[CentOS] Help with VMware ESXi manager for CentOS - newbie level

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Scott Robbins <scottro at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> >> > And yes, I'm well aware that ESXi is a modified version of, mmm, is it
>> > still RHEL 3, or have they gone up yet?
>>
>> The linux components were just for the shell-level interaction and I
>> think they are mostly gone now.   In any case, they don't have
>> security updates nearly as often as RHEL/Centos pushes a new kernel
>> which is an advantage for uptime on the guests.
>
> If I remember correctly (but I'm no longer at that job, so don't have
> access to double check) around VMware 4.x or 5.x it no longer had a Linux
> shell.  Although there are still some commands that work, I _think_ that
> it's now a very stripped down shell, as opposed to 3.5 which had all the
> commands available in a Linux shell. So, if I am correct, then Les has
> summed it up nicely.

I'm not a real expert on the ESXi command line, but I'd say that the
5.x version is more complete in terms of what you can do relating to
control of VMs at the local command line or over ssh (which is now an
exposed option instead of hidden away) but perhaps less linux-like
(notably no perl or rsync...).   I usually just start long-running VMs
with the GUI client or copy them around with the converter tool and
haven't tried a lot of automation over ssh, though.   I do use
ocsinventory-ng and there is a fusioninventory program that can pull
the hardware details and VM guest list remotely and push to the
inventory sever (not really supported, but the version from the remi
repository seems to work).  Then when you view a VM server it shows
its list of guests and when you view a guest it shows the host running
it - which also works with KVM and perhaps some others.  Without
something like that it is easy to lose track.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com