Recently a adjustment was made to the vCenter Cluster HA Agent timeout Settings.
Ref: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2017778
Performing a Reconfigure for VMware HA operation on a primary node causes an unexpected virtual machine failover
This calles for at script, because there is no way we are going to do this by hand! Feel free to use or alter the script, just remember. It is all done at your own risk.
Continue reading VMware HA Cluster: Set-Advanced HA SettingsI light of recent security vulnerabilities found in the OpenSLP service on ESXi. A recommended workaround is to disable the OpenSLP service all together.
Vulnerability information: https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2021-0002.html
Workaround KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/82374
This powershell script will help you control the OpenSLP service.
Continue reading Control OpenSLP on ESXi hosts using PowerCLIThis is a quick and easy script to get all hosts from a vCenter sorted by Cluster and Host name. You will get the Cluster, Hostname, Version, Build and Uptime in days.
Connect-VIServer <vCenter FQDN>
$clusters = Get-Cluster | Sort-Object
$objects = @()
foreach ($cluster in $clusters) {
Write-Host "Gathering from cluster: $($cluster.Name)"
$vmhosts = $cluster | Get-VMHost | Sort-Object
foreach ($vmhost in $vmhosts) {
$object = New-Object -TypeName PSObject
$object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Cluster" -Value $cluster
$object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Host" -Value $vmhost
$object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Version" -Value $vmhost.Version
$object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Build" -Value $vmhost.Build
$object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Uptime (Days)" -Value (New-TimeSpan -Start $vmhost.ExtensionData.Summary.Runtime.BootTime -End (Get-Date) | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Days)
$objects += $object
}
}
$objects | ft -AutoSize
Todays announcement of vRealize Automation 8.1 reveals the possibility to use Custom resources in vRA.
I am super exited about that ability. Those who know me, knows that I am a HUGE fan of vRO (vRealize Orchestrator) and the possibility to add anything as a resource in a vRA really opens the product to so many possibilities.
Anything you can imagine, and that you can make vRO do, you can put in a blueprint.
Spoiler alert. New vRA 8.1 feature
Sometimes you need to find the largest virtual disk. Lets say if you are sizing LUNs for datastores.
Here is a script that help you do that.
Requirement are powershell and the VMware.PowerCLI module.
Use it at your own risk.
Import-Module VMware.PowerCLI
Connect-VIServer <vCenter Name>
Function Get-LargestDisk {
param(
$Datastores=$null
)
$largest = 0
if ($Datastores -eq $null) {
Write-Host "Searching through all VMs."
$vms = Get-VM
} else {
Write-Host "Searching through VMs on datastores: $Datastores"
$vms = $Datastores | Get-VM
}
foreach ($vm in $vms) {
$hdds = $vm | Get-HardDisk
foreach ($hdd in $hdds) {
$size = $hdd.CapacityGB
if ($size -gt $largest) {
Write-Host "Found a larger VM: $vm Size: $size GB"
$largestVm = $vm
$largest = [math]::Round($size)
}
}
}
Write-Host "Largest Disk: $largest GB Largest VM: $largestVm"
}
Get-LargestDisk -Datastore (Get-Datastore V7000*)Hi, just wanted to share this piece of code with you. This short script creates a mirror of virtual portgroups from one vSphere ESXi host to another.
I only takes the name and vlan id into account, so all policies, nics and other settings are not migrated at this time, but it is easy to do. I however does not always want that.
You need VMware.PowerCLI module for it to work.
Use it at you own risk.
Import-Module VMware.PowerCLI
connect-viserver <vCenter Name>
$srcHost = Get-VMHost <Source Host Name>
$dstHost = Get-VMHost <Destination Host Name>
# Change the source and destination switch names if you need to
$srcSwitch = $srcHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name vSwitch0
$dstSwitch = $dstHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name vSwitch0
$srcPGs = $srcSwitch | Get-VirtualPortGroup
$dstSwitch = $dstHost | Get-VirtualSwitch -Name vSwitch1 -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue
if ($dstSwitch -eq $null) {
$dstSwitch = $dstHost | New-VirtualSwitch -Name $srcSwitch.Name
}
foreach ($srcPg in $srcPGs) {
$pgName = $srcPg.name
$pgVlan = $srcPg.VLanId
$pgExists = $false
foreach ($dstPg in $dstPGs) {
if ($dstPg.Name -eq $pgName) {
$pgExists = $true
}
}
if (-not $pgExists) {
#Write-Host "Creating portgroup $pgName with vlan $pgVlan"
$dstSwitch | New-VirtualPortGroup -Name $pgName -VLanId $pgVlan
}
}
Just provisioned the HPE ESXi 6.7 Update 3 custom OEM image onto some HP DL560 Gen10 servers.
After I updated the servers using update manager and the HPE vibsdepot I ran into problems. Turns out there is a conflict between the VMware provided driver and the HPE provided driver.
The result is that I cannot install all updates to satisfy compliance.
Checking the esxupdate.log file on the ESXi hosts I get the following error:
ValueError: VIBs ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 and ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 have unequal values of the 'payloads' attribute: '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1602.936 KB]' != '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1493.833 KB]'Continue reading Update Manager ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so driver conflict
So VMware released a security advisory (VMSA-2019-0009) about vulnerable VMware Tools.
In short it is recommended to upgrade all VMware Tools to at least version 10.3.10 (Build 10346) which is the newest at the time of writing.
After patching ESXi to the latest build, you might realize that the VMware tools you are left with, after upgrading the tools, in a VM, is 10.3.5 (build 10341) Continue reading How to upgrade to VMware Tools 10.3.10
Recently ran into a HPE Proliant m510 server running vSAN, where vSAN complained that the controller driver for the NVMe disk where too new.
The health error said that the current driver nvme (1.2.2.17.-1vmw.670.1.28.10302608) was to new and the recommended driver was nvme (1.2.1.34-1vmw.670.0.08169922)
Downgrading is not always a breeze. When going to VMware compatibility guide, the NVMe disk is supported for vSAN 6.7 Update 1, and there are no download links to a specific driver, so how do you get the old driver? Continue reading vSAN – Downgrading NVMe driver in ESXi 6.7 Update 1
I recently installed Powershell Core om Ubuntu 18.04, and after installing the PowerCLI module. I ran into an error.
The error is not an uncommon one, but on Windows the error message makes a lot more sense, so I just wanted to let you know what this error actually means.
The error you might get when you try to connect to your vCenter server using the connect-viserver is the following:
Connect-VIServer : 9/27/18 10:41:37 AM Connect-VIServer The SSL connection could not be established, see inner exception. At line:1 char:1 + Connect-VIServer <servername> + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Connect-VIServer], ViError + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Client20_ConnectivityServiceImpl_Reconnect_SoapException,VMware.VimAutomation.ViCore.Cmdlets.Commands.ConnectVIServer
The only hint here is “The SSL connection could not be established…”
This actually means that you do not have a valid certificate. And if you want to connect to vCenter without a valid certificate, you have to allow this.
You can either change you vCenter certificate to a trusted one, which is the correct solutions or you can ignore invalid certificates, which circumvents all security, but makes it work right now.
Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction:ignore
Please comment if this was helpful.
