Update 2022

Of course most of this is outdated by now and instead of Perl we now have PowerCLI (and govc) and open-vm-tools has replaced vmware-tools :)

VM – sysctl

Memory related optimalisation:

vm.swappiness = 10
vm.dirty_ratio = 60
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 0
vm.overcommit_memory = 0
kernel.shmmax = 268435456
kernel.shmall = 268435456
vm.min_free_kbytes = 65536


Reboot a minute after a kernel panic:

kernel.panic = 60
kernel.panic_on_oops = 60


Disable IPv6:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1


VM – install vmware-tools

Debian:
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom; tar zxf /media/cdrom/*.tar.gz -C /tmp; sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -d<br />

RedHat:
sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom; tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/*.tar.gz -C /tmp; sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -d<br />

VM – rescan/resize disk without reboot

echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/host#/scan
/usr/share/doc/sg3-utils/examples/archive/rescan-scsi-bus.sh
/sys/class/scsi_disk
ls
cd 0:0:0:0
echo '1' > device/rescan
xfs_growfs /dev/sdb


Settings vmx

bios.bootDelay = "5000"
suspend.disabled = "TRUE"


Using vim-cmd

http://blogs.balius.com/2010/12/24/esxi-creating-new-virtual-machines-servers-from-the-command-line/

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
vim-cmd vmsvc/device.diskremove 272 0 1 n
vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/volumes/vm01/vm01.vmx vm01
vnum=$(vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/$1/$1.vmx)
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on $vnum
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off $(vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms |grep $1|awk '{print $1}')
vim-cmd vmsvc/destroy $(vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms |grep $1|awk '{print $1}')


vSphere SDK for Perl

Installation:

Download VMware vSphere Perl SDK
Linux: installer uses CPAN
Windows: ActivePerl is not included in 6.5 anymore so it needs to be installed first (Strawberry Perl is also supposed to work), installer uses PPM for packages

Options for authentication (besides user/password):

• Config file: --config
• Environment Variables: VI_USERNAME VI_PASSWORD
• Credential store: VICredStore.pm
• Session file: --sessionfile
• Windows SSPI: --passthroughauth

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.perlsdk.pg.doc/viperl_proggd_preface.2.1.html
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-65/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-perl-sdk-65-programming-guide.pdf

Hardening script:

Original script: vmwarevSphereSecurityHardeningReportCheck.pl
vSphere 6.x update: vmwarevSphereSecurityHardeningReportCheck.pl

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9852
http://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.html