How to access Hosted Engine VM console from RHEV-H host?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Virtualization (RHEV) 4.3
  • Hosted Engine (HE) environment

Issue

Sometimes serial console access is needed to access Hosted Engine (HE) VM from RHEV-H host, that does not support graphical interface. How can the console be accessed?

Resolution

VNC

To connect using VNC, check which port is being used, and set a console password. On the host running HostedEngine, run:

  hosted-engine --add-console-password --password=mypass
  virsh -r dumpxml HostedEngine | grep ValidTo

Then from your client, connect to the host like so:

  remote-viewer vnc://<host>:5900

Where is the IP or FQDN of the host.

SPICE

To make a SPICE connection (if needed) with a remote-viewer, hosted-engine --add-console-password won't work, so vdsm-client VM setTicket is needed.

First, create a text file on the host running HostedEngine, similar to:

$ cat console.json
{
  "params": {
    "deviceType": "graphics",
    "graphicsType": "spice"
  },
  "password": "mypass",
  "vmID": "<HE-UUID>",
  "existingConnAction": "disconnect",
  "ttl": 60
}

Where "<HE-UUID>" is the UUID of your HostedEngine instance.

Then, set a ticket:

 date && vdsm-client -f console.json VM setTicket && virsh -r dumpxml HostedEngine | grep ValidTo

and connetc to the SPICE tlsPort from your client: ("")

  remote-viewer --spice-ca-file=rhvm-ca.pem spice://<FQDN>?tls-port=<PORT>

and "<FQDN>" is the fully qualified domain name of the hypervisor running the HostedEngine instance (FQDN must match CA certificate details)

If needed, the ca certificate can be copied from a hypervisor (/etc/pki/vdsm/libvirt-spice/ca-cert.pem)

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