VMWare ESXi

FinalBuilder Feature Requests
1

Support for VMWare ESXi would be much appreciated. Its FREE and its like VMWare Server and Workstation in one.

That would be really cool to have (the sooner the better)! And I think the COM API is similar to the other VMWare products. (And actually you would be supporting the commercial full ESX products, too)

2

Hi Christoph,

Updating the VMWare actions is quite high on our to-do list for FinalBuilder, though one of the problems we face is that we do not have a machine capable of running ESXi and therefore we can’t test the actions. If you’d be interested in testing these actions let me know and I’ll let you know when we have implemented them.

Regards,
Paul.


3

Hi Paul,

We can test the actions on our ESXi server, no problem. We might also be able to give you access to the server via VNC or similar, while one of us is monitoring the session.

Feel free to contact me on my business email to discuss further steps.

Best regards,
Christoph

4

Actually one option you could take is to install VMware server on a desktop, and then create a VM and install ESX3i on the vm. It will not be fast but it will be more then enough for you to test with and free to do.

Calvin

5

Good suggestion, we’ll give it a try when time permits.

6

 

Just wondering if there have been any steps taken to come a little closer to ESX support?

Best regards,

Christoph

7

Hi Christoph

The new VMWare actions in the most recent release of FB6 do support ESX, they use the vmrun utility. The actions are :

VMWare - List Virtual Machines
VMWare - Change Virtual Machine State
VMWare - Snapshot
VMWare - Execute Guest Command

8

I am sorry to say, but they do not support ESXi servers, as "Host Type" only provides support for "VMWare Server 1", "VMWare Server 2" and "VMWare Workstation". But there is no support for "VMWare ESX Infrastructure", which would be "esx" for the "-T" parameter of vmrun.exe.

Another nice feature for the VMWare actions would be to support %variables% in the password field.

Best regards,

Christoph

9

I was able to get this to work against an ESX server and a Virtual Center server.

For Host Name I used https://my-esx-server.domain.com/sdk

For Host Type I used VMWare Server 2.

I agree about the variable in the password field, I was not able to use a variable for the password.

Note according to the VMWare VIX API page from http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vix-api/VIX-1.6.2-ReleaseNotes.html :

Caution: ESX/ESXi support is experimental in this release. Interfaces might change in subsequent releases, and backward compatibility is not guaranteed.

10

Hi Nelson,

Thanks for the info, I’ll add the option to expand the password field value.

> ESX/ESXi support is experimental in this release. Interfaces might change in subsequent releases, and backward compatibility is not guaranteed.

This should be OK as we’re simply shelling out to the VMRun command line client which should hopefully provide us with enough abstraction over the API that we don’t need to change anything if they change their VIX API (fingers crossed anyway).

Regards,
Paul.

11

Hi Nelson,

I have now tried with 2 different ESXi servers without success. First I thougt it was because the server only used update pack2, but now I have tried with a newly installed ESXi 3.5 U3 wich also fails.

I am unable to say why it fails, as the VMRun utility only returs this very descriptive error message: "Error: Unknown Error"

So if possible could you tell me your versions of tools?

I am using

  • VMRun 2.0.0 build-127388 from VIX API 1.6.2.2190.
  • ESXi 3.5 U2 and U3
  • FinalBuilder 6.2.0.1265

The following VMRun commands fail (taken from finalbuild log)

If it works for you two guys, I guess it has to do with the version, but I dont know.

Regards,
Christoph

12

I found the reason for the "Error: Unknown Error". It was the host URL ".../SDK" it must be with small caps ".../sdk"