Hosting and Security
This article provides direct download links for the trial versions of VMWare Workstation for convenience:
This article describes how to fix the error “No Hard Drives Have Been Found” when installing Checkpoint Gaia on ESX.
This is a simple one – I used to work round it by implementing an IDE drive instead of SCSI but actually it’s just due to the SCSI controller type. It happens when you choose a Red Hat machine which in turn sets the SCSI controller type to VMware Paravirtual as shown here below:
All you need to do is go into the VM Settings, SCSI Controller, and change the SCSI controller type from “VMware Paravirtual” to “LSI Logic Parallel” or to “LSI Logic SAS.”
Job done! Screenshots available in SecureKnowledge here.
This process uses the vmware command line interface tools to backup your ESXi host configuration – a must have for disaster recovery when your ESXi host has to be rebuilt / cloned etc. The tools from the link below have been tested on all versions of ESXi from 3.5 onwards.
Note: This *DOES NOT* back up your virtual machines!!
1. Download the vCLI:
The installer will install the tools and also the ActivePerl sdk – the download link is currently here:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VSP510-VCLI-510&productId=285
2. Use the esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl to backup your host configuration:
vicfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -s <backup_file_name>
Example:
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>perl esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl — server 192.168.100.1 -s C:\Users\admin\Desktop\192.168.100.1.bin
Enter username: root
Enter password:
Saving firmware configuration to C:\Users\admin\Desktop\192.168.100.1.bin …
3. Use the esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl to restore your host configuration to a host:
esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl –server <server_name> -l <backup_file_name>
Note: this will cause the host to reboot once the process is complete.
Command Line Options
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>perl esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl –help
Synopsis: esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl OPTIONS [<backupfile>]
Command-specific options:
–force
-f
Force the restore of the configuration.
–load
-l
Restore configuration onto the host
–quiet
-q
Do not prompt for user confirmation.
–reset
-r
Resets host, restore to factory settings.
–save
-s
Backup the host configuration.
Common VI options:
–config (variable VI_CONFIG)
Location of the VI Perl configuration file
–credstore (variable VI_CREDSTORE)
Name of the credential store file defaults to <HOME>/.vmware/credstore/vicredentials.xml on Linux and <APPDATA>/VMware/credstore/vicredentials.xml on Windows
–encoding (variable VI_ENCODING, default ‘utf8’)
Encoding: utf8, cp936 (Simplified Chinese), iso-8859-1 (German), shiftjis (Japanese)
–help
Display usage information for the script
–passthroughauth (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTH)
Attempt to use pass-through authentication
–passthroughauthpackage (variable VI_PASSTHROUGHAUTHPACKAGE, default ‘Negotiate’)
Pass-through authentication negotiation package
–password (variable VI_PASSWORD)
Password
–portnumber (variable VI_PORTNUMBER)
Port used to connect to server
–protocol (variable VI_PROTOCOL, default ‘https’)
Protocol used to connect to server
–savesessionfile (variable VI_SAVESESSIONFILE)
File to save session ID/cookie to utilize
–server (variable VI_SERVER, default ‘localhost’)
VI server to connect to. Required if url is not present
–servicepath (variable VI_SERVICEPATH, default ‘/sdk/webService’)
Service path used to connect to server
–sessionfile (variable VI_SESSIONFILE)
File containing session ID/cookie to utilize
–url (variable VI_URL)
VI SDK URL to connect to. Required if server is not present
–username (variable VI_USERNAME)
Username
–verbose (variable VI_VERBOSE)
Display additional debugging information
–version
Display version information for the script