Section 13.1. Introduction

13.1. Introduction

This chapter focuses on the commands that are most likely to be used to manage your ESX Server from the Service Console. As mentioned in other chapters, the Service Console is a modified version of Red Hat Linux which is used to boot and load the VMkernel for VMware ESX Server and provide services such as the Apache web server for the MUI and command-line management which, of course, is the focus of this chapter. The target audience for this chapter is mainly Windows administrators who are not as familiar with the Linux command-line environment. It is not meant to cover every available command for Linux or to explain Linux in depth. Hopefully, this chapter can be used to provide a quick reference for the commands that will most likely be used at the Service Console command line. This chapter should also provide some insight to administrators on how commands can be used to effectively manage their ESX Server deployments. The Service Console has several commands that are unique to ESX Server such as vmware-cmd, vmkfstools, vmkpcidivy, esxtop, and custom scripts that can be used to manage your virtual environment. These commands, as well as the standard Linux commands, are covered in this chapter and examples are provided.