VMware VDM with a security server. It's easy if you know how :-)

I tried to install VDM with the security server in the DMZ but ran in some connectivity issue's.  Seems after a 1 day testing I found the clue.  First our setup :

VDM Connection Server : 192.168.0.10 (LAN)

Test Desktop : 192.168.0.20 (LAN)

VDM Security Server : 192.168.1.2 (DMZ)

External IP : x.y.z.c (WAN-IP or FQDN)

 

First item to check on the external URL setting in the VDM Connection server put in : https://192.168.0.10:443

On the VDM Security Server, go to "c:\Program Files\Vmware\Vmware VDM\Server\sslgateway\conf".

 

Create a file named "locked.properties" open it with notepad and put in the next text :

clientHost=x.y.z.c
clientPort=443
clientProtocol=https

 

Save and close it, restart the VDM Security Service and the VDM Connection Services and you are good to go.

Off course you are also able to put a FQDN instead of the x.y.z.c

Hèhè

K.

Vmware Workstation on a Vista host gives some network issue's ...

 

After installing Vmware Workstation 6.0.2 on Vista, I had some network issues.  Not able to connect to my Vista machine using RDP, SMB, ...

After some google-ing I found this :

http://www.frameworkx.com/contentblogdetail.aspx?blog=57&id=690

Which indeed solved my problem.

vimsh : handy Vmware ESX Command line tool

Hi,

Recently learned/discovered a handy command line tool on ESX :

vimsh

If you just run vimsh and press enter, you enter a sort of separate command line interface

You can do various things with this CLI here some examples :

vmsvc/getallvms :
gives you a list of all registered virtual machines

vmsvc/poweron, vmsvc/poweroff, vmsvc/powerstate :
change/query powerstate of virtual machines

vmsvc/removedisk
remove a virtual disk while your virtual machine is online
for example vmsvc/removedisk 64 0 4 N removes SCSI device 0:4 from virtual machine with vmID 64, the N leaves the virtual disk file intact.

/hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set portgroup3
enables vmotion on portgroup3, handy to integrate in post-setup configuration scripts

and much much more ...
You can find a detailed white paper about vimsh at the great site http://www.xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=fileinfo&id=4

 

For scripting purposes you can use this command in non-interactive mode, for example :

vimsh -ne vmsvc/getallvms > /root/registeredvms.txt

Clustering your Vmware License server

Clustering your Vmware License server is quite easy but there are a few things to know.  In our setup we used a Majority Node set cluster with file share withness.  We installed the license servers on each node and uploaded the license files locally in the licensing directory.

Then we created a resource group with "IP", "Network name", and "Generic service" pointing to the Vmware License service, and if you like you can add your Virtual Center Service as well. (mind KB doc. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=2195771 and be sure you use VC 2.0.1 patch2)

After starting the license server we noticed that the license server takes over the node name and not the clustered resource network name. Seems no big deal at first but apparently the ESX-servers dynamically change the license server name in their config to the node name.  If that node fails and the other node takes over the licensing service, all your ESX-servers will point to the wrong locations.

But there is a solution :

• Stop the Vmware license server
• Go to the license files and open them
• Search for "SERVER this_host ANY 27000" be sure to take to one without the # in front of the line
• Edit this line and add @<your hostname>, so for example if you clustered resource network name is "VCSERVER01" the line should be : "SERVER this_host ANY 27000@VCSERVER01"
  Clustered networknames are allways uppercase.
• Search for "VENDOR VMWARELM port=27010" be sure to take to one without the # in front of the line
• Edit this line and add @<your hostname>, so for example if you clustered resource network name is "VCSERVER01" the line should be : "VENDOR VMWARELM port=27010@VCSERVER01"
  Clustered networknames are allways uppercase.
• Save the file
• Do this for each license file
• Copy the license files to the other node
• Start the Vmware License service

Problems are hard, solutions are easy ...

I had a few clusters-across-boxes on my ESX-servers, and as Vmware described in its guides, I used RDM's. 

The result of that was that I wasn't able to add nor create vmfs's anymore.   Vmkwarning logs showed SCSI-reservation errors, what didn't suprise me as the MS-cluster-service does this, but I couldn't understand that the VI-client timed out on this.

After long search and consulting some college's we came to the idea to increase VI-client timeout settings.  (You can find it in the Edit menu of the VI-client, called client settings, remote command timeout)  And ofcourse that did the trick, so conclusion : problems are hard, solutions easy !