SAS on ESXI3.5 server comman line ?

Hey Linux gurus,

is there a command I can run on our ESXI3.5 server
that I can see exactly what kind of cards say NIC, SATA/SAS cards
it is running off of the motherboard? I mean vs me opening up the case
and look at the device. Some of the daughter boards are upside down
and I would physically have to remove the board to see the number?
I just want to run some commands like (msinfo32) haha something like that
but in unix world to see what parts I have like ram and cards and devices plugged into mobo? this would help me out big time

thanks

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itdaddy

How To Get Hardware Information On Linux Using dmidecode Command
dmidecode

great command tells all your hardware via command line. What I did was redirect it to a text file like this
then I ftp into the esxi 3.5 root and to the file to have and print out.

dmidecode > hardware.txt

scott28tt

I think I'm right in saying that you would have to do a lot of work in ESXi "tech support mode" (aka. the "unsupported" console) to be able to do that.

ESXi doesn't include an FTP daemon, so if you want to use FTP to upload/download a file you'd have to add FTP capability to the host first - it is also worth mentioning that VMware don't support you doing this either.

It might be easier to enable SSH access to the host and use SCP to perform the file transfer, as there is an SSH daemon built-in.

itdaddy

scott28tt

okay I ssh into it and copied all the dmidecode to a text file.
that is all I wanted but wow.

there has to be an easy way to copy VMS to an external usb drive isnt there????
I mean help! hahaha seems it is hard to copy your vms without a huge process am i right?

really wow why is that? amazing tool and yet in some areas it is so cumbersome.

Is there an easy way to make clones of vms and transfer the clones off of the esxi 3.5 server easily. in the datastore browser it takes forever.
I mean isnt there an easy way to copy the vms from the server to a usb device. why does vmware make it so hard to copy vms off without some fancy scripting? this doesnt make sense tome at all.

I want to copy vm clones for backup purposes and it is a bear to copy them to a USB device without killing myself. you are vmware guy can you explain
techniques or point me in the right direction to copy the vms to another server?

scott28tt

I would definitely recommend using FastSCP from Veeam for that - much quicker than the datastore browser, and it's free!

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esxi-fastscp.html

Scott.

tiersten

The output of dmidecode is mostly useless. The only reason the Linux kernel even supports it is so it can do some basic detection of known bad motherboards and activate workarounds. You're also trusting the motherboard manufacturer to actually populate the various fields correctly.

The DMI table generated by the BIOS is for the motherboard devices and is limited in what it can show you and doesn't list expansion cards. It will also have a large number of useless entries that aren't needed or useful with a modern PC like showing whether it has 5 1/4 floppy support etc...

Look at /proc/pci if you want to see what cards you've got.

bertieb

scott28tt wrote: »

I would definitely recommend using FastSCP from Veeam for that - much quicker than the datastore browser, and it's free!

Veeam FastSCP 3.0 for VMware ESX / ESXi - VMware file Management.

Scott.

+1. Its a very good tool indeed and erm, fast

ehnde

itdaddy wrote: »

How To Get Hardware Information On Linux Using dmidecode Command
dmidecode

great command tells all your hardware via command line. What I did was redirect it to a text file like this
then I ftp into the esxi 3.5 root and to the file to have and print out.

dmidecode > hardware.txt

ifconfig -a

lspci -vv

That is, if these two common linux commands are available in ESXi

Is there an easy way to make clones of vms and transfer the clones off of the esxi 3.5 server easily. in the datastore browser it takes forever.
I mean isnt there an easy way to copy the vms from the server to a usb device. why does vmware make it so hard to copy vms off without some fancy scripting? this doesnt make sense tome at all.

I want to copy vm clones for backup purposes and it is a bear to copy them to a USB device without killing myself. you are vmware guy can you explain
techniques or point me in the right direction to copy the vms to another server?

The dd command may be useful to you if you want to copy a VM to a usb drive. To copy a VM over a network, a component of ssh called scp would allow you to do this. These are both command line utilities. All of the commands I've mentioned are common unix/linux utilities....as stated before, I'm not sure if they are in ESXi.

itdaddy

you guys are my brothers thank you all so much all your help amazing you all are thank you so much wow . you make my job easy!

itdaddy

hey,
how can you tell if I am running SAS drives vs SATA? my card is
adaptec sas/sata. Without me removing the drives and looking at the
interfaces? Is there way to tell if I am running SAS vs SATA?
I mean the drives since the card is a sata/sas card???
this is the last piece to my puzzle

thanks guys!
and thanks VMMASTER for your advice on the backup system way cool.

ehnde

itdaddy wrote: »

hey,
how can you tell if I am running SAS drives vs SATA? my card is
adaptec sas/sata. Without me removing the drives and looking at the
interfaces? Is there way to tell if I am running SAS vs SATA?
I mean the drives since the card is a sata/sas card???
this is the last piece to my puzzle
thanks guys!
and thanks VMMASTER for your advice on the backup system way cool.

To identify volumes:

vdf -h

Esxcfg-scsidevs and esxcfg-vmhbadevs display information on the storage devices connected to a host. Not sure if this is what you're wanting. Good luck!

itdaddy

thanks so much for all your guy's help. I found the sata/sas card number
and not sure how to tell if it is sata or sas without removing the drives and seeing what type they are? to me this should be easy with some command line
way vs having to shut the vmserver down just to see if it is sas or sata? dont you guys think it should be easy?

Forsaken_GA

i doubt it, but it might be worth it to check and see if lshw is available, that usually gives pretty good info.

as far as determining drive types, I'm pretty SAS presents itself to linux as a scsi drive in the same way SATA does. Best way to determine what they are is to use something to tell you the drives model number and then look it up.

itdaddy

forsaken GA

ahh you have a point t here I will try it tomororow that is a good idea
yeah I think you are right it does only show scsi i bet
thanks I just hate turning it off that means I have to go in like 11pm at night
and is a big process to turn of 15 vms servers production. i can do it but if it ant broke dont fix it is my philosophy any more! hahah
thanks will let you know what i find