Hack Lab and Mac access

[only.samurai at gmail.com (Andrew Ellis)]

I run a few ESXi boxes and also use a Mac. Currently, I'm doing
exactly what you describe, either spinning up a VM on my MAC or
RDP'ing into a jump-box, either on the host or with access to it.

Depending on what you're trying to do, you could also try the following:
1. Open up ssh from the maintenance console. This will let you connect
to the console do manage the VMs on that level.
2. You could also install libvirt and either write some custom code
using that API or use the virsh that comes with libvirt.

virsh lets you do a lot of the "high level" management of your VMs,
such as power control, enumeration, resource throttling, etc. I've
only started playing with it recently, so I'm by no means an expert,
but it should run under OSX.

I've run into a few places where virsh can't do something that shows
up in the help (as it's "not implemented".) This could be that ESXi
doesn't provide the functionality and the command is there for
compatibility with other hypervisors or the hack-ish setup that I've
got libvirt running as.

-Andrew

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:16 PM, k41zen <k41zen at live.co.uk> wrote:
> I've finally built my hack lab, inspired by the latest podcasts discussing it, only to find that accessing it from 
> the Mac is a bitch.
>
> The VMware Server remote console plugin doesn't work with later versions of Firefox for the Mac. ?Some people appear 
> to have installed Fusion on the Mac and access them from either a Linux/M$ OS but this just feels wrong. I suppose I 
> could RDP into the server and use them that way but that seems crap.
>
> So I was wondering how people with Mac's access their VM's in their lab or if anyone has gotten the remote console 
> plugin working on their Mac somehow.
>
> Grateful for any help.
>
> k41zen
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-- 
Andrew Ellis
http://blog.psych0tik.net