Get ESX version numbers

Log in to your ESX and run the following command:

cat /proc/vmware/version

It will give you a nice overview of the version of ESX and its components/drivers.

Get NumLock working in PuTTY

When using PuTTY to connect to an ESX/Linux over SSH, NumLocks behaves quite strange.  When you try to enter a number your cursor jumps all over the place and you get weird characters.

To use NumLock, fire up PuTTY and select the Terminal – Features item in the Configuration Pane.  Next, check the Disable application keypad mode checkbox.

Click on Session, select the Default Settings saved session and click the Save button.  PuTTY remembers this config from now on.

That’s it!

Change the Keyboard Layout of VMware Management Assistant (vMA)

The keyboard layout standard is in US English layout, but in my case i needed it to be in Belgian layout.

Login to the vMA.  Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/keyboard by entering

sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/keyboard

Enter your password and the nano editor will fire up.

 

Change the line KEYTABLE=” “ to your keyboard layout.  In my case this was:

KEYTABLE="be-latin1"

Reboot the vMA appliance and you’re done!

Enable Serial-Line Logging on ESX 3.5 through HP iLO

First we need to configure the Virtual COM port.

Reboot your server and get into the BIOS by pressing F9.  Get into the System Options screen and select the Virtual Serial Port.  Take a note of the COM port used (COM 2 in this example).

Go back to the main menu and select BIOS Serial Console & EMS.  Under BIOS Serial Console Port, select the COM port you noted above.  Set the BIOS Serial Console Baub Rate to 115200.

How many Powered On VMs are running on my host + Speed up your PowerCLI cmdlets!

A rather simple script today, but we’ll discuss some nice improvements on our way…

 

Let’s say you want to know how many VMs are running on your host.  The following code will do the trick:

Get-VMHost "host" | Get-VM | Where-Object `

 {$_.PowerState -eq "PoweredOn"} | Measure-Object

It will give you a nice output like this:

Allright!  Script works…  but it’s rather slow.  Let’s use the Measure-Command cmdlet to see how long it actually takes in my environment.  The Measure-Command take a ScriptBlock argument at the –Expression parameter.  So pass the whole code as a scriptblock and you know how long it takes to run it.

Changes in Configuration Maximums from vSphere 4.0 to 4.1

Some maximums have changed in vSphere 4.1.  The most important ones are listed below.

Inventory Item	Item	vSphere 4.0	vSphere 4.1
ESX Host	Logical CPUs per host	64	128
Networking	vDS per vCenter	16	32
Networking	vDS Ports per vCenter	6000	20000
Cluster/Resource Pool	Virtual Machines per cluster	1280	3000
Cluster/Resource Pool	Virtual Machines per host	160	320
vCenter	Hosts per vCenter	300	1000
vCenter	Powered on VMs per vCenter	3000	10000
vCenter	Registered VMs per vCenter	4500	15000
vCenter	Powered on VMs in Linked-mode	10000	30000
vCenter	Registered VMs in Linked-mode	15000	50000
vCenter	Concurrent vSphere Clients	30	100
vCenter	Hosts per Datacenter	100	400
vCenter	Concurrent Provisioning operations per host/datastore	8	4
vCenter	Concurrent vMotion operations per host	2	4 (1 Gb)/8 (10 Gb)
vCenter	Concurrent vMotion operations per VMFS datastore	4	128
vCenter	Concurrent Storage vMotion operations per datastore	8	4
Update Manager	Host scans per vCenter	300	1000
Update Manager	VM scans per vCenter	4000	10000
Update Manager	VM (Tools) scan per Host	145	24
Update Manager	Powered on Windows scan per VUM	72	17
Update Manager	Powered on Linux scan per VUM	145	8

 

Most of the items have improved, but some of them are actually lower (especially Update Manager).  Bottom line is that you can host more VM’s per host/cluster/…