Entries from Eric Sloof

Gavin Jolliffe over at Xtravirt released a new whitepaper which shows those of you interested in scripting and automated build deployment how to configure some of the more advanced networking functions such as nic teaming, security, traffic shaping, and more. This paper outlines some of the advanced network configuration options using the VMware ESX ‘vimsh’ command. This paper assumes the reader has good technical knowledge of VMWare Virtual Infrastructure 3 together with some basic scripting experience although we have endeavoured to write this avoiding unnecessary technical jargon. Note that as this command is currently undocumented by VMware some assumptions about its use and function have been made. The command is to be used at your own risk.

Andrew Kutz has released the source code of his tool that can add port groups to all your ESX servers via the commend line. Although his application is written in C# you can get a good understanding from the comments Andrew wrote in his code. Especially those about the traversal object. Andrew has been professionally involved in the technology sector for 11 years. For the last six of them he has worked with the latest technologies while employed by the University of Texas at Austin. Two years ago, Andrew started his own consulting firm and development house, l o s t c r e a t i o n s. He is also a founding member of the Austin VMware Users' Group (VMUG). His current pet development project is Sudo for Windows.

Continue reading "Port Group adding" »

When you have created a DRS cluster the virtual machines in this cluster are automatically migrated to the least busy ESX host. These migrations depend on VMotion. The most common show stopper for VMotion is a connected CD. This application checks if one of your virtual machines is connected to a CD and displays witch ISO image is connected. I’ve written this application in VB.net and it depends on the VIClient.dll witch is written by Robert Baumstark. Some features like disconnecting all the CD’s with one click of a button are not implemented yet, but I’m so proud of my first application that I published it on my weblog anyway :). If you want to give it a try, you can get a free copy here.

This week I overwhelmed Robert Baumstark with a lot of questions regarding his ViClient.dll. I started with downloading the pre build dll files from Rob’s website and added them as a reference to my Visual Basic application. So far so good, then I pasted the code from Rob under a button and there was trouble in paradise.  Rob warned that this code was written into an e-mail without testing and compiling so it could contain some typo’s and I did. Rob gave me a lot of good tips and hints and after a few hours of struggling there began to shine some light at the horizon. The hardest part of writing your own VMware VB application is to understand how the object references can address an object within your VI-3 environment . I took me some time to get a good grip on that subject. When you finally have all the pieces together you can start programming :-). I created a little demo witch query’s the VI-3 environment for information about Virtual Machines. Especially the number of CPU’s but my final goal is to query the VM’s that won’t start automatically when the ESX rebooted. This is the most forgotten setting in the properties of a VM and this topic isn’t covered in the VI3-IC course either. Another function I would like to add to my first application is to query all virtual machines in a DRS cluster for a connection to the CD player. This connection is important when you want to V-Motion a VM to another host. So I am happy to announce that my first handy application has seen the light. When you want to take a look at the source code just scroll down.  

Continue reading "VB Programming with the ViClient.dll" »

Now is the time to reserve your spot at the premier event for the virtualization industry—VMworld 2007. Join thousands of IT professionals, software developers and industry experts from around the world on September 11-13  at the Moscone Center in scenic San Francisco to experience the latest and greatest in virtualization technology and business solutions.

Continue reading "Register Now for VMworld 2007" »

During the VMware TTT DSA class in march 2007 two of my fellow VMware trainers discovered how to use the vim sh command to put an ESX server into maintenance mode. After the information was posted in the Dutch VMware user group I discovered that there are a lot of other undocumented possibility’s regarding he vim sh command. I tried to squeeze some extra information from Jeremy van Doorn during an interview I recorded at the TSX in Nice. After a lot of hacking I created a script witch you can use to lookup witch hardware is in your ESX server. Last week Gavin Jolliffe and Paul Davey from Xtravirt published the Guide to VMware ‘vimsh’ white paper. This paper discusses the currently undocumented VMware ESX ‘vimsh’ command and seeks to explore its options and possibilities at a high level. This paper assumes the reader has good technical knowledge of VMWare Virtual Infrastructure 3 together with some basic scripting experience.

Virtual Rob has released the source code for the VIClient.DLL that was included with his Virtual MAC tool. The download links can all be found @ his new blog:  http://virtual-rob.blogspot.com/. Using the regular SDK from VB (or any other .NET language) isn't that hard. The hard part is getting all the references in place and stub DLLs built.So Rob has updated his blog with instructions on how to do just that.  And if you're still having problems, he included compiled versions of the stub DLLs. He has also cleaned up the code and released an updated version of his VIClient.DLL, as well as its full source code.  Right now I guess thats about the closest thing there is to a VI VB Toolkit - though it would work equally well from any .NET language.

The VMware presentations delivered at TSX 2007 in Nice are available online for you to download. You can find the presentations on the TSX website. VMware is also still collecting the Solution Partner presentations and they will be posted soon on the same page.

On Wednesday, April 25, 2007 something great has happened. Robert Baumstark, the creator of the virtual MAC tool has opened his Virtual Rob weblog. Rob is an infrastructure specialist at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Canada where he is responsible for keeping the place running. What can we expect on Virtual Rob ? Well after cleaning up his Virtual MAC source code we may take a peek at it. Besides that he will share some short code examples involving VB using the SDK. I have high expectations about the information Rob is going to publish on his website and think that his little DLL will eventually develop into a .NET API similar to the VI3-Perl-toolkit. The reason why Rob started his weblog is that I used this DLL in the groundbreaking “Building VMware Visual Basic�? project. Since a lot of people are going to start with developing their own code, Rob wanted to create a place where he can publish his own thoughts and ramblings and help the developing community. I wish Rob all the best with his weblog and hope to see some code real soon.

This document describes how to build a VB Application that can communicate with Virtual Center 2.0.1. When you have trouble with copying the source code out of the PDF document you can also download the Form1.txt. You can find some additional information about getting properties from an object in a free sample chapter from the “Scripting VMware Power Tools: Automating Virtual Infrastructure Administration�? book. Here is the link to chapter 3.

On April the 25th I received some additional information from Robert Baumstark and my wife corrected the grammar in the PDF document.

Bellow you can find the email message from Rob with some extra tips about using the VIClient.dll.