vmware
create vswitch from commandline
VMware ESX supports some comandline tools, and if you would like to create a new virtual switch without a lot of clicks at vmware infrastructure client, you can easly use:
esxcfg-vswitch -a testvswitch:80
where:
-a - means add
testvswitch - is name of your virtual switch
:80 - is number of port’s you would like to have
enabling interrupts - vmware esx 3.5i hangs at this
After making my magic usb key with vmware 
I was trying to install vmware esx 3.5i at HP ProLiant DL160 G5 (two quadcore processors, a lot of ram, and 4 sata 1TB disks). But with no success… The problem was that installer hanged up at “enabling interrupts” screen.
The solution I found here you should just add acpi=off to your bootloader promt, as it is said in the vmware communities:
to enable installing ESX on HP Proliant DL160 G5 you should:
1. Press Tab on very first screen of ESXi install
2. Move cursor just after first tgz filename and write “acpi=off”
3. press Enter and ESXi successfully install on DL160G5
4. Be careful because after this setting is lost and problem appears again - solution:
a) disconnect HDD, connect to computer with Win XP (Marti: or another else!), then edit boot.cfg on second partition andin second line set “kernelopt=acpi=off”
b) after starting ESX go to console (Alt-F1, see also “usupported” mode and “enable SSH in ESX” topics) type vi /bootbank/boot.cfg and set “kernelopt=acpi=off”
vmware esx 3.5i at usb drive with sata support
Yes, it is unsupported, but who cares? As you can read even microsoft does not support windows at vmware :). The VMware ESX 3.5i is free for some time. It is VMware answer for Microsoft’s Hyper-V - I think. Because the system compatybility is rather thin, and I would love to repleace my VMware Server machines with this top product! Because I have just two scsi disks, and a lot of others (sata for example) I would love to make use of it at this machine. What I need is: vmware esx 3.5i iso and a big (1GB is minimum!) pendrive. Let’s rock!
mount the vmware iso
# mount -o loop /storage/VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.iso /mnt/vmCD/
then copy a install.tgz file to some place and extract it:
# cp install.tgz /storage/
# tar xvzf install.tgz
then take a look at file usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd.bz2 “unbzip” it!
# bunzip2 VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd.bz2
then you will have one file, which is a disk image (yes, it’s bigger than 32MB thin install of esx, but it has much more drivers):
# ls -al VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 786432000 sie 13 05:00 VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd
now we are going to write the image at the thumbdrive… it is at /dev/sda in my system
# dd if=VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_2-110271.i386.dd of=/dev/sda
after this, you have a bootable USB key (look if your bios support it!)! thanks to: vm-help for its tutorial
cool script that make tracking your virtual machines really easy
Dominic Rivera form VMProfessionals made a very very very simple but extremly usefull script to track information about yout virtual machines
script can be found here, and here is my local copy of this script.
What does it do (from Dominic Rivera post):
snapalert.pl is a perl script written to identify which VMs in your environement currently have snapshots so you can take appropriate action, it works with both ESX and ESXi as there is no console component. Additionally it can be configured to send the report to you via email so you won’t have to remember to run it if you schedule the job.