Comments on: Dell ESXi Management

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:19:07 +0000

I have a similar script that runs from the vMA, finds the platform and installs the correct hardware agent (i.e. Dell or HP). Our problem is the integration between Dell ITA and the ESXi offline bundle, unfortunately ITA isn’t able to poll the vCenter API or validate the CIM providers. Because of this the ESXi hosts shows an unknown status in ITA because ITA doesn’t know the “status” of the offline bundle. For us this is a huge validation step that can’t be performed because via the vMA we can tell if the VIB is installed, but can’t validate that it’s functioning. In our environment we can’t just leave it to bunnies and sunshine and just hope that it’s working.

Have you messed with polling the Dell VIB via CIM or WS-man in order to validate functionality? I know that the Dell vCenter plugin has this sort of function but only host-by-host, not an all encompassing view. Plus I don’t want to pay for another tool. Thanks!

By: jkasal

jkasal — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:50:28 +0000

Disregard My above question. It appears to be a PowerGUI issue. Sorry for the bother.

By: jkasal

jkasal — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:41:38 +0000

Dell Tech support states the 6.2.0 VIBs should work.

I now get an error…

Cannot find drive. A drive with the name ‘vmstores’ does not exist.
At :line:21 char:18
+ Copy-DatastoreItem <<<< $DellOMSA $ds.DatastoreBrowserPath -Recurse

Anyone else getting this error and have a fix?

Thanks

By: jkasal

jkasal — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:52:50 +0000

Does anyone know if the 6.2.0 VIBs work with PE 1955 Blades? The 1955 isn’t listed in the Dell compatability list for the 6.2.0 version.

The PE 1955 is listed on the VMware ESX4i HCL.

By: Top 5 Planet V12n blog posts week 11 | VMvisor

Top 5 Planet V12n blog posts week 11 | VMvisor — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:55:06 +0000

[...] Renouf – Dell ESXi ManagementTo help reduce the system footprint and to simplify deployment, the ESXi software does not have a [...]

By: NiTRo

NiTRo — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:16:46 +0000

Dell SC440, i also had to set UserVars.CIMOEMProvidersEnabled to “1″. Now i can see the services started (with the “/usr/lib/ext/dell/dataeng status” command) but unable to connect to, i got this exact issue http://communities.vmware.com/thread/223778

By: Virtu-Al

Virtu-Al — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:43:32 +0000

NiTRo, thanks for the comments, what model was that, my testing was completed on a 2950.

By: NiTRo

NiTRo — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:08:08 +0000

forgot the lines : under

By: NiTRo

NiTRo — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:06:03 +0000

FYI, i had to remove those lines from vmware.xml (in metadata.zip) to get rid of this error : This Vib supports hardware vendor ‘Dell Inc.’ but BIOS reports vendor as ‘Dell Inc. ‘

By: Virtu-Al

Virtu-Al — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:14:42 +0000

No I doubt if you can do what you want by creating your own VIB, you could however call putty using Powershell and get it to run the script after you copy the data up to the host using Copy-DatastoreItem to automate the process.