Setting the provider parameters for VMware

Several IBM® Storage Support for Microsoft VSS and VDS parameters are specific to the VMware guest support feature. The parameters allow the IBM Storage Support for Microsoft VSS and VDS to communicate with the VMware ESX(i) server web services to manipulate the pRDM disks during a snapshot.

You must set up the parameters for VMWare in the following two cases:

The snapshot disk is discovered by the VMware ESX(i) Server through FC and mapped to the virtual machine as the pRDM disk.
The snapshot disk is discovered by the VMware ESX(i) Server through software iSCSI and mapped to the virtual machine as the pRDM disk.

The following IBM Storage Support for Microsoft VSS and VDS parameters are available only in the VMware virtual platform:

vmhost

The VMware web Service that is on the VMware ESX(i) Server or vCenter Server.

vmuser

The user who has access to the VMware ESX(i) Server or vCenter Server with the authority to run pRDM disk operations.

vmpassword

The password for the vmuser to log on.

vmtimeout

The amount of time that the connection is out to the VMware ESX(i) Server or vCenter Server.

vmcredential

The session credential store path for the VMware ESX(i) Server or vCenter Server that is used by Java.

Note: The vmcredential path is the full path name of the Java key file.

You can use the IBM VSS configuration tool ibmvcfg to set the parameters. For example, type ibmvcfg set vmhost https://9.11.110.115/sdk

C:\Program Files\IBM\Hardware Provider for VSS-VSD>ibmvcfg set vmhost 
https://9.11.110.115/sdk

Note: After the configuration is set, the service must be restarted using the following commands in order for the configuration to take effect:

net stop vss
net stop ibmvss

The above commands will stop both VSS VDS and the IBM VSS HW Provider. Both services will start automatically in later use.