Admins who run nested ESXi to test configurations and upgrades can now take advantage of the VMware Fling project's installation of VMware Tools that will work in this lab setup.
One of the best parts of VMware vSphere is that you can
experiment with vSphere features without dedicating a lot of dedicated
hardware. Specifically, vSphere can be virtualized within itself. This
means you can run ESXi (the hypervisor for vSphere) as a virtual machine
itself. This is a great tool for testing new features, permissions,
configuration arrangements, upgrades to the latest versions and more.
One
of the biggest irritants with this process is that the VM that was
running ESXi didn’t run VMware Tools. VMware Tools is the guest
enlightenment kit in terms of drivers and interaction with the host.
With the latest VMware Fling project, we can now install VMware Tools on VMs that run ESXi.
In
conjunction with this, we are also in good shape on modern VMware
hypervisors in that there is a defined guest operating system type of
VMware ESXi 5.x. This is a great step forward from all of the previous
steps needed to take a x64 Red Hat Linux operating system and morph it
with cryptic options to be an ESXi host. In Figure A, you can see
that this guest VM is configured as an ESXi operating system, and the
VM doesn’t have a report of VMware Tools running.
Figure A
The
VMware Fling that installs Tools on the virtualized ESXi host exists as
a VIB. A VIB is effectively a software installation module for ESXi;
some are produced by VMware; some are made by hardware and software
vendors for specific solutions. For VMware Tools, you can run the
following command to install the VIB for tools on the VM (Short URLs
work as well):
esxcli software vib install -v http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/esxi_tools_for_guests/
esx-tools-for-esxi-9.7.0-0.0.00000.i386.vib -f
Once the VIB is
installed, the guest VM that is running ESXi will load the VIB during
the VIB process. One of my good friends in the virtualization community,
Vladan Seget has also written a blogpost on how to make an .ISO out of
this process for easy installations where the network may not be
connected to the Internet. Read his post here. In Figure B below you can see the VIB being loaded at the end of the boot process:
Figure B
At
that point, the ESXi host can run Tools and function like a
well-behaving VM with any others that may be in use. It’s important to
note that running ESXi as a VM in this fashion is not a production-class
solution; it’s made specifically for test environments.
This is a
great way to properly prepare for a vSphere upgrade, specifically if
you haven’t upgraded from vSphere 5 yet; the change from 5.0 to 5.1 is
significant. VMware administrators need proper ways to test these
critical upgrades confidently, and this is a great way to help in
conjunction with vCenter Server and possibly a virtual lab to isolate it
all.
Have you jumped on the VMware Tools fling for nested ESXi yet? How has it gone for you? Share your comments below.
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