Sunday, November 3, 2013

ESXi 5.5 Installation and DCUI options

The installation of ESXi 5.5 is very simple and the file size of ESXi 5.5 is about 326MB. ESXi can be deployed using CD/DVD, ISO image, scripted or Auto Deploy (Stateful or Stateless).

I am using ISO image which I have already downloaded and mounted on iDRAC on Dell M610 Server.

Once the Server is booted through the ISO image, the installation starts and prompts to set root password and automatically reboots once during the process of installation.




That’s was about it and it completes in few minutes. After completion it brings up the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and press F2 to get into that


I will just walk you through the main options which can used during emergency (when the host is not accessible remotely)

  1. Configure Management Network - Used to change the Management IP address.

  1. Network Restore Options:
Standard vSwitch and Virtual Distributed Switch can be restored to default during emergencies.

  1. Troubleshooting Options:
Remote SSH and Local ESXi Shell services can be enabled and disabled
ALT+F1 - takes to the ESXi Shell access.

Restart Management Agents - This can be used if host is not responding, that rarely happens for example  connectivity issues with Storage which causes the management agent (hostd) not respond. But this may impact the running Virtual Machines.

  1. View System Logs:

Logs (vmkernel.log, hostd, vpxa and vobd) can be seen here.

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