on the same disk are idling,

then ESX Server redistributes this extra CPU time proportionally,
based on the virtual machine’s and service console’s CPU shares.
Active virtual machines benefit when extra resources are available.
In this example, the virtual machine gets three times as much CPU
time as the service console, subject to the specified CPU
percentages.

That is, the virtual machine has three times as much CPU time as
the service console, as long as the virtual machine’s CPU
percentage is between 20% and 50%. In actuality, the virtual
machine may only get twice the CPU time of the service console,
because three times the CPU time exceeds 50%, or the maximum
CPU percentage of the virtual machine.”
 o If you are running VM on the same HD as the console – consider
increasing CPU
• Same for Disks – but no percentages just the share value
o “For example, the service console and 2 VMFS partitions, VMFS-A
and VMFS-B, are located on the same hard disk on the ESX Server
system. If the service console has 2000 shares and VMFS-A and
VMFS-B each have 1000 shares, then the service console has twice
the disk bandwidth of both VMFS-A and VMFS-B.”

Viewing System Logs and Reports

• VMkernel warnings and serious system alerts, comes from
/var/log/vmkwarning in the service console.
• VMkernel messages, the data comes from /var/log/vmkernel in the
• There is also a VMKSummary log by default
• There is also a vmkusage log file if you enable vmkusage
• service console.
• Look for:
o Memory Errors
o Hardware Failures
• Availabilty Report
o Gives a QoS style report

Seeing how memory is used

Note:
Not available in 2.0. A separate tab for the memory…

• System Summary: Physical Memory - Charts show allocations of

o Virtual Machines
o Common Shares – memory used to allow data to be shared
between VM’s
o Virtualisation – Show the over-head of the VM’s and the Kernel
o Service Console – how much RAM it is using
o Free – Available RAM
o TOTAL – Total of Physical RAM on the Server
• Memory
o Memory Savings Due to Sharing – amount of RAM saved by using
“Common Shares”
o Running similar OS – load similar data – so sharing that data saves
on RAM
o Uses a “a proprietary transparent page sharing technique to
securely eliminate redundant copies of memory pages”
o Often VM’s use LESS RAM than the same machine running on
dedicated hardware
• System Summary: Reserved Memory
o RAM
 Reserved – memory committed as guatenteed allocations to
the VM’s
 Unreserverd – uncommitted memory guarteed to power on
a VM
 TOTAL – Reserved+Unreserved

o SWAP
 Reserved – as above but with SWAP file instead
 Unreserved
 TOTAL
 o Memory
 Memory Available to Power On a Virtual Machine – does
what it says on the tin!
• Virtual Machines: Virtual Machine Summary
o RAM – allocate on memory, often more than is really being used
o Private – memory used by VM only
o Shared – memory used between VMs
o Swapped – memory moved from physical RAM to HD (Swap,
rather than fault)
o Balloon Driver – memory reclaimed from VM inconjunction with
VMTools VMMEMCTL driver and the Guest OS
o Unused – Memory never used by the VM and therefore has not be
allocated
o Active – Memory recently used
o SWAP I/O – bytes per second of faults/swaps

Configure Start-Up/Shutdown Options in the Web MI

Note – not available in 2.0

• Default is VM don’t start-up automatically

• VM has no knowledge of the relationship between the servers (server
dependencies such as Citrix’s DATA STORE)
• Simultaneous start-ups could fail due to excessive load on the server – a
“unique burden”
• We can set VM’s to start & stop automatically – and what order – and a
delay between them (in minutes)
• Delay the starting of the next VM based on if the VMtools has loaded
o This delay does not OVER-RIDE the delays specified above it
o If it fails to start the VMtools within X – it starts loading the next
VM
• Same for shutdowns – you might want to bring all the Citrix boxes down
first – leaving the Data Collector & Metric Farms Servers last…
• ESX uses the First Up; Last Down principle
Chapter 7: Using SNMP with ESX
Monitoring ESX
• Ships with an agent
• Based on net-SNMP
• SNMP Management tool needs to support MIB in SMIv1 format and traps
in SNMPv1
• MIB Location is .iso.org.dod.internet.private.enterprises.vmware or .
1.3.6.1.4.1.6876
• You can retrieve lots of information – too much to list here BUT
• If variable that shows VMkernel is NOT loaded – then ANY other info must
be regarded as invalid…

Monitoring VM’s
• Can retrieve info if VM dsk is stored on an ESX VMFS partition – but not if
its on an NFS mounted drive
• Kind of data you can retrieve
o On/Off
o Lost of Heartbeat
o Resumption of Heartbeat
o Requires VMtools
o Not generated immediately when a new VM is registered
o Must reboot or restart Vmware-ServerD with:

killall –hup vmware-serverd

• SNMP within the Guest OS

o Install the SNMP service as you would on a ordinary machine
o Don’t both with hardware based MIB info – as the Virtualisation
Isolates this anyway

Setup & Install of SNMP

• Two Daemons – Master (snmpd) and a Sub-Agent (vmware-snmpd)
• Master is either a built-in Daemon or a 3rd Part one…
• Agent cannot run on its on – requires Master or 3rd party
• Sub-Agent comms to Master which comms to the SNMP
Client/Management UI
• Both daemons are automatically installed
• If you want ESX specific info you need the Sub-Agent – but its not
required to get general SNMP information
• Coverage of the changing the start up of theses services – has been
covered earlier in this documents within the Web IM

• Setup via the Service Console

o Use the snmpsetup.sh script
o Setups the connection between the Sub-Agent and the Master or
3rd Party Manager Application (such as Dell Open Manage 3 or HP
Insight Manager)
o Don’t use if you don’t want specific ESX snmp info
o Don’t use if your using the 3rd part Daemon or Service
o Proceedure: (with native system)
• At the console as root run
• Smnpsetup.sh default (sets the snmpd.conf file for the
default master, and starts both Master & Agent daemons)
o Proceedure: (with 3rd Party)
• Installed 3rd Party Management App (using vendors
instructions)
• At the console as root run
• Snmpsetup.sh connect (set the conf file for third party, and
starts both the 3rd party and Agent)
o Setting daemons to start (Automatically)
• At the console as root run:
• Chkconfig snmpd on
• Chkconfig vnware-snmpd on
o Setting daemons to start (Manually)
• /etc/rc.d/init.d/snmpd start
• /etc/rc.d/init.d/vmware-snmpd start
o Configuring Trap Destinations
• Cannot be done by Web IM!
• Need to edit the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf file
• Trapsink <fqdn> - trap destination – management console
• Trapcommunity <communityname>
• Community is set to be read-only in the snmpd daemon,
snmpd.conf file
• Default is ROcommunity
• More elaborates permission schemes can be set within the
system – see snmpd-conf (5) man for details
o Management System
• You need to load the MIBS for ESX into your system
• From the /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/mibs directory
o BIG LIST OF VARIABLES FOLLOWED IN THE OFFICAL PDF GUIDE –
NO MANY TO LIST OR DEFINE HERE
Chapter 8: Using VMkernal Device Modules
• It the VMkernel that provides the Virtualisation Layer
• Support Device Driver modules which give access to the physical layer
• Install should detect device – load device modules automatically
• Can be done MANUALLY
• Modules are stored currently in: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod
• Vmkload_mod is used to load modules
• Syntax
o Vmkload <options> <module-binary> <module-tag> n
o The n – number is used to id multiple devices using the same
driver – multiple network cards, scsi controllers and so on…
o Binary and Module-label are required
• vmkload_mod -e /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmklinux linux
o Must be run first – before loading other modules
o Allows VMkernel to use Linux drivers
o –e exports the symbols to allow access from
• Setting up drivers to be loaded at boot up
o Recommended for only advanced users only
o Edits to /etc/vmware/config – allows you supply etc parameters on
boot-up – only it to pass parameters to drivers
o Edit to /etc/vmware/vmkmodule.conf – supply extra parameters,
add/prevent a module/determine driver load order
• VMKmodule.conf
o If you use this file to set-up drivers
o You have to use it continuely as over rides the Web IM
o Must be edited an the line MANUAL-CONFIG added to activate the
file
o Syntax – just the <module-binary> <module-tag> <n>
o No need to specify a path to the binary
Chapter 9: Storage and File Systems
File System Management on RAID Disks
• VMFS – Vmware ESX Server File System
• High performance for large files
• Storage of
o DSK Files
o Memory Image files for suspended machines
o Redo Log Files
• Two Versions – 1 and 2 – 2 only shipped with 2.1
• What’s not available under VMFS 1
o Spanning Volumes
o Lost of being able to access files concurrently – 2.1 includes a
locking system to prevent corruption
o Larger system volumes and dsk files
o RAW disks mapped as VMFS files
• Version 2- is not backwards compatiable with the old 1.x ESX server
• Volumes mounted automatically as soon as storage adapters are loaded –
shortcuts to these volumes appear in /VMFS directory of /
• Vmkfstools – is file management tool – and gets round the 2GB limit of a
lot of OS tools

Viewing and Manipulating Files

• Use standard tools such as ls and cp
• Service Console is based on Linux 2.4 which doesn’t support files over 2GB
• This is also a limitation on NFS volumes
• FTP, scp, and CP – are not affected by these limits – and should be used
as long as host file system supports them
• FTP can mis-report file sizes when using LS – although it does handle files
over 4GB – this because FTP use a 32-bit values for files – and 2x32 – is
4GB

Volumes
• VMFS-2 volumes can span multiple partitions, multiple LUNS or Physical
Disks
• Volume is a “logical grouping of extents” – each extent of a portion of disk
space partition that is a addressable as a single “volume”
• VMFS-1 is limited to one extent – so can’t be used to soak disk space
across multiple disks
• Use vmkfstools –p <volume label> in the /vmfs directory to see more
information
• Labels – can be set when you create and format the partition
o Can be useful – rather than using the proper SCSI id such as
vmhba0:3:0:1
o Acts like a shortcut effectively
o Vmfkstools –S vms vmhba0:3:0:1
o Would allow you to refer to vms:w2k3.dsk in the command line and
in the VMS file
• Labels also useful for:
o Adding additional disks/scsi adaptors
o Useful for LUN ID between servers
o The LUN ID can change – as long as the servers are pointing to the
label not the LUN ID
VMFS Accessibility
• Public
o Default
o Version 1: Multiple ESX servers access same data on the SAN – one
at a time
o Version 2: Multiple ESX servers access same data on the SAN – at
the SAME TIME! – with locking to ensure file integrity
o Recommend especially on SAN based systems
• Shared
o Used for fail-over clustering based systems
o Among VM’s on the different ESX servers
o Or between Physical (NodeA) and Virtual Machines (NodeB)
• Private
o System used previously
o Still supported but recommend you convert them
o No performance overhead in doing so
o They recommend public access
• Changing Accessibility
o Done within Options page in Web based MI
o Storage Configuration
o Cannot be committed if any files are open and in use on that VMFS
Volume
o Warnings and Error occur

Using vmfkstools
• Supports creating of dsk files on a SCSI disk
• You can do most of the file management tasks on with the Web IM
• If the command files – check /var/log/vmkernel log file or Options, System
Logs in Web IM
• Uses a special syntax to address adapter, target, LUN number and
partition (4 numbers all together) such as

vmhba1:2:0:3

vmhba1 – is the second adapter the first being 0

2 – is the target
0 – it the LUN number
3 – is the volume/partition, 0 assumes the whole of the disk

• Syntax

vmfkstools <options> <device or vmfs volume> [:<File>]

• Such as:

vmfkstools /vmfs/vmhba1:2:0:3/rh9.dsk

vmfkstools /vmfs/lun1/rh9.dsk

• Options can be specified with long and short names such as:

--createfs and –C – both create dsk files

Examples of Options
• Creating a Volume
o vmkfstools -C vmfs2 -b 2m -n 32 vmhba1:3:0:1
o C - Creates a VMFS version 2 file (can create version1 file if
required)
o B – Block size must be to the power of 2 in size, and at least 1MG,
a value in K, m, g can be specifed with –b 2g
o –N – maximum number of files, default is 256
• List Attributes of a VMFS Volume or RAW disk mapping
o Vmkfstools –P OR --querypartitions <vmfs_volume_name>
o Shows VMFS format type V1, V2,
o Number of Extents
o Volume Label
o UUID Value?
o List of SCSI names of all the extents
• Exporting/Importing Contents of a file
o –e or –exportfile
 If you use it on the base DSK file – the redo log files are not
exported but can be copied manually
 If you use it on the redo.log file it exports the DSK, redo
log, previously created re-do log files, and the base virtual
disk – IE, the new dsk appears as if the redo logs were
committed – originals remain unchanged
 If you use a combo of exportfile and importfile
• To copy to remote machines
• The Virtual disk will contain less space – as it doesn’t
reserve the disk space of the original with Zero’d out
sectors of the original dsk
• Listing Files on the VMFS partition
o Vmkfstools –l –h –M
o L is a list
o H is human readable file sizes rather than bytes
o M case-sensitive verbose listing
• Advanced Options
o –m – commit your changes to the DSK file from the redo.log
o –f – specify the type of VMFS format – public, shared, writable
o Writable
 Shared files “meta-data” become read-only
 If you want to create, remove or re-size a file – you need to
unlock it and make it writable
 VM’s that use these files must be powered off
o –z – used to extend the size of a VMFS volume by spanning
 32 Extents is the maximum
o –r – make a raw disk mapping to a file
o –g – geometry’s used with importing GSX/Workstation disk which
some fail due to confusion over drive geogemetry (clinders, heads
and tracks) find out the correct geometry’s with vmware.log file,
and the specify the correct value with the g switch
o –x used to extend the size of DSK file
o –L manges reservations of SCSI disks with reserve, release, and
reset options – can upset VM’s on SAN’s use with great caution
o –r – recover – sometimes after a crash – files can appear to be
open – even though the VM’s has terminated – this release the file
handles to allow you to manipulate the files
 o –s used with fibre channel adapters attached to SAN’s used to
SCAN for a new or lost LUN
o –k create a swap file, and –w to activate it – and –y to deactivate
must be ROOT administrator
o –t coverts a VMFSv1 to VMFSv2 partition – have to deactivate
swap file first
 One way process
 Converts private volumes to public
 Maybe slow on first access due to an integreity check
 Back up first!
 No VM’s powered on
 SAN Only – no other ESX can be accessing the volume
 SAN Only – make sure the VMS volume is not mounted by
any other ESX server

Advanced Examples
• Creating a new VMFS2 partition
o vmkfstools -C vmfs2 -b 2m -n 32 vmhba1:3:0:1
• Extends an Existing VMFS Partition by spanning two partitions
o vmkfstools -Z vmhba0:1:2:4 vmhba1:3:0:1
• Names a VMFS volume
o vmkfstools -S mydisk vmhba1:3:0:1
• Creates a new VMFS virtual disk file
o vmkfstools -c 2000m mydisk:rh6.2.dsk
• Imports the contents of a virtual disk to the specified file on a
SCSI device
o vmkfstools -i ~/vms/nt4.dsk vmhba0:2:0:0:nt4.dsk
• Import a GSX or WS Virtual Disk into ESX
o vmkfstools -i winXP.vmdk vmhba0:6:0:1:winXP.dsk

Accessing RAW SCSI Disks

• access raw disks directly or use vmkfstools to map them to a file on a
VMFS-2 partition
• To connect directly to a disk
o On the VM in the Web MI
o Configure Hardware
o Add Device
o Choose Hard Drive
o Choose System LUN/Disk
o Select the Storage Contoller LUN
o Set the Virtual SCSI Device node value
• To Assign SCSI Disks you need to know which Controller the Device is on

Determining SCSI Target ID’s

• You can do this without opening the computer
• And looking at the SCSI Id’s set
• Find SCSI ID’s assigned using the boot log file in /var/log/messages or
• Examine /proc/scsi/scsi
• Info about adapters assigned to the vmKernel is in the /proc/vmware/scsi
directory
• Available once the vmkernel and device modules have been loaded
• Each entry in the path above corresponds to a SCSI Controller assigned to
vmkernel
• To ID the controller use:
 ls -l /proc/vmware/scsi

• To ID the Target ID/LUN and info about each drive use:

cat /proc/vmware/scsi/vmhba0/1:0

Sharing the SCSI Bus

• Normally one VM access one DSK file at anyone time – locked for use…
• You can have two VM’s point to one DSK file – and the second is used as a
“fail-over” server should the other VM falter
• Bus Sharing is the term used to describe this process
• Three Options:

None: Not enabled - Default

Virtual: DSK’s can be shared by VM’s within the SAME ESX server
(Cluster-in-the-box)
Physical: DSK’s can be shared by ANY VM within ANY ESX server
(Requires a shared not a public disk) – used with the SCSI command to
reserve, release and reset a disk

• Changing the Bus Sharing Options

o In the Web IM
o Configure Hardware
o Edit the appropriate SCSI Controller

SANs & ESX

• Supports Qlogic and Emulex host bus adapters
• Disk arrays using RAID
• Disk Arrays carve the storage RAID sets into Logical Units (LUNs) that
represented to the server in a manner similar to an independent single
disk
• LUN’s are few in number, relavatively large, and fixed in size
• Create LUN’s with storage management system which shipped with the
array
• VMware recommend you install ESX to a Local SCSI disk – it does not boot
from the SAN
• VMware recommend you dedicate the Fibre Channel adapters to the VM’s
on the ESX server
• Creating VMFS volumes on the SAN –
o on one ESX server initially
o exclusive access;
o one admin at a time,
o public or shared

Scanning for Devices & Luns

• ESX scans for devices & luns anyway whenever the Fibre Channel driver is
loaded
• You can do a manual scan using vmfsktools –s command
• Might need to do this if you
o Add a new disk array to the SAN
o Need to create new LUN’s on a disk array
o When change LUN masking on the disk array (some kind of alias?)
• Special Requirments for Qlogic adapters
o Before scanning for new LUN’s
o For each NUMERIC ENTRY in:
 o In /proc/scsi/qla2200 or /proc/scsi/qla2300 run the appropriate
command:

echo “scsi-qlascan” > /proc/scsi/qla2200/<numeric_entry>

or

echo “scsi-qlascan” > /proc/scsi/qla2300/<numeric_entry>

o This tells the Qlogic driver to clear the cache of existing LUN’s
o Be sure to choose the RIGHT qlogic driver for IBM/HP/EMC storage
– it is 6.04 and is the default driver used
• DO NOT RUN VMKFSTOOLS -S on NON-FIBRE CHANNEL adapters

Changing Advanced Options for SANs

• vmKernel only scans LUNs from 0-7 (That’s 8 LUN’s altogether)
• If LUN numbers are > 7 then change the DiskMaxLUN field entry
• Max number of LUNS addressable by ESX is 128
• There are changes you can make to stop ESX server scanning unnecessary
LUNs
• You “mask” ie had LUNs using the DiskMaskLUNs option – LUN 0 cannot
be masked

Specific Issues with IBM FAStT Disk Arrays

• Sometimes returns vendor specific errors
• Usually temporary – associated with Firmware Updates or battery for the
disk cache needs to be changed
• ESX may interpret these as LUN exists but is unavailable
• Fix: Enable a retry option in the verbose options called
DiskRetryUnitAttention

Trouble Shooting SAN issues

• Watch out that max no of LUN’s scanned is 8
• You can reconfigure the SAN to skip missing LUN’s – this is a default
• You can hide LUN’s with a LunMasking entry in Advanced Configuration
• Zoning can increase security and reduce traffic on the SAN
• Make sure that the HBA is connected to an ACTIVE controller on the SAN.
Most SAN’s have two controllers for fault tolerance but these are
sometimes PASSIVE – so don’t connect to the PASSIVE one

Persistant Bindings
• You can hardcode a HBA with specific SCSI devices
• Esp useful if the server connects to RAW storage rather than a DSK file
• There is perl script called pbind.pl that allows you to configure this via the
service console rather than through the MUI

Multi-Pathing
• At least two routes to two different switches to two different controllers on
the SAN
• The most fault tolerant SAN solution currently available
• Vmkmultipath –q is a command-line utility that displays the state of all or
selected paths
• Gives status info like: on, off, dead, preferred, active
• Policies – MRU (Most Recently Used) used for Active/Passive systems (the
default) and FIXED for Active/Active
• -s to set a path with –e to enable, -d to disable, -r to set the preferred
path
• Preferred path is ignored in MRU
• Syntax is like this: vmkmultipath -s vmhba0:0:1 -e vmhba1:0:1 with first
device being the controller and second device being disk
• In event of a failure – it takes about 30-60 seconds for a SAN to detect
this – multiple failures show I/O errors on the VMFS partitions
• PortDownRetryCount – controls on a Qlogic this fail over period – value is
Nx2 so a value of 15 would mean a 30sec wait
• On Windows boxes increase the Disk “TImeOut” value in the Registry– so
to be longer than the failover time
Chapter 10: Configuration for Clustering
Warning:
From this point onwards, I had attend the Admin I and II course, and developed
the course to teach it – so I have only documented stuff I didn’t know

• For “stateless” apps such as Web-Servers or VPN – although most people

would use NLB not Clustering for this as it is a cheap effect option for
clones
• DB, Email, F&P
• You can use MSCS, MS NLB or Veritas Clustering Service
• Cluster-in-a-box – VIRTUAL SHARED STORAGE/DSK/Public
• Cluster-across-boxes – PHYSICAL SHARED STORAGE/DSK – you need
Shared SCSI or SAN access – you have to use verbose names
vmhbaA:T:L:V style methods rather than VMFS Volume names
• Cluster between Physical and Virtual – as above – but use RAW storage
not a DSK file
• Consolidating Clusters – taking the cluster in a box idea to the next level
like this:

This saves you having 8 servers with a VM on each ESX speaking to

another VM on another ESX server
• You could use a Physical server for NodeA, and virtual machine for NodeB.
So when failover occour its to the VM which is a cheap stand-by option
than two physical machines
• Support only for SCSI Reservation-2, not 3 – however, all the popular
clustering software currently use only Reservation-2 anyway
• You need two SCSI adapters be they virtual or physical – one services the
BOOT disk the other services the Shared Volumes
• For cluster-in-a-box – PUBLIC is fine… Shared is used between VM on two
different server or in Physical & VM scenario. The shared disk then
becomes not a DSK file but RAW Storage as Window/Linux/Novel cannot
access VMFS/DSK files…
• You get errors in a event viewer in windows on the PASSIVE node as it
tries to access the drive – and then returns a “The driver detected a
controller error on \Device\Scsi\BusLogic3” because of the SCSI
reservations
• Clustering across physical/vm – the SCSI reserves the entire LUN – which
can be limiting – the recommend – a VMFS partition per DSK!?!?!
• Keep the DSK file separate from the SWAP as scsi reservation might stop
it from being accessible!
• Two types of locking VMFS (by the file system) and SCSI Reservations –
locking is designed to prevent file corruption
• You can sometimes get vmkfstools error message “file system is locked by
another server. Use'vmkfstools --recover' to unlock file system if no other
server is accessing” operative bit is the part in italics – the file system
might be locked for use by the other server…. So the current server you
using cannot use vmkfstools – do not need to run the recover command
• The above error happened more on VMFS-1 than VMFS-2 – because it
locked the LUN, where as VMFS-2 locks the file
• VMFS locks the partition to be read-only but allows the existing DSK files
to be modified – to unlock the drive to do file management – stop all VM’s
– and run the vmkfstools --config writable vmhba0:1:0:0 command
• On VM’s Clusters between ESX servers – the DSK file should be on VMFS
volume set to shared to reduce the strength of VMFS locking
• SCSI Reservations can result in the similar error message on the server
which I locked out of access:

” vmkfstools: shared SCSI disk is reserved by another server. Use

'vmkfstools -L release/reset' to end reservation if no other server is using
the SCSI reservation”

• If you accident share VMFS that contains a bootdisk this can stop the boot
process! It get reserved by another a machine so the VM cannot access it
to boot!
• Most Applications don’t do SCSI reservations – and this what clustering
service provide to all applications
• There are release and reset command switches you can use with
vmkpcidivy if this happens
• The reason LUN masking is useful – is that it reduces the chances of these
SCSI reservations occurring when you don’t want them
• NLB is not really touch on in the Admin Course – but I would recommend
boning up on it if you not familiar…
Extra Clustering Info from Microsoft Documentation
• A cluster can contain more than one server – depending on your OS
o W2K Adv – 2 nodes
o W2K DataCenter – 4 nodes
o Win.NET Adv – 4 nodes
o Win.NET DataCenter – 8 nodes
o NLB is 32 nodes regardless of OS
o COM Load-balancing is 8 nodes regardless of OS
• Upgrades – move app to nodeb, upgrade package on nodea, switch back
to nodea, upgrade package on nodeb – perception of no down time
• Really for F&P, Database,– use NLB for Web and Terminal Service – e-
commerce sites use both NLB on the web-pages, and clustering on the
backend databases
• Cluster really only handles failure of the server and the services it
supports – its not intended to protect the users data in the event of a
failure – however you can have shared data disk – typically for data like
databases
• High Availabilty, Reliability, Scalability
• Limits – software compatiabilty? Virus? Software corruption? Human error?
• Sometimes referred to as a pack, rather than a cluster
• Where as front-end, NLB servers are referred to as Clones, rather than
Farms
• With SQL you would be likely to partition the database up into sections so
one cluster dealt with A-F, anther G-M and so on – rather than all servers
responding to all queries
• Sometimes called a “shared nothing” cluster – ensures that two active
nodes in two different clusters could never write to the same db at the
same time – and cause corruption – supported by exchange/sql
• A “component routing cluster” handles comms between front-end servers
and Application Servers (also clustered)
• Scalability – function of what Windows OS you choose to install on, and
the CPU/Mem capcity of the those OS – so DataCenter supports more
CPU/Mem than Adv Server does
• Scale out – more servers in the pack/clone
• Scale Up – more hardware resources
• Active or Passive – with multi-node clusters you can have different combos
of both
• Nice thing about passive, is it has no load – there fore it can take a lot if
one node fails… but if you have an active/active system and one node fails
– is there enough resources to take the load of the lost node – the pack of
cards effect…
• Bad thing about passive – the “insurance policy” you don’t feel the benefit
of your investment until a failure occurs
• Answer you make sure – that the servers are loaded at 50% or less so
there is “free resources” should one of the nodes fail.
• You could have two clusters – which means you have two actives and two
passives
• Generally if you have all nodes active in a 4-node cluster each node only
takes 25% of load – making sure that it can easily take additional load
should 1 of the 4 fail – resources are least doubled to cover for this
scenario
• Put simply a two-node cluster use 50% of resources per server – leaving
50% spare. With 4 node cluster – you use reserve 25% resources or
 utilise 75% of resources on the server – a bit like RAID the cost of excess
capacity goes down as the number of servers in a cluster goes up
• DataCenter supports “cascading failover” where you set the “Preferred
Owner”, and then order and name of remain Nodes 2, 3, 4 –
• Summary – active/passive is cheaper, but you waste money on an unused
server – active/active is more expensive, but you get more value for
money for your investment
• Site redundancy – what if you loose the whole location? Answer duplicate
site – can go for full duplication or “partial impleamentation” – that only
duplicates for a limited period, peak traffic, limited services (not fully
functional)
• If you go for full duplication – you then face the challenge of keeping more
than one dataset in synch – and the possible lost/corruption of data this
entails
• Could have a “strech cluster” where you have a LAN like link between two
sites (latency of less than 500ms or SAN with fibre which has longer cable
lengths)
• Window.net supports “majority node” clustering – changes the way the
quorum is used – instead of single quorum shared between the nodes –
each node has its own quorum which is kept in synch via the network (?)
and gets round the limits of SAN cables and so on – they call it a “Quorum
Set” looks like RAID5 on the network – if one of the quorums is lost – it
can find that info out from the remaining quorums in the set(?)
• Fibre channel is the preferred method, although SCSI is supported
• Two nodes (2xIP address each for Private, and Public nets) and one Virtual
Server IP – which is what the user connect to…
• Failback support is there – so if nodea fails it can failover to nodeb, if
nodea come back online with in a configurable time – it rolls back to nodea
• Resource Group – not all services/apps need to be clustered – so we just
add the apps that do – to the resource group. What cannot be clustered:
o Non-IP based on apps using netbeiu, ipx-spx
o Apps where you cannot redirect their storage to a shared disk
o Client application need to have some kind of retry method –
otherwise they will disconnect before the hand-over to the other
node is complete
• Might be able to get round the lack of cluster awareness of apps with
VBscript & Jscipt – but this is only supported on Windows.NET
• SQL – Lots of RAM, Fast HD’s, Plenty of CPU
• Disk partition – your standard RAID0, 1 and 5 are supported but you can
now get combinations – RAID5+1 is a strip-set that’s mirrored (6 volumes
or more – excellent FT but lots overhead), RAID0+1 is mirror that stripped
(2volumes or more – good ft with good r/w#)
• Domainlet – nodes are dc in the own domain – ft on the cluster service
account
• Two NICs – private and public, with the option of using Public should
private become unavailable. Private net for low contention on network
comms between the two nodes… alternatively you might have two private
nets – with the second being an interface to front-end servers – with the
back end cluster node never actually spoken to directly by client devices
• Alternatively – you can use direct SAN coms – using what ms call
“WinSock Direct” – sans support direct hardware support which removes
the burden on the OS, and two transfer modes one for handshaking and
the other for data transfer – again with no burden on the Server OS
• The events logs are clustered so you only have to read one event log not
one per node on the cluster! – grows to 8MG and clears out in FIFO format
• Cluster disks are plug-and-play able
• You can stop chkdsk occurring which can slow reboots
• Network media failure detection part of W2K is picked up on by Cluster
Service
NLB
• Strictly not required for the exam - but it is in the same MS white paper –
so in it goes
• NLB for http/media/terminal services/ecommerce sites
• TCP/UDP but GRE is only supported in Windows.NET (Generic Routing
Encapsulation)
• Failover and Fail back – within 10 seconds… Load-balancing is endemic –
there’s isn’t a “passive” node scenario
• Clients connect to one Virtual IP – behind which are the real IPs
• Local Data on Local Drives – just synch by a central master – generally
static no volatile data
• Can have on NLB system with 10 servers in – and direct ftp to server1-5
and http to 6-10
• No special HW is really required as it is an IP driver
• Two NICs like a cluster onto the Virtual IP of the cluster and the other a
management IP
• Uses Uni or Multicast broadcast – which it proliferates on to the real server
– does nothing to the non-specified ports – just send them to a physical
server without passing through the virtual stack
• Can work with a single NIC – but limits
o Unicast only from one cluster to outside world – not NLB Cluster to
NLB cluster
o Multi-cast does support cluster-to-cluster comms, but not optimum
for heavy loads
• You tend not to buy RAID infrastructure with the servers as the are N
nodes in the NLB anyway, with the same content
• The real challenge is keeping all these local copies of data in synch and the
same – which also introduces an overhead and possibility of downtime
when the synch is occurring
Chapter 11: Networking
• Two MAC address OUI’s – one for auto and one for manual
• Auto uses UUID and path to the VMX – plus an off-set incase the algorthim
generates the same mac on two different Virtual machines
• Auto MAC stays the same unless you move the VM to another ESX server
(Vmotion?) or relocate the VMX file
• Sometime difficult to map PHYSIC nic to the ESX name allocated to them
(vmnic0, vmnic1 and so on)
• There is a command called findnic – which can assist you in working out
which card is which – does a glorified ping test – look at LED’s to see
activity?
• findnic vmnic0 10.2.0.5 10.2.0.4 first IP binds the card to that IP, and
second IP is the remote machine to ping – there is –f switch to a “flood”
ping – continuous ping?
• Default – everything is set to autonegoiate speed and duplex settings – if
you find things are slow or things miss report speed – switch to manual
settings – beware if you have installed the NATIVE network drivers to the
VM – you will get 10MG from AMD, and 1G from the Native Driver
• You can allow promisicous mode for all traffic within VM or restrict it by
MAC address
• Apparently this setting is VOLITLE and not retain after reboots
• Possible to allow the Service Console to interact directly with Virtual
Networks within the VMs – requires a you install the vmxnet_console
driver to the Service Console
• Once the driver is added and made away of the NICs that provide the
Virtual network – you can bring up these interface with the command:
ifconfig eth1 up 10.2.0.4
• It is possible to have a single NIC ESX box and share the NIC between the
Service Console and the Virtual Machines
• Does support hardware accelation features if the physical nics have them
such as:
o VLAN tag handling
o Checksum Calculations
o TCP Segmentation Offloading
• Bind similair NICs in Bonds – otherwise you might not get all the features
because one adapter doesn’t support them
• To find out NIC information – names and pic slots and so on you can use:

grep 2:04.0 /etc/vmware/devnames.conf

• You can change the bond from being an Active/Active load-balanced
system which is the default to an Active/Passive non-load-balanced
system by editing hwconfig file – you can set which is the primary NIC and
which is the failover
• Beacon Monitoring – method of checking the NICs for failure – used to
check comms to EXTERNAL switches – its an interval and if fails to get a
reply within interval it is aware of lost communications- with a failure
thresholds – so check n so often, and tolerate n failures until you assume
that connection is dead
• Default 0 you can increase this
• Beacon monitoring can create the appearance of eronous network errors –
these can be trapped by switches which then resend to the other adapter
– this effectively doubles the network traffic
• Beacon monitor is a secondary test system – if the NIC does fail it should
switch to the other nic immediately
Chapter 12: Resource Management
• Memory controls are reduced if you don’t install VMtools to the VM – BUT
also if you DON’T configure a SWAP file for ESX
• Service console gets 8% of CPU, 2000 Shares
• On thing that might influence your resource allocation is the service level
offer to customers if you host your customers systems – Platinum, Silver,
Bronze, standard customers would get progressively less resources
• Similar Guest OS on the SAME ESX box means the will more memory
saved by sharing memory…
• Put the VM Kernal SWAP on a different partition to the DSK files – if you
are using local storage
• Look out for page swap events within Guest OS as you would with physical
machines – it indicates you allocated to small amount of RAM
• Having Reconsole Open puts more CPU cycles on the Service Console –
the meantion the use of VNC and RDP for administration purposes
• Regardless of SHARES, % represent an absolute amount of Physical
RAM/CPU time to allocate – if you over allocate CPU, user get “used” to
this level of performance, even if they don’t really “need” it. Which limits
your capcity to add new VM’s without users moaning – best to restrict and
give more % as demand requires
• How minimum’s work – if contention does happen, never give anything
less than this % value
• How maximum’s work – if contention does happen, never give anything
more than % value
• Shares work WITHIN the context of Fixed Minimums and Maximums
• High, Normal and Low – aquate to values where High is 2 times as much
as Normal, and Normal is 4 times as much as Low
• There is a command called procfs – which allows you change CPU
allocations with the service console

To find out current share value assigned: cat

/proc/vmware/vm/103/cpu/shares
OR by using: cat /proc/vmware/vm/137/cpu/status
To change it: echo 2000 > /proc/vmware/vm/103/cpu/shares

• Memory Tax – if a machine has grabbed an allocation of RAM, but it is not

using it – it gets “taxed” and it has to give back that RAM to the system –
done through the balloon driver
• It is possible to set a value on the amount of RAM that can be reclaimed
its called the sched.mem.maxmemctl option in the VMX?
• If the memctrl driver is not available because VMtools has NOT been
installed – then it uses a swapping technique instead
• If you are “Over committing RAM” you need to make sure the the VM
Guest OS has enough space for its own swap file – small DSK, with large
amounts memory – are prone to running out of space for the swap file
• NUMA
o Each CPU represent a node
o Each node has allocation of “local” ram
o But can use RAM from other nodes sometimes called “remote” RAM
o The further “away” this RAM is the more “costly” it is to the system
o ESX attempt to balance VM request across the nodes
o Allocates a temporary “home” node – compares the other nodes –
and attempts to “rebalance the allocation”
 o You can over-ride this built-in “soft affinity” if you like by manually
assigning VM’s to nodes
o You can bind the VM to a particular node, and as consequence bind
it to a particular CPU and block RAM. It’s a one stage process –
once for CPU, and then ESX assumes that you will use the same
node for Memory
• Virtual Overhead – 24MG per VM – not configurable
• Service Console allocations – configurable – such 192, will support 8 VM’s
• VM ESX reserves about 6% RAM for peak usage/spikes for all running VM’s
• All VM run and consumme their maximum unless forced to give it to
another vM with higher share value
• The 512MG barrier – if you exceed the virtualisation overhead grows 54MG
for single CPU, 64MG for Dual, After 1GB there are another set of jumps
which are of 32MG – so machine allocated 2GB of RAM with 1CPU wastes
102MG in the virtualisation
• PARADOX – a VM might consume less RAM than its physical equivilant –
WHY? Well, with multiple VM’s the common data in RAM what they call
“transparent page sharing” – amount shared varies from being as little 5%
to as much 30%

EXAMPLE:
Example: Web Server Consolidation
Suppose that you are using ESX Server to consolidate eight nearly-identical Web
servers running IIS on Windows 2000. Each Windows 2000 machine is configured
with
512MB of memory. The native memory requirement with eight physical servers is
8*
512MB = 4GB.

To consolidate these servers as virtual machines, 24MB is needed for the server
virtualization layer and 192MB is recommended for the service console. Each
virtual
machine also requires an additional 54MB of overhead memory. An additional 6
percent should be added to account for the minimum free memory level.
Assuming
no overcommitment and no benefits from memory sharing, the memory required
for
virtualizing the workload is 24MB + 192MB + (1.06 * 8 * (512MB + 54MB)) =
5016MB.
The total overhead for virtualization in this case is 920MB.

If memory sharing achieves a 10 percent savings (410MB), the total memory

overhead
drops to only 510MB. If memory sharing achieves a 25 percent savings (1GB),
the
virtualized workload actually consumes 104MB less memory than it would on
eight
physical servers. YOU GET SERVER CONSOLIDATION. YOU GET THE
ADVANTAGES OF VIRTUALISATION. IF YOU HAVE vMOTION YOU GET vMOTION

It may also make sense to overcommit memory. For example, suppose that on
average, two of the eight Web server virtual machines are typically idle and that
each
Web server virtual machine requires only 256MB to provide minimally acceptable
service. In this case, the hardware memory size can be reduced safely by an
additional
2 * 256MB = 512MB. In the worst case where all virtual machines happen to be
active
at the same time, the system may need to swap some virtual machine memory to
disk.
Addendum
I passed and failed the exam. Although I got 81% as instructor I needed to get
more than 85%. So I did some additional study to bone up on the areas I wasn’t
sure on….

• Where to Core Dumps go?

The 100MG of data from the core dump file gets copied to the /ROOT
partition

• How do I gain access to the system if the ROOT’s password has

been changed?

Boot from a RedHat CD – 7.2 or higher

Use the “Linux Rescue” command/option
Use chkroot/sysimage to gain access to the system
Use passwd to reset the ROOT password
Allow the CD-ROM to reboot the server

For those of you attending the Admin II authorised course the instructions
are in the first lab where you install ESX 2.1

• What is the correct use of vmkfstools, when you want to set the
file system mode – Public or shared?

vmkfstools –F shared vmhba1:0:0:1

The numbers for the Controller:SCSI Target: Lun: Partition – can start
with 0, but partitions always begin with 1…

• What is vmware-mks when you use PS –ef when a VM is loaded?

mks – is the virtual mouse, keyboard, screen

• Does the VMID change?

Yes, every time you shutdown or restart the VM – you get a new VMID –
ESX see’s it like any other process

• What logs is syslog.d responsible for?

Bit tricky to find this out. The VM kernel log files in /var/log all start with
vmk – and there’s three of them:

vmksummary
vmkernel
vmkwarning

However, if you looking to the syslog,conf file which controls the logging
process – there is a boot.log and message file – however, these appear to
information which covers the Service Console boot process – not the VM
Kernel boot process.

It does NOT look as if the log files in /var/log/vmware directory which are
 called vmware-serverd.log are controlled by syslog,conf

• A new SAN adapter is added to the server – and one of the VM’s
starts to exhibit boot problems – how would trouble shoot this?

Not sure – vmkpcidivy?

• Why have a separate /home /boot / /root /var /log partitions?

Because if you don’t and / fills it will stall the system

• Which files contain the Service Console network settings?

IP and Subnet Mask is in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts ifcfg.eth0

Hostname & Default Gateway is in /etc/sysconfig/network
DNS is in /etc/ resolv.conf
 Boot File/Service Notes
1 BIOS Sets Boot Block HD, Floppy, CD, PXE
2 LILO runs from Boot Block Configured by editing and compiling LILO.CONF
3 LILO loads Service Console Kernel A revised version of Redhat Linux 7.2
4 Service Console launches init First process started by any Linux Kernel
5 Init obeys values in /etc/initab Sets the run-level for the Service Console to be 3 – basic networking with no
GUI. Also sets the number of console session – the default is 6
6 Init works through /etc/rc.d/rc3.d Contains calls to start-up scripts listed in numerical order – s10network
7 Service Console Daemons start s10network – starts the service console networking based on
modules.conf, ifcfg-eth0, network, resolv.conf, hosts
s12syslog – starts the system logging service, configured by syslog.conf
s55shhd starts secure shell services, configured by sshd_config
8 Init launches xinetd for Remote Console Xinetd listens for incoming service requests, and routes them to the
appropriate daemon
e.g vmware-authd (which handles authentication) wu-ftpd which handles ftp
req
9 Init runs vmware start-up scripts s90vmware is starts modprobe – which is Vmware module loader, loading
modules into memory
10 Vmware script loads vmnixmod Vmnixmod.o is loaded by modprobe – vmnixmod.o provides system calls
to vmkloader
11 Vmware script loads vmkloader Modprobe loads vmkloader
12 Vmkloader loads the VM Kernel, mounts VMFS’s Vmkloader loads the vmkernal into the uppermost ranges of memory,
service console is at the bottom
Vmkernal loads drivers based on PCI devices using the vmware-
device.map file
13 Vmware script starts logger Done by s90vmware
14 Vmware script runs vmkdump Done by s90vmware
15 Vmware script does any autostart Done by s90vmware
16 Init runs script to start MUI Done by s91vmware, httpd.vmware configured with httpd.conf