Malaysia VMware Communities

Few days ago, one of my virtual center machine was crashed and my Microsoft SQL database was corrupted without backup(damm!).

Basically setting up a brand new Windows 2003 machine is pretty simple but setup a new Virtual Machine took me 2 days. The most important is my VM template is go missing. The quick solution is search for VM template and register (add to inventory) again.

SSH into my ESX server using putty and search for VM template file with extension “.vmtx”.

[root@malaysiavmesx01 vmfs]# find /vmfs -name *.vmtx
/vmfs/volumes/465eeddb-89b75750-a52d-011aa0289d15/W2K3STD/W2K3STD.vmtx
/vmfs/volumes/465eeda7-2a63d436-724b-011aa0289d15/RHEL5/RHEL5.vmtx

How to register a VM template using CLI:
[root@malaysiavmesx01 vmfs]# /usr/bin/vmware-cmd -s register

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Latest news that Linux had been potentially attack by some of the method it use to steal the SSH key to gain root access to the potential system.

According to US-CERT, the attack appears to rely on stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system. It then uses a local kernel exploit to gain root access, whereupon it installs the “phalanx2″ rootkit, derived from the older “phalanx” rootkit.

Since the ESX server is running on Linux kernel, I will strongly recommend we should keep an eye on the ESX host to ensure this is not impacted. That could become a serious impact to the virtualization.
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I had tested both environment with my test machine which is DELL Precesion Workstation with 2 x 2.0 Quad core, which had total of 17GB ECC memory loaded with 3 SATA disk contain more than 1TB local storage. Below is the comparison I had done during the test.

Installation - ESX 3.5i had advantages as the entire process is fast and simple. ESX 3.5 require more interaction as it looks similiar to Linux installation. I know the ESX 3.5 can be script and customize by using the ks.cfg which I had done previously for mass deployment. For comparison 1 to 1, ESX 3.5i is much more easier and faster.

Configuration - Basically I dun really find much different as I do manage this machine with my virtual center. The only different is the Linux connection and command no longer usable on ESX 3.5i. By the way, I read some artical to tweak around to make the SSH work on the 3.5i, but I will prefer to proceed with powershell or CLI if I do need to use command prompt.

Perfomance - ESX 3.5i had better through put. In my test, I created 3 VM which 2 of them running on Windows 2003 SP2 with 4GB memory and 4Vcpu, plus additional 1 VM with SUSE Linux. I did the same on ESX 3.5 too. The respond on the ESX 3.5i is much smooth and not lacking, as ESX 3.5 you will see some lacking from the console open on Virtual center.  Follow by file copy test, the VM on ESX 3.5i is slightly faster than ESX 3.5. just less than a minute faster which I tried to copy some file with 20GB. Beside these points, I had not found anything different.
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If you look for VMware authentication login using Microsoft Active Directory, I’m sure you can easily found on any seach enginer but most of the documents slightly outdated which is based on VMware ESX 2.x.

The following article try to give better understanding about latest VMware ESX 3.5 authentication login using AD.

Use esxcfg-auth command - VMware ESX Server Network Management Utility

Login to VMware ESX host using SSH as root

Ping ad.malaysiavm.com to make sure you can reach AD server.

The esxcfg‐auth command includes options for configuring interoperability with several authentication providers. This note focuses on the options that are relevant to Active Directory:
esxcfg‐auth [ [ ‐‐enablead | ‐‐disablead ] [ ‐‐addomain= ] [‐‐addc= ]

Type man esxcfg-auth for more information.

–disableab
Reverts the changes required to authenticate the user against Active Directory.

–enablead
Sets up the Console OS to authenticate the user against an Active Directory server. addomain and addc are required with this option.

–addomain
Sets the domain against which the user is to be authenticated when authenticating against an Active Directory server.

–addc
Sets the domain controller against which the user’s password should be checked.

# esxcfg-auth –enablead –addomain=AD.MALAYSIAVM.COM –addc=dc01.ad.malaysiavm.com

This enables Active Directory based user authentication in the ad.malaysiavm.com domain
with the domain controller dc01.ad.malaysiavm.com.

Basically the system will generate /etc/krb5.conf file as example below:

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When I try to log in to my virtual center to verify my VM farm today, the virtual center show my ESX host had been disconnected from the virtual center by itself. The ESX host itself should be running in critical mode as production and had HA and DRS enable on the cluster. The 1st thing I try to verify is to ensure all my VM and the ESX host is still in production mode, and yes, all the VM is not been down and it still run as normal while it disconnected.

Here is what I did to reconfigure my ESX host and re-join it back to the HA and DRS cluster in my production farm.

Disable the HA and DRS features from the cluster, and totally remove the ESX host from the inventory on Virtual Center server. Follow by that, I SSH in to the ESX host with su -, then I path to the /etc/init.d and look for the services mgmt-VMware status command

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