By: Himabindu P J

IBM PowerVC Software Engineer

PowerVC 1.3.2 introduces a new feature called virtual machine console. This feature allows you to open a remote console to virtual machines managed by PowerVM NovaLink. You can view the terminal session of one or more virtual machines with or without network connectivity to the outside world. This feature is available for all the supported guest operating systems, which includes AIX, RHEL, SUSE Linux, Ubuntu Linux and IBMi. 

Accessing this feature requires the following:

• The pvm-novalink/pypowervm packages on the NovaLink system must be at 1.0.0.4 or later. Follow the instructions here for verifying the NovaLink version.


• You must be using NovaLink to manage the virtual machine, not HMC.


• The user must have one of these roles: admin, vm_manager, vm_user, deployer, or self_service.

Accessing the virtual console

1. In the PowerVC user interface, click the virtual machine’s name to open its Details pane: 


2. From the details pane, click the Console tab to view the console of the virtual machine.  


3. The console opens within the PowerVC user interface: 

Use the Reconnect button if you are unable to view the console:  

If you want a full view of the virtual machine console or if you need to work on multiple virtual machines simultaneously, click “Launch console in a new window” to open the virtual console in a new browser tab. Note that you might need to remove the PowerVC browser address from your pop-up blocker list in order for the console to open.  

Troubleshooting virtual machine console issues:

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  When viewing the virtual console in Internet Explorer, you might encounter certificate errors. This is because the console uses self-signed certificates and you can safely ignore those errors.

  
  

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  If the virtual machine terminal session is opened outside of PowerVC, you may encounter the error as shown below while opening a virtual console. To get rid of this issue, kill the mkvterm process using the command “rmvterm –id <LPAR ID>” on a NovaLink host. 

  
  


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  If you get the error “Unable to establish a console connection,” check the virtual machine’s status. You cannot launch the console for virtual machines in “Building” or “Failed” state. If you receive this error, wait for the virtual machine to be in “Active” state. 

  
  


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  If you encounter this error, “Failed to connect to server (code:1006)”, the port might be blocked by a firewall. 
  
  Execute the below two commands on the NovaLink host to enable the virtual console.
  
  firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=5901-5999/tcp
  
  firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=5901-5999/tcp –permanent 

  
  

• If the console page hangs, ensure that the two services “openstack-nova-consoleauth” and “openstack-nova-novncproxy“ are running on the management server. You can click “Verify Environment” on the PowerVC home page to confirm that these services are up and running.

Now you can easily work on virtual machine consoles.  If you have comments or questions, post them below.  We’d love to hear from you! And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook!