Charles Pluta – IT Service Integration

Project 52 – Week 1

First Lesson: Changing the IP address of a VMWare ESX 4 host. I recently had to do this as I was moving my VM box to another network.

First you must disconnect it from vCenter if applicable, and shut down all VMs on this host.. If you have high availability just move them to the other host. Put the host into maintenance mode, easily done from the vSphere client.

Now that all machines are off the host and it is in maintenance mode you can change the IP on the console. You actually have to delete the interface and create a new one.

esxcfg-vswif -d vswif0

-d marks it for deletion, and “vswif0″ is the interface you are changing. This could vary if you have multiple NICs being used. You can list the NICs using esxcfg-vswif -l.

With the interface being deleted now you may create a new one.

esxcfg-vswif -a vswif0 -p “Service Console” -i <IP Address> -n <Subnet Mask> -b <Broadcast IP>

-a Defines the interface name. -p defines the portgroup the interface is assigned to… By default, this is Service Console.

To update the default gateway, use nano to edit the network file.

nano /etc/sysconfig/network file

You can change the Gateway here. If it is not present, add

GATEWAY=<IP Address>

Save the file and reset the interface using

esxcfg-vswif -s vswif0
esxcfg-vswif -e vswif0

You can change the DNS settings on the vSphere client once you have reconnected.

I will continue to write about general network topics as well as VMWare topics as these are my primary during these 52 weeks. I hope to learn alot as well as help others learn during this time. See you next time!

I, like most people apparently, have put my blog off for numerous reasons even though I want to update it more often.. It just seems like it never gets done.

Enter Project 52.

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

I have decided to participate and hope to last the entire year… Its only 52 blog posts and a year to do it is plenty of time. I should be updating every weekend and plan on writing content based on what I’ve encountered and found during the before week. It might be shakey at first, but hopefully with time and practice each week will get better.

See you then. =)