vSphere Management Assistant

Setup

Install vMA Appliance

1. Get the OVF URL of the latest version from http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/
2. Import OVF into vCentre
   • You'll need to specify a cluster/host, datastore, and hostname
3. Once imported, power on
4. The VM will go into a Wizard
   • Update IP information
   • Enter a passsword for the vi-admin account (dictionary words not allowed)

Setup Date Time

1. Remove existing date time zone
   • sudo rm /etc/localtime
2. Add link to appropriate locale
   • sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime
3. Enable NTP daemon
   • sudo chkconfig ntpd on
4. Edit the NTP config file to add your NTP server(s)
   • sudo vi /etc/ntp.conf
   • Edit the server entries as required
5. Start the NTP daemon
   • sudo /etc/rc.d/init.d/ntpd start

Add ESX to vMA

1. Log into the vMA as vi-admin
2. Use vifp addserver command to add ESX and enter root password
   • EG vifp addserver esx-server.domain.com
3. To test, set the session to use the server
   • vifptarget --set esx-server.domain.com
4. and show NICS
   • vicfg-nics -l
5. To enable logging for all servers
   • vilogger enable

Enable root

Normally there should be no reason to run as root, everything you need to do can be done via sudo.

1. Set root password to something you know
   • sudo passwd root
2. Enable root to login, edit /etc/passwd , and change the root line to
   • root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

vilogger

Command	Description
vilogger enable	Enable vilogger for all connected hosts
vilogger list	List vilogger hosts and status
vilogger disable	Disable vilogger for all hosts