Vmware Custom Bios

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Sandra Grady

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Aug 3, 2024, 11:26:44 AM8/3/24

to muhelpmobba

Motherboard I'm using with esxi came preloaded with default strings for Manufacturer and Model information. Both show up as "To Be Filled By O.E.M." within esxi. Alas these strings are not customization via the bios, and the bios image would need to be manually edited to specify them at the source.

Is there a setting to override these strings on the esxi level? Something that would use a specificed value instead of a string acquired from BIOS? Alternative would be to hide the two entries, as this would be preferred to showing an incomplete setup process.

Hi, I have a test environment made of a dl380 g5 server with mounted on it vmware hypervisor esxi 5.0u3 (hp custom image). The server is already updated with latest SPP (2014.06.0). The problem is that the system ROM (BIOS) does not update. From the HP VMWare recipes it tells me to install the 2011.05.02 (P56) System ROM. On the server I have the 08.03.2008 (P56).

This seems to be the cause of multiprocessor BSODs on VMs that I create on it (BSOD with Windows VMs set up with more than 1 core cpu).

Please, can you address me to find the correct BIOS for above environment?

The power state of a VMware Server virtual machine can be changed either from within the guest operating system itself (for example by initiating the operating system's own shutdown command from within the VMware Remote Console) or by using the VI Web Access interface.

In the case of changing the power state from within the VI Web Access interface, a number of configuration options are available in terms of what actually happens when the power state is changed (for example when the VI Web Access power off button is clicked) and also which VMware Tools scripts are triggered within the guest operating system.

When a virtual machine is powered on or off, suspended, resumed or restarted it is said to have undergone a change in power state. The VI Web Access interface provides no less than five locations where the power state of a virtual machine may be changed. The most prominent of these are located in the tool bar which runs along the top of the interface. Toolbar buttons are provided to power on, power off, suspend and restart the virtual machine currently selected from the Inventory panel.

In addition, power state options are listed in the Commands panel of the virtual machine workspace area when a virtual machine is selected from the inventory. Similarly, power state options are listed for the currently selected virtual machine within the Virtual Machines menu option in the menu bar at the top of the VI Web Access interface.

If the host system is selected from the inventory panel and the Virtual Machines tab of the workspace is selected, a list of virtual machines appears together with a Commands panel. As each virtual machine is selected from this list, the Commands panel updates with a list of suitable commands, including power state changes, for the selected machine.

The previous section described how the guest operating system running within a VMware Server virtual machine may be cleanly shutdown, restarted or suspended through the installation on VMware Tools on the guest. When a user instructs VI Web Access to change the power state of a virtual machine, VMware Server communicates with a VMware Tools process running on the guest operating system and instructs it to execute a script. The script which is executed depends on the nature of the power state change, together with script configuration settings made within the VMware Tools control panel (covered in detail later in this chapter).

The VMware Tools Scripts section of the power configuration panel allows VMware Tools script execution to be disabled for each of the power state changes. To prevent a script running at a particular point, simply deselect the check box next to the corresponding description.

The BIOS setup section provides the ability to configure the selected virtual machine to automatically enter the BIOS setup screen next time it is powered on. This is a transient setting which is reset after the first power on.

The Advanced settings allow the VMware Tools installation on the guest operating system to be automatically updated if a newer version is available, and to specify whether the guest operating system time should be synchronized with that of the host.

If a virtual machine is configured to use VMware Tools scripts then either the default scripts installed with VMware Tools, or custom scripts may be used. On Windows based guest operating systems, the default scripts take the form of Windows Batch files and are located in \Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools. On Linux guests the default scripts are shell scripts and reside in /etc/vmware-tools. On both guest types the files are descriptively named poweroff-vm-default, poweron-vm-default, resume-vm-default and suspend-vm-default.

A review of the content of these scripts using a text or programming editor will reveal that by default they actually do very little. For example, with the exception of suspend and resume, the Windows VMware Tools scripts contain nothing but a couple of comment lines. The real power of the VMware Tools scripts is the ability to configure custom scripts.

As described in the previous section, the default scripts provided may be overridden using custom scripts. Custom scripts may be created either by modifying the default scripts, or by creating new scripts and configuring VMware Tools to use the new script in place of the default script. Custom scripts may be edited using any suitable text or programming editor, or by using the Edit... button located on the Scripts tab of the VMware Tools control panel (for more details on the VMware control panel read The VMware Tools Control Panel chapter of this book). Note that the use of the control panel script editing feature on Linux will require knowledge of the vi editor. Those lacking the necessary skills with vi should consider directly creating and editing the custom scripts using their preferred editor outside the context of the control panel.

To create a custom script using the VMware Tools control panel, click on the Scripts tab and select from the menu the power change event for which the custom script is to be created. Ensure that the Use script option is selected and click on Custom Script at which point the text box containing the path to the script and the Browse and Edit buttons will be enabled. To edit the default script simply click on the Edit button and make the modification in the resulting edit window. To edit an existing custom script or create an entirely new script, enter the path and name of the script file into the text field and press the Edit button. Once the script is complete, save the file and exit the editor to return to the control panel.

If custom scripts are being created outside of the VMware Tools control panel (and are new files rather than modifications to the existing default scripts) it will be necessary to configure VMware Tools to use these scripts. To achieve this, open the VMware Tools control panel, select the Scripts tab and choose the appropriate power state from the drop down menu. Ensure that Use scripts and Custom Script are both selected, use the Browse feature to navigate to and select the new custom script and click on OK to apply the change.

A string (in other words a sequence of characters) may be passed from the host system to the guest where it may be used within a VMware Tools script, or any other script for that matter. This is achieved by assigning the string to be passed to the guest to the machine.id value in the .vmx configuration file of the virtual machine in which the guest is running. For example, to pass the string "Virtuatopia Labs" through to the guest, the machine.id line in the .vmx file would read as follows: