VSphere

Configuring ESXi for iSCSI Storage Using PowerCLI

Configuring host VMKernel adapters for iSCSI can be a time consuming process. PowerCLI can take away a lot if not all of the effort. Below is an example of using PowerCLI to create a Standard Virtual Switch (vSS), configure a VMKernel adapter, set the VLAN, enable the software iSCSI adapter (if that’s what you are using), bind it to the required network adapter and finally, add a dynamic Discovery target and rescanning the HBA’s.

Monday, August 10, 2020 | 4 minutes Read

Centos Based Certificate Authority For The VMware Lab

A useful thing for a home lab or VMware lab, is a certificate authority. There are Windows based CA’s as well as Linux based and many others. I wanted to take the Linux based route for my home lab to give me some administration time in Linux, being that Windows is my safe place! After a bit of googling, I settled on Easy-RSA as it looked like it would do what I needed in the lab. There are already a few guides out there for this, but this is my take on it for use in my VMware home lab.

Monday, July 27, 2020 | 7 minutes Read

Configuring Encrypted vMotion With PowerCLI

Encrypted vMotion is a feature available in vSphere 6.5 onwards. It is something that is always used to secure vMotions of encrypted virtual machines, its a required option, but is optional for non encrypted virtual machines. By default, non encrypted virtual machines will be set to ‘opportunistic’. If both the source and destination hosts support it (so ESXi 6.5 onwards), vMotions will be encrypted. If the source or destination does not support it, then the vMotion traffic will not be encrypted.

Thursday, July 9, 2020 | 2 minutes Read

Creating Virtual Distributed Port Groups Using PowerCLI

I recently needed to create a new Distributed Port Group and set a specific load balancing policy on an existing Distributed Switch. Nothing to exciting, but a task many have to complete. As this is a common repeatable task, i put together this short .ps1 to allow a repeatable way of completing this. You can find the file here on GitHub Just populate the Variables section with required information like so…

Monday, June 29, 2020 | 2 minutes Read

vCenter Tag Administration Permissions

The use of VMware tags recently became a requirement for some of my colleagues in an environment that was inherited. They were faced with being unable to create Tags & Tag Categories or Assign and Delete them, despite ‘having admin rights’. Upon investigation it became apparent that while the admins had been granted the Administrators Role at the vCenter Object Level, they had had not been granted sufficient rights at the Global Permissions Level, or any rights for that matter.

vSphere

Friday, June 19, 2020 | 3 minutes Read

vSphere 7 / VCF4.0 HOLs now available

Want to get hands on with vSphere 7 and VMware Cloud Foundation 4.0 (VCF4) but don’t have a either access to it or a HomeLab to install it? VMware have announced the availability of both HOLs! Check out the link below to find out more and the links to these labs. https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2020/06/announcing-the-vsphere-7-hands-on-labs.html? These are a great way to gain experience with VMware products. Check it out!

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 | 1 minute Read

Adding an Identity Source (LDAP) - Username Format Error

I recently needed to validate some permissions using LDAP as an identity source. I hadn’t actually had a need to add an identity source to my Lab until now, so I set about adding my lab domain as a source, but hit the following error when trying to add it. Check the network settings and make sure you have a network access to the identity source To start, I looked at connectivity, firewall rules, DNS forward and reverse lookup zones but still had the issue. It was none of these…

vSphere

Tuesday, June 16, 2020 | 1 minute Read

Deploying Custom Virtual Standard Switches for Management

I have been rebuilding my lab hosts a lot lately! Once because I fiddled too much with my vSAN cluster and killed it… Another more interesting occasion being the release of VCF 4.0 on VMUG and beginning the deployment of this! I prefer to use Standard vSwitches for my management network in my labs and needed a quick and easy way to get the hosts back online with minimal effort. One thing I don’t like is seeing vSwitch0… I prefer seeing useful and descriptive naming, like I’m sure many others do!

Thursday, June 11, 2020 | 2 minutes Read

Home Lab - Equipment and Software: Part 1

Thanks for coming back! If you missed the first post in my Home Lab series you can find it here. In this post I will begin drilling into the equipment and software that makes up my Home Lab and my reasoning for these choices. I’m going to skip the original Raspberry Pi, there are enough blogs covering the use cases for them and begin at the first significant device; my MacBook Pro (late 2013). I wanted something mobile to start with so I could take it to work, use it on commutes to other offices etc. The MacBook came with an Intel i7 2.3Ghz Quad core chip, 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD. This wasn’t going to be able to run everything, but its enough to run what I need when I’m away from home.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020 | 3 minutes Read

Downgrading VM Hardware Version

Having to downgrade a VM’s hardware version or compatibility level is something that comes up now and again. There are many reasons you may need to do this; being it moving a VM to an environment with an older version of vSphere, or having issues following a planned upgrade that you now no longer have a snapshot for. There are 3 VMware supported ways to downgrade which you can find in this VMware KB - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1028019

vSphere

Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 4 minutes Read