My Upgrade from ESXi 3.5 to 4.0

In my quest to upgrade ESXi 3.5 to 4.0, I found a few gotcha's. The first one was the fact that the Intel e100 drivers were no longer being supported. So I ran over to my local geek shop and picked up two Intel® PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapters for $32 a pop ($27 on newegg.com).

My second dilemna occurred after installing the 4.0 VMWare vSphere client and attempting to upgrade with the before mentioned e100 adapters. I used the vSphere Update Utility unsuccessfully at first, but that somehow broke my connection from the vSphere client.

Without the ability to log on to the host management console, I was stuck trying to get the host in maintenance mode to restart the upgrade. I quickly remembered that I still had the RCLI and SSH access.

A quick few minutes on Google pointed me to Robert Chase's article on "VMware ESXi SSH CLI commands". http://robertbchase.blogspot.com/2008/12/vmware-esxi-ssh-cli-commands.html

I still had remote access to the VMs so I shut them down this way. I SSH'd into the VMWare host and ran this command to get a list of the VMIDs:
vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

Using each of the VMIDs listed, I used this command to verify that all the VMs had been properly shut down:
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off vmid

Finally, once I was sure all the guests were shut down, I placed the host in maintenance mode with this command:
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

After that, I ran the upgrade without a hitch.

FROM http://robertbchase.blogspot.com

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
Lists all vm's running on hypervisor and provides vmid
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off vmid
Powers off vmid referenced from getallvms command
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on vmid
Powers off vmid referenced from getallvms command
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.reboot vmid
Reboots vmid referenced from getallvms command
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/destroy vmid
Deletes the vmdk and vmx files from disk
 
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
Puts hypervisor into maintenance mode
 
vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
Takes hypervisor out of maintenance mode
 
vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/vol/datastore/dir/vm.vmx
Registers vm in hypervisor inventory
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/unregister vmid
Unregisters vm with hypervisor
 
vim-cmd vmsvc/tools.install vmid
Starts vmware tools installation for VM
 
vim-cmd hostsvc/net/info
Provides information about hypervisor networking
 
chkconfig -l
Shows daemons running on hypervisor. Can also be used for configuration.
 
esxtop
Same as linux top for vmware
 
vmkerrcode -l
List of vmkernel errors
 
esxcfg-info
Lists a LOT of information about the esx host
 
esxcfg-nics -l
Lists information about NIC's. Can also be used for configuration.
 
esxcfg-vswitch -l
Lists information about virtual switching. Can also be used for configuration.
 
dcui
Provides console screen to ssh session
 
vsish
Vmware interactive shell
 
decodeSel /var/log/ipmi_sel.raw
Read System Event Log of server