PowerCLI & vmtools custom attributes

[ctrought]

I'm using power cli to set a custom attribute on a virtual machine, and then I'd like to be able to retrieve the value of the custom attribute from the virtual machine itself using vmtools. Can anyone explain why it's returning no value when the custom attribute is visible via powerCLI and also in vSphere under the VM custom attributes?

 

 

> Set-Annotation -CustomAttribute "guestinfo.esx" -Entity "virtualmachine1" -Value esxi-host-1

AnnotatedEntity Name Value
--------------- ---- -----
virtualmachine1 guestinfo.esx esxi-host-1

> Get-VM virtualmachine1 | Get-Annotation -CustomAttribute guestinfo.esx

AnnotatedEntity Name                 Value
--------------- ----                 -----
virtualmachine1 guestinfo.esx        esxi-host-1


[root@virtal-machine-1 ~]# vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.esx"
No value found

 

 

 

  

[Macleud]

Hi.

There was already a similar topic.

https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/discussion/how-to-get-esxi-host-name-within-running-vm#bm7638469a-5c82-42e1-86ff-94899cb3f74a

It is possible though to set a custom attribute on the VM object in vCenter and then query this from within the the OS of the virtual machine.
For example:

$vmView = GET-VM -Name 'Vm_Name' | Get-View
$vmConfigSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$gInfo = New-Object VMware.Vim.optionvalue
$ginfo.Key=”guestinfo.hostname”
$gInfo.Value=$vmView.Name
$vmConfigSpec.extraconfig += $gInfo
$vmView.ReconfigVM($vmConfigSpec)

 

Once this is set, it is possible to query it within the VM, using the VM tools and the following command:

vmtoolsd -–cmd “info-get guestinfo.hostname”

 

[ctrought]

Thanks a lot, that works perfectly!