Category: Vmware Administration

ESXi password changing Part #2

December 15th, 2008 · The Fraser · Vmware Administration No comments - Tags: , , ,

After finding all the recommendations online to not work. I was forced to completely rebuild the system. This means since its a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with PERC6/i, I had to delete all RAID Virtual Disks. The reason for this was a glitch I had found when first installing the box some 5 months ago. If you configure a ESXi server on a PERC Controller that has more than 1 Virtual Disk, it will not boot. You have to complete installation using one VDisk then successfully reboot it. Once its up, you have to reboot once more create any other onboard VDisks you need then boot completely. It will automatically detect the new drive and format it with VMFS for you.

All this to say I spent most of my day rebuilding an ESXi Host to recover from a lost password. Since this machine will be folded into our VirtualCenter in the near future, it might behoove me to just reinstall using ESX proper like the other servers. I will do some through testing of the host before had to see if there is anything to gain from using the lighter hypervisor over its far more robust RedHat bound ESX brother.

Update on homebrew ESXi Host

December 4th, 2008 · The Fraser · Vmware Administration No comments - Tags: ,

I had built my first ESXi host with homebrewed hardware. There was a bunch of hardware lying around and had heard of people installing ESXi on their hardware (Mike D’s ESXi Host)

ESXi Host Info

ESXi Host Info

As having ones own host beats using Fusion any day, I couldn’t resist. I am in the process of building an iSCSI server to provide a nice backend. This host was built using a Winfast C51GM03 Motherboard, Dual Core AMD Opteron and 4GB of cheap RAM. I am not expecting this box to “blow your mind” concerning performance (Thats reserverd for the Dual-Quad core 32GB RAM servers at work, 35 hosts on each), but this will do in a pinch for 4 home Linux hosts for me to test host creation and automation tools.

ESXi password changing

December 4th, 2008 · The Fraser · Vmware Administration No comments - Tags: ,

So I have a new ESXi host i setup about 5 months ago and was never used (and of course when it was set up it was HIGHEST PRIORITY). So I am trying to go back to the box and the password that have documented is not working, a couple of people had access to this machine while I was away on my Honeymoon and now I am locked out.

After doing some heavy researching, there is no way to recover the password from ESXi as there is no service console that I can boot to first as one can with ESX.

To resolve this situation:

1) Place ESXi Installer disk in drive and boot to it.

2) During the install phase you will be asked to repair or reinstall. Please select repair as this will not destroy your VMFS stores.

3) After it has finished installing the hypervisor, you should be able to finish installation as you did the first time and attach your Storage device. Then you can add your VMs as you had done once before.

Sadly this is the only way to recover from a failure of the mind and forgetful co-workers. The only way to get any more advanced support from VMware is to purchase  Virtual Center License.