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Initialize VMs in a vSphere private Cloud using Cloud-Init Cloud-Init Datasource for VMware GuestInfo is deprecated The Web is full of explanations, how to use „Cloud-Init Datasource for VMware GuestInfo“ but https://github.com/vmware-archive/cloud-init-vmware-guestinfo it is deprecated. It is now integrated natively into Cloud-Init Cloud-Init 21.3 has been released https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/release-of-cloud-init-21-3/23857 which integrates this software. New name: „DatasourceVMware“ https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/pull/953, readthedocs https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/datasources/vmware.html, I’d expect it to be in the current Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/impish/current/ – the release notes for 21.10 don’t specify the exact version. Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) is still at cloud-init 20.1-10 according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseNotes which is too old. Prepare a VM-Template Unfortunately Ubuntu provides theRead More →

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I prefer accessing VMs using SSH or RDP directly. Sometimes, the IP-Address of the VM isn’t reachable, or protocols for remoteaccess need to be disabled for security reasons. In these cases, if an IP-connection to the ESXi-Server is available this could be an option to use the ESXi hypervisor as VNC-Server to provide access to VM keyboard, video, mouse… Three VM advanced Configuration Parameters need to be set: „password“ is optional, but mRemoteNG as VNC-Client doesn’t work without password set.Read More →

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While the „old“ SCAv1 built a virtual fence around all virtual processors („Intra VM Security Boundary“), SCAv2 lets processors of one virtual machine (VM) to run within a „common fence“ („Inter VM Security Boundary“) which balances security and performance for most workloads. See https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/performance/scheduler-options-vsphere67u2-perf.pdf for performance analysis. Configure Verify Configure SCAv1Read More →

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Background VMware wants us to prepopulate an Excel-Sheet with SSH-Keys and SSL-Thumbprints of all ESXi-Hosts, who have been freshly deployed minutes before, which effectivly protects against man-in-the-middle-attacks – maybe a problem in US-datacenters. Beginning with VMware Cloud Foundation Release VCF 4.2 the Cloud-Builder-App verifies the „CN“ of all ESXi-SSL-Certificates, which is in default-setup set to „localhost“ (to be overwritten when connecting to the vCenter so this is seemed to be no issue) – not accepted, CN has to be set to <server-fqdn>. Solution plink.exe „plink.exe“ from the Putty-Suite allows to be called from PowerShell in automated fashion without interactive Password-Prompt. (In May 2021 there seemsRead More →

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Business Case My QNAP-NAS (TS-431X2) is slow this must not be QNAPs fault, maybe the drives (4 disks, RAID5, between 147..167 MB/second for sequential read) are the root cause adding a SSD-Cache didn’t improve performance when I had a 3-disk RAID 5 many people around the world are troubleshooting this without success so I decided to use the QNAP-NAS as a Virtual-Tape-Library for Backup-Purposes etc use my ESXi-Host as Storage-Server „Storage Server“ VM I regularily use „Nested ESXi“-Hosts for Lab Environments which should access the storage, so I decided to first give NFS a try – ESXi has no built in NFS-Server, so a smallRead More →

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Background: Python-Requests wants to verify https-certificates, which makes sense to me. – but my VCenter uses a self-signed Certificate Don’t think about ignoring certificate errors 😉 Prerequisites Download the certificate from the VCenter: Install the certificate: Now Python.requests validates the vCenter: Add the Export to ~/.bashrc at the end of the fileRead More →

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Routers with more than three interfaces? Not that uncommon! It might be handy, if several devices are needed with more than three interfaces, to: not: deploy the devices with three interfaces first add the needed number of interfaces to the routers attache tne new interfaces to the correct vSphere-Portgroup but instead: create an OVA-Template with the correct number of interfaces (one time) deploy the routers and attach them during deployment to their portgroup So using vNIC Hot-Add might be not the favourite way to work. Common OVF Tool COT lets you to deploy Cisco CSR1000v routers by easy to use (linux-)commands. (Common OVF Tool (COT)Read More →

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My apprehension – a weird nightmare of having to shutdown the router, add the nic and boot the router again – proved wrong. vNIC Hot-Add is supported for VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer and KVM Not for Hyper-V, Azure, AWS today. Cisco: Virtual Machine Requirements …up to 10 vNICs for ESXi btw. Starting with three default-interfaces select the VM go to „Edit Settings“ Next, Next, Finish be patient …Hot-Remove is supported only using a special „two-step“ strategyRead More →