Create Vima with VMware to simplify ESXi management

By running scripts and loading Third-party applications through the VMware ESX Service console, users can manage the ESX host system and virtual infrastructure. However, because VMware ESXi does not have a service console, VMware makes up for this shortcoming by creating a Vima (Virtual infrastructure Management Assistant). Vima also provides a centralized way for VMware ESX servers to run scripts, which is a very necessary feature of Vima. With the right help, users can easily install Vima, and Vima is completely free.

What is Vima (VMware infrastructure Management Assistant)?

Vima is a new, free virtual device that VMware has launched, and can be downloaded directly from the VMware official home page. Because Vima uses an open virtual machine format (Ovf:open virtual Machine format), it is easy to import into the user's VMware's underlying architecture.

After the Vima is operational, you can provide the following features:

Provides a mechanism to run VMware ESX Server scripting at the infrastructure level

Provides an interface for Third-party application installations that require access to VMware virtual machine devices

Provides a management mechanism for ESXI servers that have the ability to manage these functions, such as running scripts and third-party applications to VMware Infrastructure Access (note that software developers need to modify their developed applications)

Unified management of virtual infrastructure landing mechanism

Further speaking, users can manage multiple ESX hosts through a single ESX host without additional authentication. In addition, the existing ESX Server Service console script only needs to make simple changes to run on the Vima.

In other words, you can think of Vima as an integrated service console for a VMware ESX server. For those who use VMware ESXi, Vima not only provides centralized management, but also provides the features of many service consoles that disappear when users choose to use ESXi instead of ESX.

constituent components of the Vima

Vima consists of a red Hat Enterprise Linux 64-bit virtual device and a series of applications installed above. These applications mainly include VMware Tools, Perls command-line tools (similar to the functionality of the ESXi Service console command), VI Perl Toolkit, Java JRE 1.5, VMware Authentication components (Vi-fastpass), VMware Landing Component (Vi-logger) and a Simple Network Management Protocol (Snmp:simple Network Management Protocol) server.

These applications are integrated together as a tool to help users better centralize the management of ESX and ESXI servers by using scripting, ESX commands, or third-party applications.

Configuration requirements for Running Vima

Typically, I browse through the configuration requirements and assume that my server or operating system is running any application or operating system without problems. But I want to remind you that for VMware Vima, you have to be aware of these configuration requirements. I roughly estimate that about 50% of the virtual machine's underlying architecture does not meet one or more of the configuration requirements.

The configuration requirements for VMware Vima are as follows:

64-bit ESX or ESXi host, AMD Opteron e (or above) processor or a VT-supported Intel EM64T processor

VMware Infrastructure Clients (VI client:vmware infrastructure Client)

513MB of available memory

Of these configuration requirements, many IT departments do not meet the host configuration of the 64-bit host this item, if the user tries to run Vima on a 32-bit machine, you will see the following error message:

As shown in the diagram: The CPU of the host does not meet the CPU configuration requirements of the virtual machine, and this requirement must be satisfied, there is no alternative method. The Vima must be on a 64-bit VMware ESX or ESXi host to run.