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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In addition to this warning, an alert is shown via the host icon in the inventory tree view.  I’m sure many vSphere administrators have encountered this annoyance.  Recently, I wondered why some of my hosts had it and some did not.  As it turns out, the warning goes away after rebooting.  But this is VMware ESXi — not Windows — and reboots are few and far between.

Fortunately, the warning will also go away after restarting the “management agents” (Host Agent, specifically).  This can be done through the DCUI console GUI, but since you are probably logging in with SSH anyway, the same thing can be accomplished with the following command:

/etc/init.d/hostd restart

And here it is in action:

If you have been looking for a way to get rid of this warning, I hope this helps you out.

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Fire up the vCenter Linux Appliance

Download the OVF and import it to your ESX host.

Power it on and accept the EULA, you will end up at this screen:

NOTE: VMware accidentally included the  Highly Confidential Beta Software EULA with the vCenter on Linux appliance.  I have confirmed with one of the beta program managers and product management that this is not a private beta.  After all, Dr. Stephen Herrod told everyone about it in his keynote today.

Next, configure networking via the menu option or determine the current DHCP IP address — log in as root/vmware and run ifconfig (or just look at the VI Client summary for the VM).

Download the two instant client packages from Oracle to your workstation, as specified in the install documentation.  Copy them to the vCenter VM, like this:

Prepare an Oracle Database

I’m not going to cover how to install Oracle.  Let’s just say it’s not a next-next-finish operation.  You can get the free Oracle Express Edition or use an existing instance already present in your environment.  What I will give you is a simple recipe to prepare your Oracle instance for hosting a vCenter database.

Save the following code as “vpxadmin.sql” on your Oracle server.

CREATE SMALLFILE TABLESPACE "VPX" DATAFILE '/u01/app/oracle/oradata/vcdb/vpx01.dbf' SIZE 100M AUTOEXTEND ON NEXT 10M MAXSIZE UNLIMITED LOGGING EXTENT MANAGEMENT LOCAL SEGMENT SPACE MANAGEMENT AUTO;
 
CREATE USER "VPXADMIN" PROFILE "DEFAULT" IDENTIFIED BY "secretpassword" DEFAULT TABLESPACE "VPX" ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
 
GRANT CONNECT TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT resource TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE VIEW TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE any SEQUENCE TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT CREATE any TABLE TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT EXECUTE ON dbms_job TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT EXECUTE ON dbms_lock TO VPXADMIN;
GRANT unlimited tablespace TO VPXADMIN;

Then, just execute it:

$ sqlplus / as sysdba @vpxadmin.sql

This will create a tablespace and credentials for your vCenter database.

These four things are required in order to connect vCenter on Linux to Oracle:

1. Hostname or IP address
2. Instance name – by default in Oracle this is often “orcl” but you or your DBA may have changed it.  You probably need the fully-qualified version, which would be something like “orcl.whatever.yourcompany.com” — this likely is not the same as the FQDN/hostname of the server.  In the following example, I am using “vcdb.vmware.com” as my instance.
3. Login id: VPXADMIN
4. Password: secretpassword (please change this)

Configure vCenter on Linux Database Connection

Reboot the vCenter VM.  On next boot, the Oracle drivers are detected and installed automatically:

Enter your Oracle connection information and you are done:

Connect to vCenter on Linux with the VI Client

If you already have a recent VI Client installed, you should be able to use it — or download and install by pointing your web browser to your vCenter VM IP.  When you are ready, log in to your new vCenter on Linux (use the root account, not the database account), create a datacenter, add hosts, and try it out.

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I prefer the appearance of a traditional Linux (X11) console font.  To me, it makes text much easier to read.  A few years ago I came across a nice-looking Windows version of that font that works great with PuTTY.   Observe the difference:

If you like this better, simply download the MiscFixedSC613 font from April King and drop it into c:\windows\fonts.  When you configure PuTTY, remember that this is a 9-point font only.

While we are on the topic of PuTTY, here is another tip.  Although PuTTY has a sophisticated configuration dialog that allows storing of profiles for hosts, I’ve found that it is generally easier if I skip all that and launch it the same way I use ssh from a Linux machine.  To do this, make sure putty.exe is in your PATH, open the Run dialog and type in putty user@host, like so:

No muss, no fuss, no empty cans.

Related posts:

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