esxtop output is not displaying as it should

by | Dec 4, 2020 | ESXi, Linux, VMware, vSphere

When you connect to your ESXi host and you launch esxtop. You look at the esxtop output and it is not displaying as it should. Instead, it is displaying like in the below screenshot:

esxtop displaying incorrect

Your esxtop output will be displayed correctly if you are using a terminal emulator that defaults to xterm as the TERM environment variable. Some terminal emulators will use another terminal emulator value by default, eg. xterm-256color. ESXi does not map xterm-256color to one of the values it knows, so it doesn’t know how to display the output.

There is a KB article that explains how to resolve:

Output of esxtop defaults to non-interactive CSV with unknown TermInfo (2001448)

The value of the environment variable TERM is used by the server to control how input is recognized by the system, and what capabilities exist for output.

Let us have a look first what the TERM variable is in my case:

I am receiving the following output:

echo TERM output

My terminal emulator tries to connect to the endpoint (ESXi) with xterm-256color. Now let’s take a look at what values this endpoint does support:

terminfo_values

So all of the above is possible to assign to TERM. The value my terminal emulator uses is not among the supported terminfo types. So the ESXi host cannot map to any of the known and thus does not know how to display the esxtop info correctly.

When we update the TERM environment variable to xterm and try to run esxtop again, the output will show nicely formatted.

Let’s check esxtop again to make sure the outcome is as expected:

esxtop displaying correct

Use iPerf to test NIC speed between two ESXi hosts

by | Oct 26, 2020 | ESXi, VMware, vSphere

Sometimes you want/need use iPerf to test the nic speed between two ESXi hosts. I did because I was seeing a NIC with low throughput in my lab.

How can we test raw speeds between the two hosts? iPerf comes to the rescue. I was looking on how to do this on an ESXi host. I doesn’t come as a surprise that I found the solution here at William Lams’ virtuallyghetto.com. Apparently iperf has been added to ESXi since 6.5 U2. You used to have to copy iperf to iperf.copy. In ESXi 7.0 that has been done for you, although you will need to look for /usr/lib/vmware/vsan/bin/iperf3.copy

ESXi host 1 (iperf server)

Disable the firewall:

Change to the directory containing the iperf binary

Execute iPerf as server

Overview of the used parameters:

-swill start iperf as server
-Bdefines the IP the iperf server will listen to

Disable the firewall

ESXi host 2 (iperf client)

Change to the directory containing the iperf binary

Execute iPerf as client

Overview of the used parameters:

-iwill determine the interval of reporting back
-ttime iperf will be running
-cclient ip, will force the usage of the correct vmkernel interface
-fmdefaults to kbit/s, adding m will use mbit/s

Don’t forget to re-enable the firewall on both systems.

esxcli network firewall set --enabled true

Reconfigure diagnostic partition using Get-EsxCli -V2

by | Nov 2, 2018 | ESXi, PowerCLI, VMware

The following powershell snippet is going to unconfigure the diagnostic coredump partition using the esxcli version 2 cmdlet. The second part will reconfigure the diagnostic partition with the ‘smart’ option so that an accessible partition is chosen.

If you want to configure a new diagnostic partition the you will find the necessary information in the following VMware knowledge base article: Configuring a diagnostic coredump partition on an ESXi 5.x/6.x host (2004299). There will be additional steps to supply the partition id.

First we connect to the esxi host directly and insert the connection details in the variable $srv:

Then we create a esxcli object $esxcli using the variable $srv we created previously:

Now we create a variable $arg to store the arguments we will provide later:

Setting the $arg property ‘unconfigure’ to true will deactivate the diagnostic partition:

The invoke command will invoke the command remotely on the esxi host. After execution the diagnostic partition is deactivated:

The second part starts with creating a new set of arguments:

Reactivate the coredump, because we deactivated it before:

Enable the coredump partition:

The ‘smart’ property will try to use an accessible partition:

The last argument will configure the diagnostic partition using the supplied parameters:

vShield Endpoint SVM status vCenter alarm

by | Mar 23, 2017 | ESXi, Trend Micro, VMware, vShield, vSphere

vCenter is showing an alarm on the TrendMicro Deep Security Virtual Appliance (DSVA): ‘vShield Endpoint SVM status’

vShield Endpoint SVM status alarm

Checking vShield for errors:

The DSVA VA console window shows: (as to where it should show a red/grey screen)

Let’s go for some log file analysis

To get a login prompt: Alt + F2

Login with user dsva and password dsva (this is the default)

The log file we are going to check is the messages log file at /var/log/messages

(why less is more: you get almost all the vi commands)

To go to the last line:

For some reason the ovf file is not like it is expected. The appliance is not able to set some ovf settings, in this case the network interfaces.

To exit the log file display mode:

To gain root privileges:

Enter the dsva user password

Navigate to the /var/opt/ds_agent/slowpath directory

Create the dsva-ovf.env file (if the file exists, delete the existing file first):

Reboot the appliance, once rebooted give it 5 minutes and the alarm should clear automatically:

Start or stop ESXi services using PowerCLI

by | Mar 3, 2017 | PowerCLI, VMware, vSphere

Start the ssh service on all hosts:

Thanks to Alan Renouf at virtu-al.net, where I found this snippet: https://www.virtu-al.net/2010/11/23/enabling-esx-ssh-via-powercli/

If you want to start the ssh service on a single host, change ESXiHostName to your ESXi FQDN:

If you want to stop the ssh service on all hosts:

If you have multiple cluster in vCenter, are connected to multiple vCenters, be sure to launch the command only to the necessary hosts:

  • Get-Cluster -Name ClusterName will filter to the specified Cluster
  • Get-VMHost -Name ESXiHostName will filter to the specified ESXi
  • Get-VMHost -Server vCenterServerName will filter to the specified vCenter server

These are other services I frequently use:

  • DCUI (Direct Console UI)
  • lwsmd (Active Directory Service)
  • ntpd (NTP Daemon)
  • sfcbd-watchdog (CIM Server)
  • snmpd (SNMP Server)
  • TSM (ESXi Shell)
  • TSM-SSH (SSH)
  • vmsyslogd (Syslog Server)
  • vmware-fdm (vSphere High Availability Agent)
  • vpxa (VMware vCenter Agent)
  • xorg (X.Org Server)

There are other services available but I have never used them in this context (yet):

  • lbtd (Load-Based Teaming Daemon)
  • pcscd (PC/SC Smart Card Daemon)
  • vprobed (VProbe Daemon)

Change the startup policy for a service:

  • Automatic: Start automatically if any ports are open, and stop when all ports are closed
  • On: Start and stop with host
  • Off: Start and stop manually