
During the VMware TTT DSA class in march 2007 two of my fellow VMware trainers discovered how to use the vim sh command to put an ESX server into maintenance mode. After the information was posted in the Dutch VMware user group I discovered that there are a lot of other undocumented possibility’s regarding he vim sh command. I tried to squeeze some extra information from Jeremy van Doorn during an interview I recorded at the TSX in Nice. After a lot of hacking I created a script witch you can use to lookup witch hardware is in your ESX server. Last week Gavin Jolliffe and Paul Davey from Xtravirt published the Guide to VMware ‘vimsh’ white paper. This paper discusses the currently undocumented VMware ESX ‘vimsh’ command and seeks to explore its options and possibilities at a high level. This paper assumes the reader has good technical knowledge of VMWare Virtual Infrastructure 3 together with some basic scripting experience.