Basic vmware-cmd VM Management tips

Sometimes using a command line is much more faster than using GUI. Personally I found VMware Virtual Center always have bugs. The following article will guide you how to use vmware-cmd VM management tool for some basic VMware administrative tasks.

The figure below illustrates states, transitions, and state changing commands for virtual machines.
VMware

List path and names of registered VM guest vmx files on the present host
For an example:
# vmware-cmd -l
/vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473ddd52-a6f731ac-3125-001aa0288d45/SLES10/SLES10.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-eqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-02/WIN2K3-02.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/47f0819a-9f092588-548c-0015174a435a/WIN2K8-01/WIN2K8-01.vmx
/vmfs/volumes/473daqws-2a53d446-625x-001aa0288d45/WINXP-01/WINXP-01.vmx

VMware ESX provide basic power state options include:

Power on — Powers up the virtual machine and boots the guest operating system if the guest operating system is installed. How to power on VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx start

Power off — Powers down the virtual machine. The virtual machine does not attempt to gracefully shut down the guest operating system. How to power off VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx stop

Suspend — Pauses the virtual machine activity. All transactions are frozen until you issue a Resume command. How to suspend VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx suspend

Resume — Allows virtual machine activity to continue, and releases the Suspended state. How to resume VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473ddda7-2a53d446-x25b-001aa0288d45/SLES9/SLES9.vmx resume

Reset —Powers down the virtual machine and restarts it. How to reset VM guest using command line:
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx reset

How to check VM guest power state
#/usr/bin/vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/473dde07-d8a0f854-rqqa-001aa0288d45/WIN2K3-01/WIN2K3-01.vmx getstate
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August 18, 2008 · Filed Under How's To, Tips, VMware

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Thanks to VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 Bug

I would like to thanks to VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2 BUG, it’s really make it busy today. Thanks god, it’s only happen to few of my VM guest and most of them are not mission critical machine.

Anyway, an official letter from VMware CEO Paul Maritz said about 2 failed.

  • Not disabling the code in the final release of Update 2; and
  • Not catching it in our quality assurance process.

I guess the person in charges have to responsible and probably someone may terminate. This is really a big mistake and we know how’s is the VMware quality control work.

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August 13, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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Veeam Backup 2.0 has been released

Less than five months after the first release, Veeam Backup 2.0 has been released!

The interesting features like:

  • Real-time statistics and reports
  • Support for VMware ESXi (free of charge)
  • Support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) in Windows guest OSes backup
  • Support for 3rd party tape backup devices
  • Backup and replication combined
  • Fast file-level recovery
  • Database-consistent backup

Veeam Backup

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July 30, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2 have been released

VMware have been released the Update 2 for ESX (build 103908) and VirtualCenter (104215).

This new version brings a number of important features including:

  • Cross-processors VMotion (auto-configuration of AMD-V Extended Migration and Intel FlexMigration)
  • Virtual machines live snapshot through Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) (only Windows 2003 and 2008 guest OSes)
  • Virtual machines live cloning
  • Virtual disks hot-extension (only for flat disks without snapshots in persistent mode)
  • VMware HA support for individual virtual machines
  • VirtualCenter alarms for physical servers health (single components supported)
  • Manual computers addition in Guided Consolidation (by hostname or IP)
  • Single Sign-On (SSO) on VirtualCenter client (capability to pass-through Windows authentication credentials, with support for smartcards and digital certificates)
  • Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Sun Solaris 10 U5, Novell SLES 10 SP2 and Ubuntu 8.04 guest OSes
  • Support for 8GB Fibre Channel HBAs
  • Support for NFS and iSCSI over 10Gbit Ethernet
  • Support for Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) (no more experimental)
  • 192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

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July 28, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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VMware CPU Resources

Look at my VMware ESX Server CPU Resources.

  • click here for bigger image.

As you can see from graph above, my VMware ESX Server running for more than 85% - 97% of CPU resources.

Basically I have 2 VMware ESX 3.5 running on top of Dell R900, Intel Xeon E7330 @2.4 Ghz processor and 128 RAM on each server.  The CPU hungry incident happen when I did a vMotion about 40 VM guests from ESX 1 to another ESX 2 server for VMware ESX host patches update. Thanks god! My VM guest are still running without any issue and this is mixed of PRODUCTION and DEVELOPMENT servers.

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July 12, 2008 · Filed Under VMware

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