Saturday, March 17, 2018

How to mount an ISO to an ESXi Host

I was recently working on and issue in an environment that required me to mount an ISO to an ESXi host.

To access the contents of a CD or ISO within your ESXi Host perform the following:

1. Mount the ISO using iDRAC / iLO etc.
2. Console into the ESXi host and run the following to load iso9660:

vmkload_mod iso9660

3. To find the path to the CD ROM drive run the following:

esxcfg-mpath -l | grep -i cd-rom


4. Run the following to mount the CD-ROM drive:


vsish -e set /vmkModules/iso9660/mount <devicename>


5. You will now be able to see the contents of the CD- Rom in /vmfs/volumes/.  In my case, the ISO I mounted was named "20180215":


6.  Once you're done unmount the CD/ISO with the following:

vsish -e set /vmkModules/iso9660/umount <devicename>

7. To unload the iso9660 module":

vmkload_mod -u iso9660

On a similar note, I've had a lot of success using the following application to create ISOs from files/folders:



VMWare Update Manager - interface com.vmware.vim.binding.integrity.VcIntegrity is not visible from class loader

After logging into the vSphere Web Client, I found the following error in the Update Manager section:

 interface com.vmware.vim.binding.integrity.VcIntegrity is not visible from class loader


I started off by restarting the VMWare vSphere Update Manager Service for the affected vCSA:

1. Log into vCenter using the administrator@vsphere.local account.
2. Home - System Configuration - Services - Restart


This did not resolve my issue...  Unfortunately, I had to resort to something a bit more drastic and disruptive.  Since I did not know which service(s) needed to be restarted I restarted all of them.

SSH/Console into the affected server and run the following commands:

service-control --stop --all
service-control --start --all

This resolved the issue and I was able to see the proper output under the Update Manager tab.

vSphere 6 - Fix - Cannot complete operation due to concurrent modification by another operation.

Add more resources to a VM, not a problem right?  Well, not this time.  When attempting to add memory to a VM, I received the following error:

"Cannot complete operation due to concurrent modification by another operation."



I confirmed there were no other operations/modifications occurring on the VM at the same time.  In the past, I would just SSH/Console into the vCSA and restart the services with the following commands.  (Warning - This process is disruptive):

service-control --stop –all
service-control –start –all

In this case, the services restart did not resolve the issue.  On a whim, I created and deleted a snapshot on the VM.  This action "freed" up the VM and allowed me to add the additional resources.


In the future, I'm going start off with the "snapshot" route since it's less disruptive.

Hope this helps!

Friday, March 16, 2018

"RDP Inception"

That's when you have to RDP into one box to get to another box.  That is all...