Start and Manage a VM Without Using vSphere Client

You’re familiar with features in VMware vSphere that can help bring up critical virtual infrastructure after a widespread datacenter outage — planned or otherwise — but did you also know that it’s possible to power on a virtual machine and even determine the dynamic IP address of a guest OS using a simple command-line utility?  This could be handy after a disaster or if you normally rely on a Windows virtual machine to run the vSphere Client and don’t feel like firing up Fusion for one quick task.

Power on and SSH to a Linux VM from Mac OS X

Consider this real-world situation:  You are working remotely on your Mac and need to log into a powered-off Linux VM back in the datacenter.  Don’t fret — if you can ssh to the host using Tech Support Mode (VMware ESXi 4.1 shown here), you are most of the way there.  Thanks to vim-cmd you can find your VM, power it on, and learn the guest OS IP address in no time:

Let’s break it down step by step:

1. Use grep to find the ID of your VM (1008 in this example):

~ # vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | grep -i CENTOS1
1008   CENTOS1      [CX4-01-LUN9] CENTOS1/CENTOS1.vmx         centos64Guest

2. Quick sanity check to verify the VM is actually powered off:

~ # vim-cmd vmsvc/get.summary 1008 | egrep '(power|ip)'
      powerState = "poweredOff",
      ipAddress = ,

3. Power on, wait a few moments, and check status again:

~ # vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on 1008
Powering on VM:
~ # vim-cmd vmsvc/get.summary 1008 | egrep '(power|ip)'
      powerState = "poweredOn",
      ipAddress = "10.136.234.38",
~ #

4.  Connect with ssh (or RDP, if targeting a Windows VM) and get on with things

Enjoy!

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2. Easily view guest IP addresses with vSphere Client
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5. Half the VM reboots on Patch Tuesday