Enabling VNC for ESXi

Sometimes in home lab environments you don’t have access to resources like vCenter to look at the guest VM status via console. Fortunately, you can modify ESX to enable VNC to a guest VM and use any computer to get KVM access. Pre-requisites: Network connectivity from your client to the ESXi host Root SSH access … Read more

Finding an associated Cisco Fabric Interconnect in ESXi

If you have SSH access to your ESX server, smbiosDump has some very useful information. If you look in “OEM Strings: #14”, you can see some very useful information: [root@ucs-test1:~] smbiosDump | grep “OEM Strings: #14” -A 4 OEM Strings: #14 $SPI:rack-unit-13 <- Server ID $SPT:hx-nodes <- Service Profile Template $SYS:test-fi1 <- Fabric Interconnect This … Read more

Removing GPT partitions

I had one system where the disk (sde)was formatted with a GPT partition, but fdisk did not show any partitions # fdisk -l /dev/sde WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on ‘/dev/sde’! The util fdisk doesn’t support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sde: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 … Read more

Raspberry pi Console Server

Do you work with networking devices but don’t have the money to shell out for a Opengear, Pele, or Tripplite serial console server? Fear not, Raspberry Pi is here! Home lab users and budget constrained Network Admins will enjoy this. For those who are unfamiliar with the Raspberry Pi (RPi for short), its a credit … Read more