Edge console does not work - workaround fro ESX Enterprise License requirement

[lwebb]

I have several Edge appliances at my company.   I was going to upgrade however, I found out that I cannot connect to the consoles with dvadmin.   We do not have VMware Enterprise licensing on these remote sites.  They are sites with just single physical servers.

I was wondering if anyone had tried creating a serial named pipe connection from a VM to an Netapp Edge appliance both hosted ont he same physical server?  I tried and failed.  However, I thought maybe there is a trick to the settings needed.

Thanks,

Linda

[SeanHatfield · Accepted solution]

Enterprise is required to support the IP based serial port console connection to the VM due to the way VMware has packaged the featureset.

DVAdmin doesn't have a serial port, and the vmconsole commands expect an IP based connection.

You could configure a named pipe based console to some other VM, for example a windows VM, to gain console level access and perform the upgrade.  To do that, the VM must reside on the same host as the edge appliance.  I'll use a windows VM in this example:

Configure the Edge VM's serial port as follows:

Serial Port 1:
Use Named Pipe:
Pipe Name: \\.\pipe\edge-cons
Near End: Server
Far End: A Virtual Machine

Configure the Other VM's serial port as follows:

Serial Port 1:
Use Named Pipe:
Pipe Name: \\.\pipe\edge-cons
Near End: Client
Far End: A Virtual Machine

Then in your putty session:

Connection Type: Serial
Serial Line: COM1
Speed: 9600

Connect, hit enter, and you should get a login prompt.

That should allow you to monitor the console during the upgrade.  Just understand running in this configuration may pose a challenge when you need support.

[lwebb]

 Your directions make sense with what I've seen in my google travels.   I blew ESX on a physical host and just setup a small test box using local disks.  I figured I would iron out the details, before the upgrade especially since adding serial ports requires me to shutdown the VMs.  However, for the life of me, this does not seem to work on my test environment.

When I connect using putty, the window just sits.  It doesn't time out and also does not display anything.  I'm going to keep trying, seems like it should be very simple.

[SeanHatfield]

Its possible the VM was configured for vidconsole.  Open the VMware console window and see if you can interact with it.  If you can log in via the vmware console the comconsole is not active.  The Edge eval instances are configured this way by default, but if the VM was deployed with DVAdmin the default should be the comconsole.

[lwebb]

Thanks for the great information.  The VM console does not let me interact with it.  On my test platform I can use dvadmin to console in.  So it seems like the Netapp Edge part looks good, just can screen (linux), or putty (windows) in.   I'm going to use a VM eval license to try to get dvadmin access, and upgrade.