Day: April 21, 2014

Add ProFTPD to ESXi 5.1

Uploading files to an ESXi datastore ist terrible slow using the build-in upload mechanism. However if you add FTP to your ESXi server, and use an ftp client to upload/download files, the upload/download will be much faster.

ProFTPD runs good in ESXi 5.x and offers high transfer rate over normal transfers.

To add ProFTPD Service, do the following.

Enable SSH in ESXi.

  • Connect to your ESXi host
  • Goto Configuration
  • Goto Security Profiles
  • Click on Properties
  • Select SSH from the list of services
  • Click Options end start the service

Connect to your ESXi host using any ssh client like putty.
Navigate to your datastore folder  cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore/
[Replace “datastore” to match your datastore name]

Create any folder where your FTP Service files can be downloaded from the internet or any other source.

mkdir install
cd install

Now download ProFTPD using wget

wget http://esxi-customizer.googlecode.com/files/ProFTPD-1.3.3-8-offline_bundle.zip

install ProFTPD using esxcli

esxcli software vib install --no-sig-check 
-d /vmfs/volumes/datastore/install/ProFTPD-1.3.3-8-offline_bundle.zip

I needed to restart the ESXi system to activate ProFTPD in the Security Profiles.


Forcing a localized vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client installation to launch in English

My vSphere Client starts with a german User Interface. Obviously, the language depends on the OS language. In my cas, it’s German …

To be able to provide screenshots with english labels and error messages in a way, that I can find results on Google more easily. I was looking for a way to switch the language of my vSphere Client to English.

 

vSphereClientLang

There is no setting in the UI itself, but here is a little trick, how it can be done without pushing language files around like in the pre WW1 days.

Simply add one of the following parameters to the start parameter of the vSphere Client desktop icon

  • English: en_US
  • German: de_DE
  • Japanese: ja_JP
  • Simplified Chinese: zh_CN
  • French: fr_FR
  • Korean: ko_KR

"C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Virtual Infrastructure Client\Launcher\VpxClient.exe" -locale en_US

You can do the same with your web based client.

Th switch the language to French, simply add the language parameter to the URL

https://client-hostname:9443/vsphere-client/?locale=fr_FR