Esxi

Using SSH keys to connect to ESXi

2012-02-27 77 words, 1 minutes
esxi
keys
openssh
ssh
vmware

In VMware ESXi 5, SSH is enabled through the “Configuration / Security Profile / Services” section. When you connect using the root user, you have to specify the root password. If you want to use SSH keys, the only thing you have to do is copy them, over ssh, to a dedicated directory: # cd ~/.ssh # scp id_rsa.pub authorized_keys root@esxi:/etc/ssh/keys-root/ You can now connect to the ESXi using your SSH keys (and the `ssh-agent`). So simple!

Raw Device Mapping of local SATA disks on ESXi

2012-02-26 680 words, 4 minutes
esxi
raw device mapping
rdm
sata
ssd
vmware

My brand new ESXi machine is a “standard” Intel Z68 powered PC. It has three disks inside: two SSD and a SATA disk. My idea is to use the first SSD to host some VM (production VM, virtual ESXi, virtual Hyper-V…) and to connect the two other disks to a FreeNAS virtual instance. This enables to present a ZFS storage to the virtual hypervisors. Here’s the way to attach two of the SATA drives to a single virtual machine using RDM technics. BTW, I’m using ESXi v5.0.0.

Enable and configure SNMP on VMware ESXi 5

2012-02-24 362 words, 2 minutes
esxi
snmp
vmware

Here we are, VMware ESXi 5 is installed on the Z68 motherboard. One of the first thing to do is enable SNMP to be able to actually get remote information on what happens to the beast :) Later on, we’ll be able to get pretty graphs to show how the virtual infrastructure lives. Here’s how I did enable and configure SNMP on my ESXi. This is the free instance, without any vCenter.