vCenter appliance: “No networking detected”

If after deploying and booting the vCenter appliance, automatic network configuration fails, the vCenter console will display “No networking detected” in red. To configure networking:

1. Access the appliance VM console via the the vSphere client / web client

2. Login using “root” and “vmware” as password

3. At the command prompt, enter “/opt/vmware/share/vami/vami_config_net”

4. The below screen will be shown, allowing for network configuration

vCenter_network_config_0

Deploy OVF directly from local datastore / SAN

When deploying OFV files vCenter allows for either browsing files locally on the client or specifying a URL. The latter can be handy when one wants to deploy an OVF file stored somewhere on the VMware clusters datastores.

1. Navigate to the any ESXi box in the cluster which has the datastore containing the OVF mounted and select “browse datastore”

install_from_url_0

2. Navigate to the datastore and folder containing the OVF file

install_from_url_1

3. Copy the URL from the browser address bar into a text editor. Also copy and paste the filename of the OVF you want to deploy and insert it in the folder path

Original URL:

https://10.6.26.1/folder/ISO?dcPath=ha-datacenter&dsName=vmfs1

Changes to:

https://10.6.26.1/folder/ISO/VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.1.0.10100-1123965_OVF10.ova?dcPath=ha-datacenter&dsName=vmfs1

4. Copy and paste the  new URL into the path box in vCenter when deploying the OVF

install_from_url_2

You may need to enter the credentials for the ESXi server used to provide the file

Fullscreen with rdesktop / rdesktop-vrdp

It’s extremely useful to use rdesktop (or virtualbox the rdesktop-vrdp) for RDP connections to Windows hosts from your Linux workstation. This is how to use the fullscreen mode:

jonas@erebus:~$ rdesktop 10.6.26.40 -f &

Exit fullscreen mode using CTRL+ALT+Enter

Alternatively, set a percentage for the screen real estate you’re willing to give the RDP session like so:

jonas@erebus:~$ rdesktop 10.6.26.40 -g 90% &

 

 

Dell OME plugin install on ESXi 5.1

First SCP the installation file to the ESXi box and SSH over to issue the below command for install:
/tmp/OME_ESXi_plugin # esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/OME_ESXi_plugin/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-7.2.0-6945.VIB-ESX51i.zip
Installation Result
   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
   Reboot Required: true
   VIBs Installed: Dell_bootbank_OpenManage_7.2-0000
   VIBs Removed:
   VIBs Skipped:
/tmp/OME_ESXi_plugin #

Reboot to complete