ESXi 4 cmdline resources?

[contink]

I'm running an ESXi unit on a HP Proliant for my home system and increasingly for my business but I'll be honest I've never found the time or the necessary convoluted logic to understand where all the information is for maintaining my system.

I know plenty about running a NIX box so it shouldn't be hard to tackle but the VMWare marketing and sales pitch always seems to get in the way of anyone trying to work things through for themselves/free.

So, purpose of this thread is to ask for any useful gentle introductions to some of the common maintenance and/or control tasks required to effectively manage a box like this properly.


I'm aware that there's a version 5 appearing and it seems they've confused things further by calling it ESXi despite it apparently ditching the free model completely so you see what I feel like I'm up against...


Any help gratefully received and willingly returned when it comes to printer issues or teething toddler solutions... I pay it forward

[Arthur]

I'm aware that there's a version 5 appearing and it seems they've confused things further by calling it ESXi despite it apparently ditching the free model completely so you see what I feel like I'm up against...

VMware haven't ditched the free version of ESXi v5.0 (or "vSphere Hypervisor Based on ESXi" to give it it's full name), although they have limited it to a maximum of 8GB vRAM.

[Butuz]

VMware haven't ditched the free version of ESXi v5.0 (or "vSphere Hypervisor Based on ESXi" to give it it's full name), although they have limited it to a maximum of 8GB vRAM.

Which basically means it's been castrated to only be useful for a spot of testing and noting else

Butuz

[contink]

VMware haven't ditched the free version of ESXi v5.0 (or "vSphere Hypervisor Based on ESXi" to give it it's full name), although they have limited it to a maximum of 8GB vRAM.

Thanks for the info Arthur...

For my purposes the 8Gb limit is fine as I've a ML110 unit here and that's the limit anyway... When you're running a 2 person company (wife has joined me for her sins) there's not the same level of requirements for RAM, etc...


With that side of things aside, can I ask has anyone got any tips for upgrading an ESXi 4.x system that boots off a USB stick? or indeed any other how-to guides/info for making future updates/upgrades/patches?

That's the stuff I'm really missing since they ditched the Host Update Utility.

[Arthur]

any other how-to guides/info for making future updates/upgrades/patches?

Here's a good guide...

http://blog.peacon.co.uk/how-to-patch-esxi-4-1/

[contink]

Cheers Arthur... Just to correct I have a ML115 (not the ML110)...

That link was pretty useful though and exactly what I was after... much appreciated...

[andrew-virtusolve]

Update link is useful, for general maintenance you can do most things through the UI or using local tech support mode - the 'proper' way to administer is to use the vCLI -

vSphere Command-Line Interface

Wouldn't spend too much time learning vi-hostops.pl though, a new unified command set is coming out for vSphere/ESXi 5 - esxcli (good article here)

[contink]

Thanks for both your answers Andrew... Exactly what I was hoping for and while, as you say, things are changing, it's still a useful starting block to understanding the general commands and getting started.

Much appreciated.