The Helpdesk For I.T. Administrators
The VMWare ESXi / vSphere Infrastructure client allows for command line parameters to auto connect to a VMWare ESXi / vSphere server.
The following command line options are available:
| Parameter | Description |
| -i | Ignore untrusted certificate |
| -s <server address> | Server address of the ESXi / vSphere host. |
| -u <username> | Username to connect with. |
| -p <password> | Password to connect with. |
eg:
VpxClient.exe -i -s 192.168.1.20 -u root -p password
VMWare ESXi/vSphere 5 has the option to accept SSH connections to the server, to allow access to the file system of the server itself. By default SSH is disabled, and its not the easiest setting to find if you do need to enable it. This guide will show you how to enable the SSH server.
Load up the vSphere client, and connect to the ESX/ESXi/vSphere host machine you wish to enable SSH on.
Make sure the actual VMWare server machine is selected on the left hand listing.
Click on the “Configuration” tab.
Click on “Security Profile” link from the “Software” section.
The right hand side of the screen should now display the security profile details.
Click on the “Properties” link located to the right of the “Services” title/section.
You will now see a list of services, and their running status.
You will notice that “SSH’ will be stopped.
Highlight the “SSH” service, and click the “Options” button.
The window that will appear shows the service status, startup policy settings, and also allows you to stop and start the service.
Click the “Start” button in the “Service Commands” section to start the SSH server service.
Click “OK” to close the SSH options window.
Click “OK” to close the services properties window.
You should now be able to SSH into the VMWare server now.
To prevent any further SSH connections, follow the above steps, but click the “Stop” button to stop the SSH service.
As of VMWare ESX/ESXi/vSphere version 4.1 and above, you can now pass through USB devices to the guest virtual machine, as though it was directly connected to that machine. This is great for passing through USB HDD’s, USB tape drives, printers, etc.
The following steps outline how to set up ESXi to pass through a USB device to a virtual machine.
This is a two stage process the first time you set this up. You need to add a USB controller to the virtual machine before you can add USB devices. After this initial setup, you can just add more USB devices as needed.
Start by loading up the vSphere client, and connect to your VMWare ESX/ESXi/vSphere server.
Find the virtual machine that you want to configure USB pass-through on, right click it, and select “Edit Settings”.
You should now see the virtual machine properties window, as shown in the screenshot below.
Click the “Add” button at the top.
Select “USB Controller” and hit “Next”.
Select “EHCI+UHCI” if you only need USB 2.0 or 1.1 support, or if your operating system doesnt support the USB3 controller.
Select “xHCI” from the drop down list to allow USB 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1 support.
I will be using xHCI for this example.
Hit “Next” after selecting the controller type.
Verify the selection configuration, and hit “Finish”.
Now you have a USB controller added to the virtual machine, you can go ahead and actually add the physical USB device to the virtual machine.
Make sure your USB device is plugged in now, before proceeding.
Press “Add” again on the virtual machine properties screen.
This time you will need to select “”USB Device”.
Press the “Next” button.
Select your USB device to add to the virtual machine.
In this example, I have a Samsung external USB HDD plugged in.
Hit the “Next” button.
Confirm your configuration options, and hit the “Finish” button.
You will now have a USB controller, and a USB device added to the virtual machine.
Press the “OK” button to save, and apply the changes.
When you boot up the virtual machine, you should now have access to the USB device just like it had been plugged directly into that virtual machine.