ESX and virtual cdrom provided by the HP iLO on hpdl380g5

[georgeotj]

Howdy,

I have ESX-3.5 up on a rather large HP DL380G5 and would like to take advantage of the HP virtual cdrom and attach it to various virtual machines on this server. The ESX-3.5 kernel doesn't seem to have a driver for this device. I get a "funny" msg from the kernel, see below.

Does anyone know a resolution for this situation?

Regards,

George...

[Lightbulb]

The Virtual CDROM under ILO is kind of hit or miss.

You could try the following as a workaround. Copy the ISO to a directory under your SC (Has to be ext3 not VMFS) i.e. /root/

Type the following

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

mount -o loop -t iso9660 foo.iso /mnt/cdrom (where foo.iso is the full name of your ISO file)

Although a better solution would be to copy over ISOs to your datastore and mount them from VC/VIC (See Attached)

[georgeotj]

Lightbulb,

THANKS for your quick response!

I have more questions I'm afraid.

What is an SC? My ESX host?

How do I copy to my datastore?

I login as root to my host and enter df but see only

/dev/cciss/c0d0p1/2/7. fdisk -l shows other drives which is where I

defined the datastores via ViC.

I did make a mount point within /vmimages (/vmimages/ISOS) and mounted

to that mountpoint from another system... This took a while and

generated some messages about the mounting that I would be concerned

about if they appeared on a "normal" system.

I'm also having trouble getting my virtual machines to access one of

these exported isos more than once. The second time around, the console

just sits there after the display of a VMware logo(?) and a line that

says something like "hit f2 to enter setup". This f2 doesn't work

though. It's like the VM doesn't "hear" the f2 for some reason. I'm

running ViC from my winxp laptop and have applied NO updates to any of

the VMware software. Clues/hints/tips on doing this would be appreciated

as well.

As you may have guessed, I'm rather new to the VMware software... Much

older when it comes to computing AND virtual machines...

Regards,

George...

[rt7500]

George,

The SC or COS is your ESX server.

If you goal is to get an .iso to a datastore that your VMs can access. The easiest way would be to use Veeam FastSCP. http://veeam.com/esx-fastscp.html

This way you don't have to fuss with "Permit Root Login", scp, iLO virtual media, etc.

I typically place my .iso on a LUN that all the ESX hosts have access to. If using only local storage I then place it in the same directory as the vmtools.iso.

Off the top of my head I think that location is /vmfs/vmimages/tools-isoimages

Hope this helps.

Please award points accordingly.

[thehyperadvisor]

SC is for service console. If you've installed the latest version of esx then you will have to create a local account on the esx server. Do this by connecting directly to the esx server with the vi client (not virtual cente) using the root account. Then go to "Users & Groups" and create an account with console access.

So, a better way then iLo is to copy the iso file to one of the datastores that the esx server has formatted. Use <a href='http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-fastscp.html'>Veeam Fastscp</a> as it is very easy and free. Use the local esx account to connect and elavate access with the root accoun. Copy the iso to a datastore, vmimages if it has enough space. Then you can edit the vm guest to use the iso by browsing to it in the cdrom settings.

As for the f2 issue, you can go into the vm guest settings -> Options -> boot options and either up the boot delay or force to enter the bios setup.

Hope that helps.

I only use iso and iLo to install software to the esx, like hp agents and naviagent. Once connected with iLo su to root and "mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/somedirectory"

[Lightbulb]

What is an SC? My ESX host?

SC is your service console, the RHEL3 OS image that intermediates communtication to the vmkernel (Sort of). What you SSH to to get cli interface.

I login as root to my host and enter df but see only

/dev/cciss/c0d0p1/2/7. fdisk -l shows other drives which is where I

defined the datastores via ViC.

Try vdf -h from the cli you will see your datastores

You can copy files over to your ESX host using Datastore browser (See attached, I hate typing and a picture is worth a thouand words). you can also SCP it over as a couple of folks have piped in about as I have been typing