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Mircea Vutcovici
Asked: 2011-04-07 13:41:07 +0800 CST

Is it possible to manage ESX servers from Linux?

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VMware vSphere Client can not run in wine. Neither in Mono.

What tools are you using to create, start/stop new VMs, connect on the console without VMware vSphere Client?

vmware-esx

6 Answers

  1. VMware's own VCLI will take care of most non-graphical tasks. For viewing the console, though, you're stuck with Windows unfortunately.

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  2. Best Answer

    Yes, using VMware Workstation you can "login" and use it like a vSphere client.

    connected to ESXi

    Workstation remote login screen

    Also, you can start VMware VMplayer from the command line with -h flag this will give you control over one virtual machine at a time. More about using VMplayer as remote console in here

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  3. You can use the VMWare Command Line Interface to do a great many things with VMWare hosts.
    This can probably meet many of your management needs, though it's not as "friendly" as the GUI and there's no console access that I know of...

    You can also always run a Windows instance in VirtualBox and manage your systems from there.
    This is the solution we use in my (Mac) shop, though it does require a Windows license...

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  4. I would recommend RDCing to the vCenter server or to a VM running Windows. I know it's not really the "correct" answer but the GUI and PowerCLI tools really are the best way to interact with ESX/i.

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  5. I'm working on a solution to manage ESX(i) natively on Linux with a GUI...

    This has started as a little learning simple GUI coding project but it becomes more and more usable ;o)

    You can take a look on the current features here:

    http://vEMan.nethna.de

    This is may useless for newer releases of ESX because according to:

    http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=2005377

    (Starting from ESX(i) v5 there will be the web access feature also available for ESXi - so you may don't need a client anymore...)

    But when you're using v3.X/4.x you will have no other GUI tool than mine (as far as I know) ;o)

    I'm happy for comments ;o)

    Regards Thomas

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  6. libvirt seems to have a driver to connect to ESX in some form or other - http://libvirt.org/drvesx.html

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