Configuring ESXi Hosts for GuestStore<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To begin, I configured all of the hosts in a cluster to use the same NFS datastore as a gueststore repository. The official docs linked above show how to do this per host with This sets a datastore folder named This is a basic shell script. It is just a sample, we could use this same method to distribute any script or binary file that is 512MB or less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I then deployed a TinyCore Linux VM, which is super small (my OVA is less than 30MB, including open-vm-tools) and perfect for this type of testing as it deploys very quickly. In this example, the TinyCore VM has no network adapter, CD\/DVD drive, or floppy drive that could be used to access script files or other binaries. It does run in the Inside the guest OS we’ll run the following command to retrieve the file:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since this file is only a few KB in size, we should see a complete progress bar almost immediately, with confirmation that ‘getcontent’ succeeded, as pictured below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From here we can make our script executable ( This script creates a very basic output, but its just a starting point. The real key here isn’t the script, its the process of getting the script to the virtual machine which does not have an alternate method of file transfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Configuring GuestStore on ESXi hosts wasn’t difficult. Using VMware Tools to get these files into the guest OS was also straightforward. While there are many ways to get files into a virtual machine, this worked well in this specific case where the VM didn’t have a CD drive or functioning network connectivity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When working with VMs that lack network connectivity, transferring files can be tricky. I recently explored the GuestStore feature a built-in vSphere feature that solves this challenge by allowing file delivery via VMware Tools\u2014even without a network. This post walks … Continue reading esxcli<\/code> so I used that example to write a PowerCLI equilivant. This example uses one host has a reference to create the arguments, populates the URL value, then sets the value for each host in cluster NestedCluster03<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n$setRepo = (Get-VMHost test-vesx-71* | Get-EsxCli -v2).system.settings.gueststore.repository.set.CreateArgs()\n$setRepo.url = 'ds:\/\/\/vmfs\/volumes\/ebb8ed5e-48fb2f0b\/h045-gueststore'\n\nforeach ($thisHost in (Get-Cluster NestedCluster03 | Get-VMHost | Sort-Object Name )) {\n ($thisHost | Get-EsxCli -v2).system.settings.gueststore.repository.set.Invoke($setRepo)\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nPreparing the Content \/ sample script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
h045-gueststore<\/code> as the base folder for my custom content. I then created a script file to demonstrate how to get this file to the VM. The full path of the test file would be [nfs-datastore-a] h045-gueststore\/custom\/myscript.sh<\/code>. This script will write the current date\/time value from the system, dot source the os-release file, and then write the ‘pretty name’ of the OS to the screen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n#!\/bin\/sh\necho \"The current system time is $(date)\"\n. \/etc\/os-release\necho \"This system is running ${PRETTY_NAME}.\"<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nGuest VM Retrieval with VMware Tools<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
NestedCluster03<\/code> which has GuestStore configured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\/usr\/local\/bin\/vmware-toolbox-cmd gueststore getcontent \/custom\/myscript.sh \/tmp\/myscript.sh<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-1024x234.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nRunning the Script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
chmod +x \/tmp\/myscript.sh<\/code>) and then run it (\/tmp\/myscript.sh<\/code>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-1-1024x169.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nConclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n