Friday, August 27, 2010

Upgrading to ESXi 4.1 from 4.0.

I recently needed to update an ESXi 4.0 host to ESXi 4.1. After discovering that the host update utility was not supported with ESXi 4.1, I resorted to my other option, the vSphere CLI.
Here's the session (on Windows 7 64bit):

 C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI>bin\vihostupdate.pl --server my_server -b upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip -i

The output:


 Please wait patch installation is in progress ...
 The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.


Followed by a reboot:


 C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI> bin\vicfg-hostops.pl --server my_server -o reboot

 Host my_server rebooted successfully.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Netgear GSM Switches and LAGs/Port channels

Setting up port-channels/lags is pretty easy on Netgear GSM switches. In this example, we are assuming that we are connecting two Netgear GSM7324 switches, and adding vlan 10 to them. We'll link together ports 23 and 24 on both switches.

1. create the interface:

configure
port-channel lag_01

2. assign it to two ports:
configure
interface range 0/23-0/24
addport 1

3. Allow VLAN 10 and 1 to travel over it. Require them both to be tagged:
configure
interface lag 1
vlan participation include 1
vlan tagging 1
vlan participation include 10
vlan tagging 10