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Upgrading vSphere Web Client due to Fix Security Issue CVE-2015-2342 5.5u3b

December 13, 2016 Bilal Ahmed 0

These are the steps I took to apply this fix: First thing I did is I took a Veeam backup of the VM, then I copied over the files as downloaded from: Additional patch for security issue CVE-2015-2342 for vCenter Server 5.x on Windows (2144428) I did a md5 check Opened Command Prompt as administrator, and navigated to the folder where I had extracted the script and ran: cscript JMXScript5.<x>.vbs “<location_of_wrapper.conf_file>” cscript JMXScript5.5.vbs “C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vShereWebClient\server\bin\service\conf\wrapper.conf” Since I was running 5.5u3b, I already had a partial fix so it was just a matter of running the script to fully patch it. The script stops the web service, does it business and restarts the web service again. This takes about a minute or so. The […]

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Configuring/Creating Custom Site Recovery Manager 5.8.1 (SRM) Alarms

December 6, 2016 Bilal Ahmed 0

Configuring the alarms isn’t all that easy and not documented that well. In the vExpert slack I was chatting to @railroadmanuk Tim as he was trying to configure up some alarms, and this is something I have been meaning to dig into more myself. He started me off in the right direction telling me he configures them from the vCenter server alerts. So, vCenter Server > Manage > Alarm Definitions and from here you create a new alarm. I needed to create an alarm for when a new VM is put onto a replicated datastore and an alarm when a currently protected VM has been configured in a way, which would impact its protection status (eg new VMDK on a non replicated datastore […]

Testing vSphere 6.5 DRS – CPU Over Commitment Ratio

November 17, 2016 Kim Bottu 2

The CPU over-commitment ratio also known as the vCPU to pCPU ratio. In this post I will test this new feature of vSphere 6.5 and how it impacts a vSphere 6.5 datacenter design. I am testing this because some of the information about this setting is kind of vague and I want to be sure that I understand how it works and what its impact is on production environments and how it will affect vSphere designs. To be able to test the above mentioned features I have setup a small test environment using 2 nested ESXi hosts, a nested VCSA 6.5 server and a handful of VM’s. The Cluster: 2 hosts HA is disabled DRS is enabled ( because this is a DRS feature!) The hosts: Both hosts have the […]

Emad Younis & Adam Eckerle – The vCenter server and Platform Services Controller Guide to the Galaxy

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

If you have questions about the deployment of or migration to the VCSA no matter what version, Emad and Adam are probably the guys you want to have a conversation with and the session called ‘The vCenter server and Platform Services Controller Guide to the Galaxy’ should be the first session you should check out at VMworld Barcelona. The right question to ask yourself here is: why would you want to stay with the Windows Server  hosted vCenter server? Because you are used to it and everyone in your department can support it? Because the database administrators know perfectly well how to support Oracle or MSSQL databases but no Postgres? Because the Windows vCenter server historically has supported more features and has […]

Guido Appenzeller – NSX the network bridge to the Multi-Cloud future

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

This presentation was actually co-hosted by Guido Appenzeller, the CTO for the NSBU and Scott Lowe who hardly needs any introduction anymore. In this session they elaborated further on how NSX will bridge clouds together and gave live demonstrations on how it all works! Note: I scheduled this session without actually knowing what to expect. Often these kind of sessions tend to be loaded with marketing talk which doesn’t interest me in the least. However this session in reality was a true gem. The guiding principles The guiding principles for a multi cloud network are that software really has to be independent from the hardware, the software had to evolve to a new model and some form of cloud networking is needed of course. Let’s […]

VMworld Barcelona 2016 – General Session Tuesday!

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

At the keynote today Pat Gelsinger emphasized how IT is transforming to cloud adoption. How traditional business is changing to a digital business model if it hasn’t already transformed to a digital business model only. In any case together we will face forward and drive the digital business forward as well . At the moment about 20% of the current businesses are leading the digital transformation while about 80% of businesses are lagging. Where leaders write the rules, laggers tend to still try to optimize the process. What is happening today is that we are grooming the industrial business age into a digital business for everyone. Cloud has come a long way. In 2006 AWS was launched and cloud computing […]

What is new for Photon 1.1?

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

VMware has big plans for its version of Cloud Native Applications. One of the important parts of this solution is of course the Photon platform which is a container solution platform comprised out of a suite of products: Photon Controller which is build on the Photon OS ESXi Network Virtualization (NSX) Distributed Storage (VSAN) Photon has been purposely build to give the developers and the infrastructure guys at the same time what they both require. A developers usually wants the newest of the newest when he wants it while the operators want to keep everything as secure as possible and manageable.  Multi-tenancy: The Photon platform is a true multi-tenant solution. The security of the platform is managed through Lightwave. The Photon ticketing system Properly distributing resources among tenants is mandatory […]

What is new in vSphere 6.5 Security?

October 18, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

Data security and data privacy are still becoming more and more important. On the flip side of trying to tighten the security layer is that security is becoming vastly harder to manage. VMware’s vision about security is that it has to be easy to manage. This of course applies to traditional applications  as well as cloud native apps, such as VMware’s Photon. Of course in both cases it is mandatory that the infrastructure hosting data, the data itself and the access to data would be always as secure as possible.  vSphere 6.5 Enhanced Logging For years we have been having issues getting the right logs for auditing out of vCenter and ESXi server logs. For example today, vSphere 5.x and vSphere 6.x […]