VMware Software Manager Tool

There is a little free tool from VMware call VMware Software Manager (VSM) which you can use to help download and manage your VMware products installation media files into one central location. It has a simple interface where you can just browse for the product and version of the software that you would like to download which I think is far simpler than at the website.

There are some pre-requisites before starting this:

• Plenty of disk space if you have a lot of VMware products and need various version of them 
• Using one of the following operating system for where you will be installing this product; 
• Windows 8.1 (Pro or Enterprise edition) 64-bit 
• Windows 7 SP1 (Professional or Enterprise edition) 64-bit 
• Windows Server 2012 R2 (Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter edition) 64-bit
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter edition) 64-bit  

• The following browsers are supported and one of them needs to be installed where software manager is installed;  
• Internet Explorer 10 or 11 
• Firefox 40 or 41 
• Google Chrome 45 or 46 
• I am pretty sure newer versions of the browsers will still work but may not be tested

• The browser used must allow the use of cookies, JavaScript, and DOM storage. The supported browsers allow the use of these features by default 
• Incoming port TCP 8000 bounded to the localhost only where you are running Software Manager 
• Outbound TCP ports to allow Software Manager to communicate to VMware download site to the following addresses and port numbers; 
• depot.vmware.com - port 443 
• download2.vmware.com - port 443 
• download3.vmware.com - port 443

• An “My VMware” registered account which permits you to download products

1) Go to https://my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/info?slug=datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_software_manager/1_5 and you will be prompted to login with your registered VMware account.

2) Select which version to download and at the time of writing this was version 1.5 and then click “Download.

3) You will be taken to the next screen to show the available files to be downloaded. Select your preferred way of downloading and you will be greeted with the End User License Agreement which you must tick and accept before download will proceed.

4) On the PC that you are going to install Software Manager create a new directory where you will be downloading VMware products to. My one is “C:\download”.

5) Once downloaded execute the installer on the PC you wish to run Software Manager from. The version I have used in this example is 1.5.0.4322026.

6) Click “Next” at the first installer screen.

7) Tick box “I accept the terms in the License Agreement” and click “Next.

8) If you need to change the install location of Software Manager do so here. For the “Depot Location” change it to the one you want otherwise the default would be “C:\depot”. Click “Next”.

9) Click “Install” to install the product.

10) Once installed by default “Open Download Service web application” is ticked which will run the application once you click “Finish”.

11) Your default web browser will fire open to the url of http://localhost:8000. You have three choices on how you would like to connect to “My VMware”. I used my email address and password that I have registered with “My VMware”. Click connect once you have filled in your details.

12)  It will attempt to connect to VMware site with your credentials to start bringing down the catalogue of software that you can download. You would possibly see this message as below.

If after 5 minutes the screen doesn’t change then try to refresh the page (F5). If you get this screen then we would need to apply the fixes below before moving to step 13.

There seems to be a bug with the software at the moment where some files looks to be removed from the repository but they have not been removed them from the configuration files which causes Software Manager from working. With the help of the community thread https://communities.vmware.com/thread/568541 I have written the steps below in case there are more files that needs to be amended.

a) Shutdown the services for Software Manager. Go to the task bar of Windows and right-select Software Manager Icon which would bring up a menu. Select “Quit”. Make sure you do this step before proceeding on. 

b) Once you have quit the application you will now need to browse to the following location "c:\users\%CurrentLoggedInUser%\appdata\roaming\vmware\software manager\download service\logs". %CurrentLoggedInUser% is the username you are currently loggedin as to rn this application. 

c) You will see a list of log files and the one we are after is “stdout-vapi_server”. If you did not do “step a” then this file will be empty until you stop quit the application. Open the file to find which depot slot you are currently using. Then look for the text “failed to load:” which should highlight which file has failed and make a note of it.

d) The community thread has highlighted which file we should be modifying “dlg_ESXI60U3A.xhtml” so go to “C:\Users\%CurrentLoggedInUser%\AppData\Roaming\VMware\Software Manager\Download Service\Data\”%DepotSlot%\channel\” (%DepotSlot% is the slot directory information from previous step). Use your favourite text editor which I have used Notepad++ to open up “dlg_ESXI60U3A.xhtml".

e) We now need to find and remove the file that has failed to load from “Step c” so we either use the find function or find the name which will be between <li title=”associated-channels”></li> (about 6-8 lines down from the file).  

Once you find the text delete it from that line. If the text happens to be the last one like the one shown then make sure you remove the “,” from the last file name as well then save the file.

f) Below I have listed the files that I had to remove to get it working from “dlg_ESXI60U3A.xhtml” which should help you edit the file all at one go. I have also hosted the "dlg_ESXI60U3A.xhtml file at github which you can download to replace https://github.com/myvmx/myvmx/tree/master/VMware/vsm

• dlg_DT_ESXI60_ADAPTEC_SAS_AACRAID_12152040 
• dlg_DT_ESXI60_EMULEX_BE2ISCSI_112119717 
• dlg_DT_ESX60_EMULEX_LPFC_1123200 
• dlg_DT_ESXI60_HITACHI_HFCNDD_104220152 
• dlg_DT_ESX60_INTEL_NIC_IXGBEN_153 
• dlg_DT_ESXI60_MELLANOX_NMLX5_CORE_415103 
• dlg_DT_ESXI60_PMCS_SMARTPQI_1001060 
• dlg_DT_ESXI60_STRATUS_NIC_FTSYS_I40E_650100 
• dlg_ESXI60U3A_OSS
  

Once you have removed all the entries and saved the file. Start Download Manager from the icon on your desktop and login with your “My VMware” credentials. If after a few minutes you refresh the page and get the same errors shown at step 12 then you will need to repeat the above from “step a”. Hopefully you will get the home screen as shown in step 13 and can proceed.

13) You should now be presented with a view of all the VMware software that is currently available and they will be grouped into sections. On the right hand side of the web page you have addition options such as including drivers, custom ISOs such as hardware vendor custom built from the likes of HPE, Dell.

If you click on the “cards” themselves then you get a brief description about the product.

If you see an “>” it means that you can drill further into the product itself to find what you want to download. We will just do a basic download so we would select “VMware vSphere” and click on “>”.

15) This will drill down to the versions that you can download so we will select VMware vSphere 6.5 and click on “>”.

16) Now you have to decide on which edition you would like to download. From this screen you can see that there is “>” as well as download icon. You will notice the disk space required if you was to click on the download icon at this point. You would be wondering why on earth it would need around 37GB? Click on the card itself and it will tell you what you would be downloading if you clicked on the download icon from this page.

As I don’t want to download everything I will be clicking on “>” to drill further down

17) You can select the sub products that you wish to download. For each of the product you can now see the number of files it will download and the total space required for the download. If you want to see what files will be downloaded then click on the card and it will tell you.  We will select “ESXI65U1” and click on the download button to start the download.

18) You will see that the card icon will change and also a progress bar at the bottom of thw web page. At this point you could close the browser or come back later while it is downloading. If you was to close the browser then you will need to just browse back to http://localhost:8000 to bring the page up.

19) Once the download is completed the card will change to show a folder icon. If you click on the folder icon it will take you to the source files that you have downloaded to the specified directory. Now that you have the files available locally you can use your chosen method to perform your VMware software installation.

Please note VMware Software Manager is not set to auto-start when Windows starts. Unless you want to check if there are any new software updates it is not necessary to start the software as you can browse to the download depot to retrieve the media files that you have downloaded previously.

At the time of writing my account has allowed me to download all the software available which is good for me to testing and a great way to easily build up my software repository of VMware software. It saves the headache of trying to locate the download pages on the website and finding if there are new updates.

References :

Release Notes 

• http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vsm-download-service/15/software-manager-download-service-15-relnotes.html

User Guide but only version 1.3 I could find

• http://pubs.vmware.com/vmware-software-manager/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vmware-software-manager-download-service-13-users-guide.pdf

vSphere Beta program register your interest

It is that time of the year again where VMware opens up their vSphere Beta program for people to test and provide feedback for their upcoming releases. The good thing about these new beta programs is that they have options to use their "Hosted Beta" which means you don't need to install anything and can just test new feature just like Hands on Lab. If you still prefer the traditional way you will still be able to download the beta software to test.

https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/10/new-vmware-vsphere-beta-indicate-interest.html

Sign up form link: http://learn.vmware.com/43478_vSphere_Beta_Reg

As always please remember to not run Beta software code on production systems.

Online HPE Server Memory Configurator tool

I found some memory modules and wanted to see if I could boost my HP G6 server a bit more. Digging around the HPE site and reading the pdf I was not getting anywhere to see if I could just easily add the extra modules. I then googled and it pointed me to a HPE Server Memory Configurator tool - https://h22195.www2.hpe.com/ddr4memoryconfig/home/legal (Appears to only work with G6 and above)

This tool has two ways to help you work out your memory modules configuration if you are looking to increase/upgrade the memory in your existing server - 

• Use HPE Insight Diagnostics tools to help detect the memory already installed in your server. This means possibly no downtime if you already have the correct versions of various HP management tools already installed on the server otherwise you would still need downtime to install/update/reboot the server. 
• Enter HP part number/s for the memory modules you have installed already in your server but this requires you to either have the information already or shut down the server to gather the information (part number/assembly number) from the memory modules itself.

If you are using this tool to plan for a new server and want to know what combination of modules are required to achieve your capacity then you don’t need to worry about the two points above. I will show a quick example of how I used it based on my G6 DL360 with 8 x 8GB modules installed already. I have located some 2GB modules so I wanted to see if it was possible to add those modules and how to position the installation of all the memory modules.

1) Go to https://h22195.www2.hpe.com/ddr4memoryconfig/home/legal. Select which type of memory you are trying to configure. Select DDR4 if it is for Gen9 or Gen10 servers, DDR3 for G6, G7 or Gen8 then click "I agree". I selected DDR3 as it is a G6

2) Under "Step 1a" if you have a pre-configured BTO server model part number (SKU Number) then select "yes" and select "next". I didn’t have the details for “step 1a” so I followed “step 1b” which is to select which ProLiant server series you have, I selected “HPE ProLiant DL Servers” and then select your server from the drop down box below which I selected “ProLiant DL360 G6”

3) Processors - Once the model has been chosen you will need to select how many processors are installed or to be installed to the system

4) Memory - If you are configuring a brand new server then you would select "No" and click "Next" (Skip to step 7). For me I had memory installed so I selected "Yes" which will bring down another menu to choose what type of technology the memory is currently configured in the server. I selected "None" as I am not using any of those technology but if you are then select the appropriate one followed by "Next"

5) Existing Memory Information - If you have the correct HPE Diagnostics Insight tools (check the versions required as shown on the web screen) on a server then you can use "step2a" to help automatically detect the memory installed in your server. I chose to use "step 2b" clicking on "Enter your memory"

6) A pop-up windows appears and gives you some guidance on how to gather the part numbers of the memory modules you have installed in your server. Use the scroll bar to go down to the section where you start entering the module information. As you can see I have added the part numbers of where the modules are currently installed for me and click “Next”

7) You will see to the right of the web page your server memory configuration details. If “Existing memory” is shown as “0 GB” then you are using the tool to configure a new server or you have entered the incorrect part number/s hence the tool is not recognising your part number. My one is showing I have 64 GB ram which is correct

8) Use the slider or enter your desired memory you would like to increase/upgrade for your server. Select the memory options you would like and read the tips section to give you guidance. This section could determine how your existing memory/new server memory are configured. As you can see some options are based around cost and performance. Selecting the wrong memory option could equate to overspending or degrading the performance to achieve the desired configuration. So for my example I have used 8 out of 18 slots to get my 64GB (8 x 8GB) so I have 10 slots free. The modules that I have found are 2GB so assuming I can use all the remaining 10 slots I should be able to get 20GB extra so my desire memory would be 84GB. I selected “General purpose” and clicked “Next”

9) You will now get the results of what are the possible configuration you can achieve for your server based on your chosen desire memory and memory option selected. Some options may require you to remove/replace/add different modules to the ones you already have in your server. Once you decided which option you will go for click “Select”. As you can see there is an option where I can use all my 2GB ram and my current 8GB ram modules. 

10) You will get details about what HPE memory module kits to buy and a diagram of where to install/re-position the modules which is the essential part !!

So this was just a very basic run through of how I used it at home for my lab kit to see whether the memory I have located can be added to my server and also where to position each of the modules in my server so that it works. As I stated in step 8 it is important on which memory “option” you select where you can choose from Performance/Power Efficiency/Low Cost/ General Purpose as this could affect whether you need to replace existing modules in your server to achieve you memory requirement. I know I will be using this tool when I next do a upgrade or configure a new HPE server.