Esxi shell что это
Добрый день! Уважаемые читатели и просто заглянувшие гости, лучшего блога, о виртуализации pyatilistnik.org. Я очень часто пишу, о технологиях компании Vmware, и стараюсь освещать, самые востребованные ситуации, с которыми может повстречаться, как начинающий, так и профессиональный инженер. В сегодняшней статье, я хотел бы рассказать, каким образом можно включить ssh доступ на ESXI хосте, будь то версия 5.5 или 6.5, 6.7. Ниже я опишу ситуации, когда это необходимо, и без этого нельзя.
Ситуации, когда нужно включить ssh на ESXI
Сразу отмечу, что любая служба доступа, это дополнительная точка взлома, поэтому всегда минимизируйте количество служб, позволяющих получать непосредственный доступ к управлению серверами. Сделать, это просто:
Способы включения ssh в Vmware хостах
Существует, как минимум три метода, позволяющие вам это сделать.
Включение SSH и esxi shell на ESXi 5/6 через локальную консоль
Подключитесь к вашему гипервизору. Для входа в его настройки нажмите клавишу в консоли:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-01
Вводим пароль root и переходит в пункт «Troubleshooting Options»:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-02
Выбираем пункт «Enable SSH»: Enable esxi shell, для включения данной службы. После чего вы выходите из данного режима и сохраняете настройки.
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-03
Включение ssh, через vSphere Client
Второй метод, это включение SSH и esxi shell на ESXi 5 через vSphere Client. Открываем его и переходим на вкладку «Configuration», выбираем пункт «Security Profile» и нажимаем «Properties»:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-04
Выбираем сервис SSH и нажимаем «Options»:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-05
Устанавливаем режим запуска сервиса SSH на ESXi и включаем его кнопкой Start. Как видите тут 3 варианта запуска службы:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-06
После включения SSH на ESXi 5.0 у вас появятся следующие предупреждения в vSphere Client для хоста:
Как включить доступ по SSH и esxi shell на хосте VMware ESXi 5.1-07
Если вы включали ESXi Shell, то будет сообщение:
ESXi Shell for the Host has been enabled
Чтобы их убрать, нужно сделать так. Выбираем нужный хост ESXi.Переходим в категорию «Advanced Settings» в разделе «Software» на вкладке «Configuration». Переходим в раздел UserVars > UserVars.SupressShellWarning. Меняем значение с 0 на 1. Нажимаем OK.
Включение ssh, через HTML клиента
По умолчанию, версия VMware ESXI 6.5 не имеет толстого клиента, но уже имеет встроенного HTML клиента, доступного через браузер, для версий 5,5 и ниже, нужно будет докачивать отдельно клиента. Давайте, включим ssh доступ в версии 6.5. Логинимся через браузер в интерфейс управления.
В открывшемся окне, найдите пункт «Manage» Затем переходите на вкладку «Services» и выбираете службу ssh.
Выбрав службу ssh, найдите в самом верхнем меню, пункт действия «Actions». Нажав его вы сможете взаимодействовать со службой.
Пункт «Policy» позволит настроить автозапуск служб. Как видите, использование и предоставление доступа по ssh на Vmware ESXI реализованного, очень просто.
ESXi. The command line and shell magic
Introduction
ESXi is a type-1 hypervisor, meaning it runs directly on system hardware without the need for an operating system (OS). Type-1 hypervisors are also referred to as bare-metal hypervisors because they run directly on hardware.
VMware provides a powerful and convenient graphical interface for managing ESXi servers.
In this case, using the command line interface (CLI) is what you need – it is possible to configure all settings, including the hidden ones in the command line which is also referred to as the console. In addition to traditional commands that are the same in Linux and ESXi, ESXi has its own ESXCLI commands.
ESXCLI is a part of the ESXi shell, this is a CLI framework intended to manage a virtual infrastructure (ESXi components such as hardware, network, storage, etc.) and control ESXi itself on the low level. All ESXCLI commands must be run in the ESXi shell (console). Generally, ESXCLI is the command that has a wide list of subcommands called namespaces and their options. The ESXCLI command is present right after ESXi installation along with other ESXi shell commands. Notice that ESXCLI commands are case-sensitive, similarly to other console commands used in ESXi.
The data is written to this file if an ESXCLI command has not been executed successfully. If an ESXCLI command is run successfully, nothing is written to this log file.
The most useful ESXCLI commands are explained in today’s blog post.
Environment
In this article I have VMware ESXi Hypervisor 6.7 U3 (Free version)
Usage
How to open the CLI in ESXi?
By default, ESXi shell is disabled for local and remote access; hence, you are not able to run ESXi shell commands until you enable the ESXi shell. VMware has made this restriction for security reasons.
You can enable this with local command line direct connected to ESXi host (named DCUI) or with WebGUI (throw web-browser).
After enabling the ESXi shell, press Alt+F1 to open the console on the machine running ESXi. You should enter your login and password after that (credentials of the root user can be used). If you need to go back to the ESXi DCUI, press Alt+F2.
The Enable SSH option allows you to open the ESXi console remotely by using an SSH client.
Command list
The entire list of all available ESXCLI namespaces and commands is displayed after running the command:
Checking hardware
To view installed PCI devices, run the following ESXCLI command:
Check the amount of memory installed on the ESXi server:
View the detailed information about installed processors:
Change a hostname
Run these commands to change the hostname:
Power control ESXi host
Power off an ESXi host:
Start and stop VM
The basic command to control the virtual machines is
To list all virtual machines run:
To work with individual VMs you need the provided by the previous command.
To get a summary of the machine run (where is a number):
To power on/power off/suspend a VM run:
Stop VM via esxcli
Use this to forcibly stop a virtual machine.
List all running virtual machines on the system to see the World ID of the virtual machine that you want to stop.
Stop the virtual machine by running the following command.
Autostart of VM
Get a list of virtual machine IDs:
Enable force autostart feature:
Now check the VMs startup settings:
Uplink of vSwitch
To list your vSwitch run:
If you have no vmnic or are missing the one that you want to use for the management network then you need to add it by using the following command:
Replace vmnic0 with your vmnic and same for the switch.
So if I wanted to remove vmnic0 from vSwitch0 I would use the following command:
Enter to maintenance mode
Enter the host to the maintenance mode.
Get currently status of the host
Backup configuration
Using the ESXi Command Line to Back up ESXi Host. You don’t need to install any additional software to use the ESXi command line. You have to enable ESXi shell and remote SSH access to an ESXi host. Once you have connected to your ESXi host via SSH, you can run the commands.
ESXi configuration is saved every hour automatically to the /bootblank/state.tgz file. For this reason, you should ensure that the current ESXi configuration is written to ESXi configuration files right now to confirm that all changes made to ESXi configuration since the last autosave are saved:
Back up ESXi configuration:
As a result, you’ll receive a link to download the configBundle.tgz archive from the ESXi host. You should replace the asterisk with the IP address of your ESXi host. The archive file that contains the ESXi configuration backup is saved to the /scratch/downloads directory. The scratch partition was mentioned in the blog post about installing ESXi on a USB Flash drive.
Restore configuration
Once you have prepared your freshly installed ESXi host to restore ESXi configuration from a backup, connect to the ESXi host via SSH and enter the host to the maintenance mode.
Copy the archive that contains the ESXi configuration backup configBundle-xxxx.tgz archive from a local machine to the /tmp/ directory on the destination ESXi server.
Rename the configBundle-xxxx.tgz file to configBundle.tgz before you enter a command to restore ESXi configuration. Otherwise you will get an error message: File /tmp/configBundle.tgz was not found.
Restore the ESXi configuration:
After running this command an ESXi host will be rebooted automatically.
Login to console by SSH rsa key
Configuring Login Behavior
ESXi has a good security feature to add a root account lockout for safety. After a number of failed login attempts, the server will trigger a lockout. By default, a maximum of five failed attempts is allowed before the account is locked. The account is unlocked after 15 minutes by default.
You can configure the login behavior for your ESXi host with the following advanced options:
Remote access for ESXi local user account ‘root’ has been locked for 120 seconds after xxx failed login attempts.
Are you seeing this message? Do not worry, you are in the right place. Now, let’s look at what to do if your ESXi root account is locked. The command line to clear the lockout status and reset the count to zero for an account is shown here with the root account as an example:
Conclusion
Today’s blog post has covered a series of ESXi shell commands. Using the command line interface gives you more power in addition to WebGUI. You can use ESXi shell commands for viewing and configuring settings that are hidden or not available in the GUI. Use the ESXi shell commands list provided in this blog post for fine ESXi tuning.
Additional information
Updated: May 21, 2020
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Troubleshooting with ESXi Shell
The ESXi Shell gives us a subset of commands for troubleshooting and managing individual ESXi hosts. ESXi Shell can be useful to quickly investigate and resolve issues with single hosts, for example if management agents are unresponsive. This section will cover how to enable ESXi Shell, how to access the ESXi Shell, and how to use the ESXi Shell. It is important to remember that when the ESXi Shell and SSH services are enabled you are potentially opening up vulnerabilities to which attackers may be able to use maliciously. For this reason you will see a warning on any hosts in the web client when the ESXi Shell and / or SSH service is enabled. You can suppress the ESXi Shell warning by following this kb. Remember to disable the ESXi Shell when you have finished, it is also possible to configure time-outs when enabling the ESXi Shell; availability time-out to determine how long ESXi Shell is enabled for, and idle time-out to determine how long idle sessions are kept connected.
You can remotely manage multiple hosts using the vSphere Management Assistant, for more information see the vSphere Management Assistant Guide.
Enabling ESXi Shell
By default the ESXi Shell is disabled, it can be enabled using the DCUI or web client (local or vSphere).
Access ESXi Shell
Once enabled, the ESXi Shell can be accessed locally using the DCUI or remotely over SSH.
Using ESXi Shell
The ESXi Shell contains the full range of esxcli and esxtop commands, as well as esxcfg for legacy purposes (although be aware that esxcfg is depreciated and may be phased out in future releases). The ESXi Shell is useful for performing maintenance and troubleshooting individual hosts, it cannot be used for scheduling scripting jobs. For managing multiple hosts and scripting use vSphere CLI (vCLI) either as a local installation or with the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA).
Have a look in /usr/sbin to view the available commands for the ESXi Shell; enter cd /usr/sbin and then ls. Note that commands are case sensitive.
esxtop is a powerful utility for examining ESXi host performance metrics and investigating performance issues. In the ESXi Shell enter esxtop with variables such as c for CPU, m for memory, n for network, and d for disk, read more in the Troubleshooting with ESXTOP post.
esxcli is a comprehensive set of commands for managing the vSphere environment. The command set is broken down into namespaces, to view the available namespaces use the esxcli command.
This propogates down the chain, for example use esxcli storage to view the options within the storage namespace. You can use –help at any level of esxcli for assistance.
You can view a full list of esxcli commands by entering esxcli esxcli command list. The screenshot below has been cropped and isn’t a full list, it may be beneficial to drill down through the relevant individual sections using the method outlined above.
As you can see the range of esxcli commands is vast, let’s take a look at a few examples.
To exit the ESXi Shell use the exit command. Hopefully this post provides enough to get you started, if you are using ESXi Shell on a regular basis and want to view previously executed commands see this post by William Lam. For details on patching or upgrading ESXi from the command line see the ESXi Command Line Upgrades post.
Most Useful ESXCLI and ESXi Shell Commands for Your VMware Environment
VMware provides a powerful and convenient graphical interface for managing ESXi servers – you can use a VMware vSphere Client that is a standalone application on Windows machines for managing ESXi hosts and the entire vSphere environment. Another option is to use VMware vSphere Web/HTML5 Client on any machine. Thus, you can launch a web browser for managing vSphere with ESXi hosts and VMware Host Client for managing ESXi hosts in a web browser.
The majority of settings are available in the graphical user interface (GUI), though sometimes you may need to get some information or change a configuration that is not displayed in the GUI. In this case, using the command line interface (CLI) is what you need – it is possible to configure all settings, including the hidden ones in the command line, which is also referred to as the console. In addition to traditional commands that are the same in Linux and ESXi, ESXi has its own ESXCLI commands. The most useful ESXCLI commands are explained in today’s blog post. This blog post has been created in the format of a catalog which lists useful ESXCLI commands that are part of the ESXi shell commands.
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How Do I Open the CLI in ESXi?
By default, ESXi shell is disabled for local and remote access; hence, you are not able to run ESXi shell commands until you enable the ESXi shell. VMware has made this restriction for security reasons. There are three main methods for enabling the command line interface in ESXi.
Using the ESXi default interface
In the ESXi Direct Console User Interface (DCUI), go to Troubleshooting Options, navigate to Enable ESXi Shell and Enable SSH strings and press Enter to enable each option. After enabling the ESXi shell, press Alt+F1 to open the console on the machine running ESXi. You should enter your login and password after that (credentials of the root user can be used). If you need to go back to the ESXi DCUI, press Alt+F2. The Enable SSH option allows you to open the ESXi console remotely by using an SSH client.
Using VMware Host Client
Open a web browser and enter the IP address of your ESXi host in the address bar, then log in. Go to Host > Actions > Services and click Enable Secure Shell (SSH). Now you can connect to the ESXi console by using your SSH client remotely. Similarly, you can enable the console shell on a local ESXi host in the Services menu.
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Using vCenter and VMware vSphere Client
This method can be used if your ESXi host is managed by vCenter Server. In VMware HTML5 vSphere Client, go to Hosts and Clusters, select your ESXi host, select the Configure tab, open System > Services and click SSH in the list of services. After that, hit Start to launch the SSH server once, or hit Edit Startup Policy and select Start and Stop with host if you wish to enable the SSH server for an extended period of time. You can also enable the ESXi shell in the Services menu.
In order to connect to the ESXi console remotely via SSH, in the Linux console, type a command like ssh 192.168.101.221, where 192.168.101.221 is the IP address of the ESXi server used in this example. You need to enter the login and password of the ESXi user in this case (root can be used by default).
In Windows, you can use PuTTY as an SSH client for running ESXI shell commands remotely.
About ESXCLI Commands
ESXCLI is a part of the ESXi shell, this is a CLI framework intended to manage a virtual infrastructure (ESXi components such as hardware, network, storage, etc.) and control ESXi itself on the low level. All ESXCLI commands must be run in the ESXi shell (console). Generally, ESXCLI is the command that has a wide list of subcommands called namespaces and their options. The ESXCLI command is present right after ESXi installation along with other ESXi shell commands. You can locate ESXCLI and explore the nature of ESXCLI after executing the following commands:
which esxcli
As you see in the console output, ESXCLI is a script written in Python that is located in the /sbin/ directory. If you want to see the contents of the script, you can use the built-in text editor vi.
Thus, ESXCLI consists of branches that are the main categories (namespaces) of ESXCLI commands. Notice that ESXCLI commands are case-sensitive, similarly to other console commands used in ESXi. The entire list of all available ESXCLI namespaces and commands is displayed after running the command:
esxcli esxcli command list
The list of available ESXCLI commands depends on the ESXi version.
Hence, the list of top ESXCLI namespaces for ESXi 6.7 is as follows:
The main commands appear as verbs indicating the same action:
If you are unable to remember a particular ESXCLI command related to the appropriate namespace, you can enter the command and see a tip in the output of the console—for example, type:
esxcli network to see all available commands for the network namespace, then type:
esxcli network vm to check the commands for the vm namespace.
The ESXCLI log file is located in /var/log/esxcli.log
The data is written to this file if an ESXCLI command has not been executed successfully. If an ESXCLI command is run successfully, nothing is written to this log file.
Useful ESXCLI Commands
Now that you are familiar with the basic working principle of ESXCLI commands, let’s consider the particular examples of useful ESXCLI commands which can be used in VMware vSphere. The list of ESXCLI commands considered in this article is divided by categories equivalent to namespace names.
Checking hardware
By using the hardware namespace, you can view the full information about installed devices. In order to view installed PCI devices, run the following ESXCLI command:
esxcli hardware pci list | more
Check the amount of memory installed on the ESXi server:
esxcli hardware memory get
View the detailed information about installed processors:
esxcli hardware cpu list
System settings
In this section, you can see the commands of the system esxcli namespace.
Check the precise ESXi version and build number, including the number of installed updated and patches:
esxcli system version get
Check the hostname of an ESXi server:
esxcli system hostname get
Check the ESXi installation time:
esxcli system stats installtime get
Check the SNMP configuration:
esxcli system snmp get
Enter the ESXi host to the maintenance mode:
Exit the maintenance mode:
After entering an ESXi host to the maintenance mode, you can shut down or reboot the host.
Power off an ESXi host:
esxcli system shutdown poweroff
The command for rebooting the host is similar:
esxcli system shutdown reboot
You can also set a delay and write a reason of rebooting the host to be saved in system logs:
In this example, the delay is 60 seconds.
Another command is to set the custom welcome message instead of a standard background screen with a shaded inactive main menu where the “ Customize System/View Logs Shut Down/Restart” tip and the IP address to manage the host are displayed. Notice that after setting a custom welcome message you will see only this set message on the black screen. You can type “Press F2” manually to avoid confusion. The custom message can be used for hiding information about your ESXi host on the display connected to the ESXi host when a user is not logged in.
Verify whether the welcome message is already set:
esxcli system welcomemsg get
Network settings
The network namespace is one of the largest namespaces of ESXCLI. Let’s explore the commands that can be useful for diagnostics.
Check the status of active network connections:
esxcli network ip connection list
View the list of installed network adapters:
esxcli network nic list
Display the information about network interfaces:
esxcli network ip interface list
Display the information about IP addresses of the network interfaces that are present on the server:
esxcli network ip interface ipv4 get
Display the network information for VMs:
esxcli network vm list
View the domain search settings:
esxcli network ip dns search list
View the DNS servers set in the network settings:
esxcli network ip dns server list
List virtual switches and port groups:
esxcli network vswitch standard list
Show statistics for the vmnic0 network interface:
Check the firewall status and rule settings:
esxcli network firewall get
esxcli network firewall ruleset list
Note: The default firewall policy is to drop traffic if the opposite rules are not set.
You can temporary disable the firewall on an ESXi host for troubleshooting:
The firewall must be enabled with the command:
It is recommended to have the ESXi firewall enabled for security reasons.
The network namespace includes many commands. Only basic and the most popular of them are considered in the Network section of today’s blog post. It is possible to configure a high number of network parameters with esxcli, but would require a long walkthrough that is out of scope for today’s article.
Storage
The storage namespace allows you to check and edit storage settings.
Check the information about mounted VMFS volumes:
esxcli storage vmfs extent list
View mappings of VMFS file systems to disk devices:
esxcli storage filesystem list
List all the iSCSI paths on the system:
esxcli storage core path list
Display the list of mounted NFS shares:
esxcli storage nfs list
How do you check SMART with esxcli? S.M.A.R.T. is useful for disk diagnostics and for preventing disk failure. You can read the S.M.A.R.T. data and, if you discover that something is wrong with your disk, you can make a timely decision to replace the disk.
First, list all storage devices and locate the unique device name (see the screenshot below):
esxcli storage core device list
Then, use the command to get the S.M.A.R.T. data of that disk device:
where naa.50026b7267020435 is the name of the device used in this example.
iSCSI
iSCSI is a widely used protocol for accessing shared storage on a block level, and there is a separate iscsi namespace in ESXCLI for managing the iSCSI storage.
Show the list of available iSCSI adapters:
esxcli iscsi adapter list
Re-discover and re-scan iSCSI adapters:
Instead of -A adapter_name you can rescan all adapters by using the —all option.
Software
Software packages intended for ESXi are usually distributed as VIB files (vSphere installation bundle). A VIB file is similar to a container with zipped packages that can be installed in the system, with a descriptor and a signature file. In turn, VIBs are usually distributed as files packed into an archive file in the standard ZIP format. You may need to include VIBs into an ESXi image in order to use the appropriate hardware or install VIBs in an existing system for applying a security patch.
You can view the list of VIB packages installed on your ESXi host:
esxcli software vib list
You can install a VIB with ESXCLI (the ESXi host must be in maintenance mode):
VM operations
The vm namespace can be used for operations on running virtual machines processes.
Check the list of running VMs and display their World IDs:
esxcli vm process list
You can kill the unresponsive virtual machine with ESXi shell commands. Using ESXCLI, in this case, can be helpful when a VM cannot be shut down via GUI, such as the GUI of VMware vSphere Client, VMware Host Client or VMware Workstation.
Shut down the VM by using the World ID displayed in the output of the esxcli vm process list command. In the current example, the World ID of the necessary VM is 75498.
If the soft command type was not helpful, consider performing an immediate shut down of the VM by using the hard method.
There are three available command options for the kill command:
Other Useful ESXi Shell Commands
Besides ESXCLI commands, you can use a lot of ESXi shell commands. The ESXi shell commands list that may be useful for you is provided below.
Open the ESXi DCUI from the console (the colors are different when you connect to the ESXi shell via SSH):
dcui
Press Ctrl+C to go back to the command prompt.
Convert a thick provisioned virtual disk to a thin provisioned virtual disk by using vmkfstools:
Among ESXi shell commands, vmkfstools is a powerful command for performing storage operations as well as managing storage devices, VMFS volumes, and virtual disks. Read more about thick and thin provisioning as well as virtual disk shrinking in the blog post.
Open the ESXi task manager:
esxtop
After opening the task manager with the esxtop command, you can switch between tabs by pressing the appropriate keys:
P – power management
Find the file in the current directory:
Replace the . character with the name of the directory in which you would like to locate a file, and replace filename.txt with your file name. For example, if you wish to find a diskname.vmdk file in the /vmfs/volumes/ directory, run the command:
Open the interactive VMware console:
vsish
Show loaded vmkernel drivers:
Check the settings of the swap partition:
esxcli sched swap system get
You can list users by using one of the following commands:
esxcli system account list
cat /etc/passwd or less/etc/passwd
Creating a new user
There are at least two methods of creating a new ESXi user by using ESXi shell commands.
Using the adduser command
If you type the adduser command in the ESXi console, you will get the message:
-sh: adduser: not found
You should define the full path to the appropriate busybox binary to run this command:
/usr/lib/vmware/busybox/bin/busybox adduser
Now you can see the usage options for this command.
Finally, run the exact command to add an ESXi system user:
-s /bin/sh is a shell used after user login;
-G root – the group name whose member is a new user (the root group);
-h / is a home directory (the root directory) of a new user;
user1 is the user name.
Enter a new password and confirm the password when prompted.
Using ESXCLI
As an alternative, you can add a new user just with the one command by using esxcli:
-d means the displayed description
-p is the password set for the new user
-c is the password confirmation
Which method of creating a new user in the command line is better? The single command used in the second method may appear to be the optimal method for creating a new user, but it is not entirely true on account of security reasons. If you’ve been attentive, you should be able to remember the warning message displayed right after logging in to the ESXi shell:
All commands run on the ESXi shell are logged and may be included in support bundles. Do not provide passwords directly on the command line. Most tools can prompt for secrets or accept them from standard input.
If security is a concern for you, enter commands without including passwords as plain text into the commands. If a password is needed, it is usually prompted and can be entered in the standard console input. For example, if you would likr to create a new user with ESXCLI, use a command like:
A password will be prompted separately and will not be displayed in the console while entering the password.
Conclusion
Today’s blog post has covered a series of ESXi shell commands including ESXCLI commands. Using the command line interface in ESXi gives you more power in addition to nice graphical user interfaces of VMware vSphere Client and VMware Host Client for managing ESXi hosts. You can use ESXi shell commands for viewing and configuring settings that are hidden or not available in the GUI. Use the ESXi shell commands list provided in this blog post for fine ESXi tuning and experience the extra power of using the command line interface in VMware vSphere. You can learn more by reading about PowerCLI, another type of the command line interface for managing VMware vSphere from Windows PowerShell.
