ESX Commands: esxcfg-pciid,rescan,resgrp,swiscsi,upgrade, vmhbadevs

I have been writing on ESX command line stuff for far too long now. I just need to finish it before ESX 5 comes out with no command line support and my year long series is rendered obsolete before it is finished.

Here is a few more commands from ESX 3.5u4. They are pretty short and sweet. So enjoy.
esxcfg-pciid
Used to read the xml files under /etc/vmware/pciid/ – from what I can tell it is used in the process of getting unsupported hardware to work.

esxcfg-rescan
Supply this command with a vm hba and it will rescan for new LUNs.

esxcfg-resgrp
Do a esxcfg-resgrp -l and get a ton of information try following it with a “| more”: esxcfg-resgrp -l | more
It does include options to add remove and restore resource groups. Here is a place on the interwebs with information on how to use it.

esxcfg-swiscsi
Used to enable and disable the Software iSCSI Initiator. esxcfg-swiscsi -q will give you the list of the status.
Make sure to create a vmkernel port first.

esxcfg-upgrade
According to the ESX Configuration Guide this command is not for general use but is used to upgrade VMFS2 to VMFS3. Would be very smart to have moved all VM’s off of the VMFS2 before messing with this command.

esxcfg-vmhbadevs
Use the -m tag to list all vmfs volumes. Typical output will look like this:
vmhba0:0:0:3 /dev/sda3 4afc26df-ddbe3ee5-2037-000c29acbc0a

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *