A Daemon's VIB: Building a software package for VMware ESXi (Part 1/3)

Part 1: Binaries

I recently released an Offline Bundle for installing the ProFTP Daemon in ESXi 5.x. This was the result of a self-educational project: The subject of this project was not really how to develop software for ESXi, but how to nicely package software for ESXi in a way that makes it easy to distribute and easy to deploy and use for the average VMware administrator. I chose the example of an FTP daemon, because I already stumbled several times over requests for having this available in ESXi, and I know that there were some hacks for it around since the days of ESXi 3.5.

I promised to share what I have learnt in this project, and I will deliver on this promise in three parts. This first part is about binaries and binary compatibility.

Read more »

[Release] ProFTPD (FTP server) for VMware ESXi 5.x

ProFTPD is a GPL-licensed, feature rich and highly configurable FTP server. Today I have made available an Offline Bundle to install ProFTPD in VMware ESXi 5.x. Installing it will enable you to transfer files from and to an ESXi host using an FTP client program.

Read more »

[Update] ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools 2.1

I just published updated versions of my ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools. What's new:

• The TGZ2VIB5 tool now allows to build the VIB payload file from a directory structure (rather than using a pre-packaged tgz file as input)
• You can now change the Acceptance Level of the VIB package

Read more »

Are ESXi 5.x patches cumulative?

I find this question being asked again and again in the VMware forums by people who cannot just use Update Manager for patching, and most times the answers that are given there are a bit vague and unclear or even plain wrong. This is because ESXi patching is a really complex and not well documented matter. So I need to provide some background information before I'm going to answer this question:
Read more »

HP releases Service Pack 2012.10.0 for ProLiant and updated drivers for ESXi 5.0 und 5.1

HP has released version 2012.10.0 of their Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP). This is a (bootable) ISO file that contains the latest firmware and driver packages for ProLiant servers. What's new:
Read more »

VMware Converter 5.0.1 released, now supports vSphere 5.1

As announced in my last post VMware released the Converter 5.0.1 today which now supports ESXi 5.1 and vCenter 5.1.

• Download link
• Release Notes

Be aware: Converter 5.0 does not (yet) work with vSphere 5.1

Those of you who have just completed a brand new vSphere 5.1 deployment or upgraded your production environment to 5.1 may run into a real show stopper ... once you try to virtualize a physical server into this environment using VMware Converter. Why? Because the current release of VMware Converter (5.0) does not work together with ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1! The 5.0 version of the Converter is a bit old now and has not yet been adapted to work with vSphere 5.1. Maybe VMware just forgot that, or was in such a hurry to release vSphere 5.1 that they intentionally neglected Converter compatibility.

If you desperately need to use Converter with vSphere 5.1 *now* then you have the following work arounds available:
Read more »