Listing all VM's with Snapshots via PowerShell

 

get-vm | get-snapshot | select name,vm,sizemb

EMC Avamar virtual machine combination proxy

I always forget these and spend so much time trying to find it.

This is the username and password need to access the EMC Avamar virtual machine combination proxy.

Username root
Password avam@r

Setup Host Dump Config

VMware KB2002955
esxcli -s servername system coredump network get
esxcli -s servername system coredump network set --interface-name vmk0 --server-ipv4 X.X.X.X --server-port 6500
esxcli -s servername system coredump network set --enable true

Commands to Disable navi reg

esxcli system setting advanced list -o /Disk/EnableNaviReg
esxcli system setting advanced set -o /Disk/EnableNaviReg --int-value "0"
esxcli system setting advanced list -o /Disk/EnableNaviReg

After installing VMWare 5.0 and doing an update to 5.1 I got this error.

No vmkcore disk partition is available and no network core dump server has been configured. Host core dumps cannot be saved.

ESXi basically wants to know where to dump the OS in an event of Purple Screen of Death.

After some digging around I found this KB. KB2001566
This didn't help much if you want dump to a LUN.
To configure the dump to LUN look at this KB2004299

Basically do install esxcli from vmware.com

esxcli -s "servername" system coredump partition get

Active:
Configured:

Came back blank as its not configured.

List the drives.

esxcli -s "servername" system coredump partition list

The output appears similar to:

Name Path Active Configured
--------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- ------ ----------
naa.60060160028131:7 /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.60060160028131:7 true true

Once you have a drive set it to be to core dump.

esxcli -s "servername" system coredump partition set --partition="naa.60060160028131:7"

esxcli -s "servername" system coredump partition set --enable true

Check to make sure the drive is now set.

esxcli -s "servername" system coredump partition list

The output appears similar to:

Name Path Active Configured
--------------------- ------------------ ------ ----------
naa.60060160028131:7 /vmfs/devices/.... true true

VMware vSphere PowerCLI Overview


PowerCLI cmdlets

Installing VMware Tool within CentOS Linux


yum -y install perl
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
cp /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz /tmp
umount /mnt/cdrom
tar -zxf /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp
cd /
./tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl --default
rm -f /tmp/VMwareTools-*.tar.gz
rm -rf /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib

Cisco UCS Boot from SAN

Came into and issue when configuring Cisco UCS boot from San option and vSphere 5.1. I had already installed and setup the Initiators (2 HBA's) and storage group and attached the 5GB LUN. I installed vSphere and the server booted fine.  The issue became apparent when I wanted to attach the server datastores that are shared among the other esxi hosts.This happened because vSphere automatically registered itself with Unisphere.

The problem is I need 2 storage groups in Unisphere. One for the boot LUN and another for the data LUN's. The issue I came across was vSphere would register all 4 HBA's as one host, what is great except the host needs to have its own boot LUN and this is not something that can be shared among multiple hosts.

First create a 5GB LUN and create a single Storage group and assign this the LUN. I called it esxprdXX-Boot.

Then I applied this VMware Fix to the host then powered down the host. In Unisphere I entered engineering mode Ctrl+Shift+F12 pw=messner and removed the host from any storage groups and De register the host.

Power back on the server and go back to Unisphere. 2 HBA's should turn up as UNKNOWN. I registered both as hostname-Boot and gave it a IP (Not a true IP as its not going to be used) I gave mine 1.1.1.1

Make sure you register all paths, and then add the hostname-boot to the esxprdXX-Boot storage group. This give the LUN back to the server so it is able to boot. Restart the server.

Once the host is up the other 2 HBA's are now know to UniSphere and can be registered to the correct hostname. Attach this to the shared storage groups and the server was ready.