06.04.09

Shortcut to console on VMs in ESXi

Posted in Geeky at 13:48 by djn

I’ve been annoyed that to access the console of a running virtual machine, I must open VMware Infrastructure Client, login to the host and find server and then click open console.

Luckily VMware Remote Console (available via VMware server or VMware Workstation) supports connecting to ESXi.

I create a shortcut pointing to:


"C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\VMware Remote Console Plug-in\vmware-vmrc.exe" -h esxhost -u user -p password -m "[myDatastore] myDir/myServer.vmx"

And voila! shortcut to a console :-) To obtain the argument to -m, I opened the settings view via Infrastructure Client, clicked “Options” and copied the field “Virtual Machine Configuration File”.

Hope this helps someone else!

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5 Comments »

  1. Rater said,

    July 23, 2009 at 17:51

    I have VMware server 2.0.0. This method does not work on my environment.

    “E:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VMware\VMware Remote Console Plug-in\vmware-vmrc.exe” -h alla:8333 -u u -p 1 -m “[C] Virtual Machines/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.vmx”

    Error message: bad user or password.

    user u and password 1, – its works for standard generated vm shortcut.

    What is wrong?
    Thanks

    Reply

  2. djn said,

    July 26, 2009 at 11:59

    I’m not sure, I have not tested with vmware server 2.0.0, only ESXi (3.x actually). At work we do not use VMware server so I cannot test it.

    But given that vmware-vmrc.exe reports bad user or password, it would seem that at least some of the API’s needed are present. Perhaps a permission thing with your user u ?

    Regards,
    ./Daniel

    Reply

  3. Generate Virtual Machine Shortcut for ESXi 4 « Plog said,

    August 26, 2009 at 8:54

    [...] Someone apparently had the same problem (The internet is a great counselor; it provides relief to grief by telling you that someone out there shares the same fate as you) and gave a solution. Thanks! For this we need VMware Remote Console from either Workstation or Server; I only attempted this with Server though. [...]

    Reply

  4. HC said,

    October 30, 2009 at 14:31

    Do you have to install Server or Workstation to get this to work or can you just have the files in the C drive?

    Reply

  5. Rater said,

    October 30, 2009 at 14:57

    HC, I have installed VMware server 2.0.0 correctly.

    Reply

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