Query ESXi memory slots/installed memory modules from PowerCLI 4.1

Question

I have a VMware infrastructure with some ESXi 4.1 hosts and a vCenter Server 5.0 installed. I need to extend our hardware inventory with the following info:

• how many memory slots are available in each ESXi host
• how many and what type (DDR2/DDR3, size, MHz) of memory modules are installed in the slots

To collect this info I have to use PowerCLI and if needed, I can use ESXCli from within it. However I do not have ssh access to the ESXi hosts, so running native ESXi commands is not a possibility.

Is there a way to query the memory information from PowerCLI?

(As a bonus it would be lovely to query if the RAID controllers in the ESXi hosts have a BBWC module installed...)

Solution 1

So these are HP ProLiant servers. You have a variety of methods to gain the inventory information you're looking for... Of the available choices, querying the VMware host via PowerCLI is about the last option I'd use...

• HP Blade Chassis Onboard Administrator via SSH or Web.
• Individual server ILO interfaces via SSH or Web.
• From within the running operating systems using hponcfg (ILO) or hpasmcli (management agents) or hpacucli (RAID) utilities.
• VMware vCenter.
• HP Systems Insight Manager.
• dmidecode (on older hosts).
• smbiosDump or esxcfg-info, scripted or manually.

I'll add that if you're not using the HP build of ESXi or don't have the HP .VIB bundles installed, you won't get full visibility into the storage system features.

Also see:
How to find out more hardware details using only ESXi4.1 and (possibly) shell
and
Options for managing Smart Array P400 on an ESXi 5 host

Solution 2

With the smbiosDump command it is possible to know how many RAM expansion slots and which are connected in each one.

Example:

To know the number of slots:

smbiosDump | grep -A 4 'Physical Memory Array'

It shows us the total RAM installed for 12 slots:

smbiosDump | grep -A 12 'Memory Device'

Here more detail of how it works: https://www.sysadmit.com/2018/05/vmware-esxi-ver-modulos-de-ram.html

Comments

[Zizzencs]

Yeah, these are all the tools that I could use for this scenario - and they are exactly the ones that I do not have access to... I'm trying to convince the management that I need access to the chassis management UI but I'd still be interested if the querying is doable from PowerCLI.

[ewwhite]

Depends... Sounds like more of a political issue. For the PowerCLI, it's possible, but far more work. Start here.

[BISI]

To bring his answer a bit more up-to-date, I found it necessary, after the first step (determining the number of slots), to just pipe the smbiosDump output through less, and then personally parse the output to find out what slots were filled with what memory (the second step) given. Also, the standalone version of esxi 5.0.0 returns different information than illustrated in the link.