I had the prerequisite of keeping the MAC address of this VM. I first read this post I found with google. http://zealkabi.blogspot.com/2008/09/vmware-esx-server-3x-procedure-to-set.html

I first tried it manually but got the famous error message “The MAC address entered is not in the valid range. Valid values are between xx:xx:xx:xx:xx”

 Then I removed the vm from ESX inventory; download the vmx file and changed the ethernet0.addressType to static and ethernet0.Address = “01:0C:29:B0:27:E1″ with Notepad++.I deleted original file from the Datastore and upload the vmx file back. I started the vm again and got the message below:

Please specify a static Ethernet address for ethernet0. Failed to configure ethernet0

Without additional setting in the vmx config file you won’t be able to assign a static MAC address in the range your require. To disable mac address checking before boot add the following line in the vmx file.

 ethernetX.checkMACAddress = “false”

Thanks to Jason Nash I fixed this problem.
http://jasonnash.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/disabling-mac-address-checking-in-vmware/

My working config changes:

ethernet0.checkMACAddress = “false”

ethernet0.addressType = “static”

ethernet0.Address = “00:0C:29:B0:27:E1″

• An error occurred while attempting to change the state of virtual machine. Unable to allocate MB of RAM. Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. etc…

The virtual machine is running Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft enhanced the feature for extending basic disk volumes on the fly. In my previous post I needed to add the virtual disk to another server; assign a drive letter and than run the extend option in diskpart. Within VI client extend the "Hard Disk" in the properties of the virtual machine to desired and planned size and goto Computer Management / Storage / Disk Management, right-click and Refresh.

The additional defined disk space will be shown as "Unallocated". Right-click on the C:\ volume and choose "Extend Volume". Follow the wizard and within seconds the basic volume has been extended. Thanks to VMWare ESX and Microsoft Server 2008 our lives as System Engineers is becoming easier.

As lesson learned size your virtual environment appropriate and especially the Hard Disk configuration.

Related links:

• Technet – Extend a Basic Volume

VMWare ESX allows you to extend the virtual disk size on a running virtual machine. How to extend the virtual disk size? Right click the virtual machine in the VI cleint; choose settings and go to “Hard Disk 1″ and type new disk size. Click OK.

Example of my new  Disk Configuration in “Disk Management”. To extend the virtual disk we need to go to diskpart and extent the volume.

I opened command prompt and opened diskpart; selected the volume and run extend.

The volume you selected may not be extended.
Please select another volume and try again.

My virtual hard disk was full and I was not able to extend my basic disk with the additional 2GB I added to this configuration.

Thanks to Kalpesh Prajapati post I was able to find a solution to my problem.

Follow these steps to extend your virtual machine basic hard disk:

• Shutdown the virtual machine
• Extend the virtual disk size
• Add the harddisk to another virtual machine and start it up (second virtual machine)
• Open command prompt and start diskpart.exe
• list volumes and select the volume with the disk problem
• extend the disk

Make sure the volume has a drive letter assigned otherwise same warning will be returned. Virtual machine was started again without any problems and two additional gigs of disk space.

Links:

• Arne Fokkema posted another way how to perfom these actions on a basic disk. It should be easier if you download the additional ExtPart.exe tool from Dell. Extend the OS disk the easy way (ExtPart.exe)

[root@LAB-ESX-01 root]# esxcfg-vswitch -a vSwitch0 –> This will create new virtual switch

[root@LAB-ESX-01 root]# esxcfg-vswitch -L vmnic0 vSwitch0 –> This will link my first physical network interface to vSwitch0

Result of the two commands:

As you can see vmnic0 with 1000Mbps has been associated with vSwitch0. Now I would like to have a “Service Console” port group sitting on this virtual switch.

[root@LAB-ESX-01 root]# esxcfg-vswitch -A Service\ Console vSwitch0 –> This will create new port group named Service Console. Creating new port group on a virtual switch is nothing more than assigning or defining a interface on a switch. Now I would like to assign a L3 IP address on this interface/portgroup.

[root@LAB-ESX-01 root]# esxcfg-vswif -a vswif2 -p “Service Console” -i 192.168.1.2 -n 255.255.255.0 -b 192.168.1.255 –> This will create new L3 interface which is linked to the Service Console port group with an static IP address. ESX server will generate new L2 mac address and assign this to the vswif2 interface.

[2008-09-12 13:22:21 'Vnic' warning] Generated New MAC address, 00:50:56:40:49:f4 for vswif2

Target result:

Just using two built-in esx configuration command line tools I was able to create and assign new service console ip address on a special physical management network interface.

Summary:

• esxcfg-vswitch -a switch_name
• esxcfg-vswitch -L physical_nic switch_name
• esxcfg-vswitch -A Service\ Console switch_name
• esxcfg-vswif -a vswif2 -p “Service Console” -i 192.168.1.2 -n 255.255.255.0 -b 192.168.1.255

Related links:

• B2V Guide to VMware ESX Server 3

See my work log and screenshots how to enable this feature:

• Login with root from the console
• Change directory with “cd /etc/ssh”
• Open sshd_config with “vi sshd_config”

• Locate Authentication section and change “PermitRootLogin no” to “PermitRootLogin yes”; for going into edit mode type i; press ESC to exit

• Type “:wq!” to save and exit the file
• Restart the SSH deamon with “service sshd restart”

• Start putty.exe or any of you favorite SSH remote management tools to connect to your ESX 3.5 server.

This procedure also applies to version 3.x. With this procedure I achieved to manage my ESX server remotely so I don’t need to use my remote management access card. SSH daemon also support secure file copy protocol which can be used to connect with WinSCP and download or upload any file/virtual machine to your VMFS file system.

Please be aware of any security implications! I enabled this kind of access because the management interface is sitting in a different VLAN than the vSwitch networks within virtual machine which are trunked amongst different networks.

What is VMware ESXi 3.5?
VMware ESXi 3.5 is the industry’s first, thin hypervisor integrated into server hardware. With its next-generation architecture embedded in hardware, VMware ESXi enables a plug-and-play data center with greater security, reliability and manageability. Requiring no installation and minimal configuration, VMware ESXi accelerates server deployment—IT organizations can take servers from boot-up to running production applications in virtual
machines in minutes.

List of features is amazing and now we all get them for free. Check the full list here, but these are which I like:

• Bare-metal architecture
• Small Footprint with only 32MB
• Virtualization for storage and support for iSCSI
• VLAN tagging support
• Wake-on LAN
• 64bit support

Basically all features I missed with VMWare Server and now getting them for free with ESX3i version.

Why is VMware making ESXi free? VMware is making its standalone ESXi hypervisor available at no cost in order to help companies of all sizes experience the benefits of virtualization. Customers have shown tremendous interest in ESXi due to its innovative architecture, simple setup, and high performance. Allowing IT administrators to obtain VMware ESXi for free enables everyone to gain access to VMware’s datacenter technology and prove its value in their own companies.

I have nothing more to add than just go download the VMware ESXi data sheet for more information and get a free copy of VMware ESXi and try it for yourself. I am running couple of production host servers with VMWare Server  and will upgrade them very soon.

For creating a new Virtual Port Group use:

Assigning a special VLAN to this a Virtual Port Group:

With these two simple commands I was able to push my sh script and create same “Networking” configuration on dozen of my ESX servers.

esxcfg-vswitch [options] [vswitch[:ports]]

  -a|–add              Add a new virtual switch.

  -d|–delete           Delete the virtual switch.

  -l|–list             List all the virtual switches.

  -L|–link=pnic        Set pnic as an uplink for the vswitch.

  -U|–unlink=pnic      Remove pnic from the uplinks for the vswitch.

  -M|–add-pg-uplink    Add an uplink to the list of uplinks for a portgroup

  -N|–del-pg-uplink    Delete an uplink from the list of uplinks for a portgroup

  -p|–pg=portgroup     Specify a portgroup for operation

                        Use ALL to set VLAN IDs on all portgroups

  -v|–vlan=id          Set vlan id for portgroup specified by -p

                        0 would disable the vlan

  -c|–check            Check to see if a virtual switch exists.

                        Program outputs a 1 if it exists, 0 otherwise.

  -A|–add-pg=name      Add a new portgroup to the virtual switch.

  -D|–del-pg=name      Delete the portgroup from the virtual switch.

  -C|–check-pg=name    Check to see if a portgroup exists.  Program

                        outputs a 1 if it exists, 0 otherwise.

  -B|–set-cdp          Set the CDP status for a given virtual switch.

                        To set pass one of “down”, “listen”, “advertise”, “both”.

  -b|–get-cdp          Print the current CDP setting for this switch.

  -m|–mtu=MTU          Set MTU for the vswitch.

  -r|–restore          Restore all virtual switches from the configuration file

                        (FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY).

  -h|–help             Show this message.

After the reboot  and boot into BackTrack we went trough couple of system settings and logs and he asked hey can you forward me the esxcfg-boot.log to me  by email…. I was using the DRAC console and copy and paste is not going to work ;-(.  Guys from past remember the real tricks when we did those back than with IIS and within couple minutes I was able to get the orginal file to one of my tftpd daemon on the network.

How did I get the log files?

• • Download, burn the iso and boot from CD-rom
  • Login with root/toor
  • I prefer the GUI and start KDE by running startx
  • Open Console session
  • ifconfig eth0 up
  • dhcpcd eth0
  • check you ip address with ifconfig eth0
  • now run tftp
  • open ip address
  • put esxcfg-boot.log or any other.

That’s all. For more information and download go to http://www.remote-exploit.org/.