A Daemon's VIB - Part 3 (Building a software package for VMware ESXi)

Part 3: Packaging, SecPolicy and VisorFS

This is the third and last part of the "Daemon's VIB" series about building a software package for ESXi, using the example of the ProFTPD Offline Bundle that I recently released. In the first part I explained how to get (or create yourself) suitable binaries for ESXi, in the second part we cared about the Daemon's configuration, firewall settings and automatic startup. In this last part we will
   a) build and install the actual software package
   b) deal with the VMkernel access security policies and
   c) make the service configurable to adapt to your own needs.

A Daemon's VIB - Part 2 (Building a software package for VMware ESXi)

Part 2: Service configuration and startup

This is the second part of the "Daemon's VIB" series about building a software package for ESXi, using the example of the ProFTPD Offline Bundle that I recently released. In the first part I explained how to get (or create yourself) suitable binaries for ESXi. In this part I will focus on what is necessary
   a) to make the service start up automatically on system boot and
   b) to make it fully manageable via the vSphere Client.

A Daemon's VIB: Building a software package for VMware ESXi (Part 1/3)

Part 1: Binaries

I recently released an Offline Bundle for installing the ProFTP Daemon in ESXi 5.x. This was the result of a self-educational project: The subject of this project was not really how to develop software for ESXi, but how to nicely package software for ESXi in a way that makes it easy to distribute and easy to deploy and use for the average VMware administrator. I chose the example of an FTP daemon, because I already stumbled several times over requests for having this available in ESXi, and I know that there were some hacks for it around since the days of ESXi 3.5.

I promised to share what I have learnt in this project, and I will deliver on this promise in three parts. This first part is about binaries and binary compatibility.

[Release] ProFTPD (FTP server) for VMware ESXi 5.x

ProFTPD is a GPL-licensed, feature rich and highly configurable FTP server. Today I have made available an Offline Bundle to install ProFTPD in VMware ESXi 5.x. Installing it will enable you to transfer files from and to an ESXi host using an FTP client program.

[Update] ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools 2.1

I just published updated versions of my ESXi5 Community Packaging Tools. What's new:

• The TGZ2VIB5 tool now allows to build the VIB payload file from a directory structure (rather than using a pre-packaged tgz file as input)
• You can now change the Acceptance Level of the VIB package

Are ESXi 5.x patches cumulative?

I find this question being asked again and again in the VMware forums by people who cannot just use Update Manager for patching, and most times the answers that are given there are a bit vague and unclear or even plain wrong. This is because ESXi patching is a really complex and not well documented matter. So I need to provide some background information before I'm going to answer this question: