IES Group Blog

ESXi 4.0 server by VMWare is a very powerful on-the-metal virtual machine environment. However, it is somewhat confusing to many first time users. Unlike most Operating Systems, or even hosts, there is no User Interface on the actual server; instead everything is done remotely.

The question then becomes, how do you transfer pre-existing vm’s? On first glance it appears you can only create new machines or access VM’s that are on a network share.

At IES Group, we have a mixture of Microsoft Virtual PC’s and VMWare Virtual Machines. During our conversion we encountered the following three issues:

1. User interfaces for ESXi 4.0 comes in two flavors, vConnect and vSphere. vSphere is free, so we use vSphere. Our developers use Windows 7, and as we quickly found out; vSphere is incompatible with Windows 7. Here is the work around:
1. A “%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll “ must be located from a machine windows Vista or earlier and has .Net 3.5 SP1 framework installed (Note the different location for 64bit and 32bit operating systems)
2. Create a new folder called “Lib” in “%ProgramFiles%\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher”. (Note the different location for 64bit and 32bit operating systems)
3. Launch Notepad.exe in administration mode.
4. Open VpxClient.exe.config in notepad.
5. Add
   <configuration>
   <runtime>
   <developmentMode developerInstallation="true"/>
   </runtime>
   </configuration>
6. Create a batch file. Add the following commands. (note: adjust the file location appropriately) SET DEVPATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\Lib "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe"
7. Double click the batch file to launch the VSphere Client and you should now be able to connect to your ESXi server.

After reading the articles at professionalvmware, Techhead, and VMware Communities, we were reasonably confident enabling.

2. Transferring the VPC’s and VM’s to ESXi 4.0 can be accomplished by using VMware Workstation or the free VMWare Convertor. We enconounted conversion issues with both VPC’s and VM’s.
   1. Using the convertor to directly convert from VPC’s to ESXi VM had corruption issues on about 50% of conversions. We resolved this by booting up the VPC and completing the conversion using the Physical Computer option. Making it believe it was converting a Physical Computer worked great.
   2. Converting VM’s from any VM version worked great; except for the network card issues. ESXi comes with a new enhanced network card option. During the conversion from the old “Flexible” to the newer “Enhanced vmxnet” network adapter, it leaves an Easter egg for you. The Easter egg comes in the form of a ghosted network adapter. The result is the operating system believing you have an IP Address conflict. To resolve the issue, complete the following steps:
   1. Select Start > Run.
   2. Enter cmd.exe and press Enter. This opens a command prompt. Do not close this command prompt window. In the steps below you will set an environment variable that will only exist in this command prompt window.
   3. At the command prompt, run this command:
      set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
      
   4. In the same command prompt run this command:
      Start DEVMGMT.MSC (press Enter to start Device Manager.)
   5. Select View > Show Hidden Devices.
   6. Expand the Network Adapters tree (select the plus sign next to the Network adapters entry).
   7. Right-click the dimmed network adapter and then select Uninstall.
   8. Close Device Manager.
   9. Close the Command Prompt
   3. Although the VMWare compatibility website identified our server configuration as being compatible for ESXi 4.0; we found an incompatibility with Windows Server 2008 R2 and have not been able to resolve it. With the exception of not having a network card, our W2K8 R2 VM’s run fine, except have not network cards. We have purchased other network card options and will be trying them today.


3. We use “base” VM’s for everything, and often need to copy a “base” to start a new project for during our testing phase. A “base” virtual environment is a basic system install of all publically available operating systems our customers utilize (Win XP, Win 7, Win Vista, W2K Server, W2K3 Server with Oracle #i, W2K8 Server with SQL Server 2005…).

   Because we are not using vConnect, and using the free vSphere client; a cloning utility is not provided in the UI. To bypass this minor inconvenience, use the following process:

   First it is beneficial to enable SSH on your ESXi server. However this is an unsupported feature. To enable SSH follow these steps:
   1. At your ESXi host, press Alt – F1.
   2. Type “unsupported” and the press enter.
   3. A password prompt will appear.
   4. Enter the root password.
   5. This is a unix based command prompted. So you can view the details by typing “ls”.
   6. We want to edit the “inetd.conf” file to do this enter “vi /etc/inetd.conf”
   7. Use the arrow keys to navigate down to the line that begins #SSH. In ESXi 4.0 there are two lines beginning with #SSH. One is for IPv6 and the other is for IPv4. Uncomment the appropriate line item by pressing the Insert key to enter edit mode.
   8. Delete the “#” character to uncomment the line.
   9. Press Esc
   10. Type :wq to save and quit (note: to quit without saving type :q)
   11. Now you need to restart the inetd process. To do this type ps | grep inetd. This gives use the processID of the inetd.
   12. Next run kill –HUP where is the results from the previous step. Example kill –HUP 1234

   An alternative option I have read at VM-Help.com was given by user Martin Ruegg. The above steps can be summed up in 2 commands.

   sed -ri "s/^#ssh/ssh/g" /etc/inetd.conf

   and

   kill -HUP `ps | grep inetd | sed -r "s/^([0-9]+).*/\1/"`

   These commands have not been tested so use at your own risk

   So now that SSH is enabled you can now use a client like PuTTy to SSH into you ESXi server.

   So to clone a VM follow these steps.

   1. Turn off the VM you want to copy
   2. Login via SSH client (PuTTy)
   3. Navigate to your datastore. Typically (\vmfs\volumes\datastore1\)
   4. Create a new directory with the appropriate mode. Mkdir ClonedVM
   5. Change the security of the directory (example: chmod 4755)
   6. Move the harddisk to the new directory mv harddisk1.vmdk \somelocation\harddiskcopy.vmdk
   7. Next edit the first line in the copied .vmdk file. VI harddiskcopy.vmdk
   8. Change the old filename to the new one. Save and exit VI
   9. Open vSphere Client
   10. Create a new “Custom” VM and select the newly copied disk.

Recently, IES Group upgraded a large portion of our servers, desktop environments and supporting software environment. This was an exciting time for all members of the IT division. The biggest hurdle in the hardware design was finding a solution to backup employee laptops, give them quick to our file repository through corporate firewalls. We found a diamond in the ruff; the Windows Home Server. Built on highly efficient, stripped down version of Windows Server 2003, we have grown to love our 10TB WHS. Numerous backup solutions exist, but only one solution meets the following criteria:

1.) The solution must not be a burden to the user and provide automated backup during non-working hours and a single click manual incremental backup for when users stop at the office for short time periods. The system does this by keeping track of changes to aid in efficient incremental backup; but this is not the best part. I can hardly wait to tell you the “best part”, but you will have to wait and read the next item.

2.) Because we run virtualized environments for each of our projects, our storage requirements are very large. At any given day, the developer could be at any number of customer sites; therefore each developer is equipped with multiple “base” VM environments for ease of access. Each developer never changes the “base” VM, and copies it if modification is required for development or testing. A “base” virtual environment is a basic system install of all publically available operating systems our customers utilize (Win XP, Win 7, Win Vista, W2K Server, W2K3 Server with Oracle #i, W2K8 Server with SQL Server 2005…).

Ok, now for the “best part”! The WHS keeps a built in librarian for all files on the server to never store the same file twice. This result is being able to backup everything and never storing OS level files twice, “base” VM’s, project files, MS Office, and any other duplicated files across user laptops. And as an added bonus, this provides versioning and makes daily backups of our development environments possible!

WHS provides software RAID out of the box. I never thought I would say this, but IES Group is using software RAID on our file server. The RAID automatically decides what RAID levels is best for your HD configuration. For example, if you have Hard Drive #1 (500GB), Hard Drive #2 (750GB) and a Hard Drive #3 (750GB); WHS will RAID 5 500GB of each HD, and then use RAID 1 for the left over 250GB from HD #2 and HD #3. Running out of space?....Just add another drive!

The main limitation to WHS is the 10 user limit for backups. This is only for backups, and not for file access securities. WMS is the difference between using your 2TB External USB Drive as a storage solution, to what WinXP is to using DOS! It retails at $95 USD, provides robust Web/FTP and network access to your files, the data security of NT/RAID and lightening fast file transfer speeds.

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