VMware Octopus wallpaper

VMware

VMware Octopus desktop background

Duncan over at Yellow Bricks was nice enough to share this VMware Octopus wallpaper. Of the VMware wallpaper I have this one is my favorite for some reason.

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How to easily add an ESXi SSH login message banner

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ESXi issues message

Preparing for some upcoming audits, I noticed one of the checkpoints was to ensure each ESXi host was configured with a warning banner stating the machine is being monitored and audited when someone logs into the ESXi host via SSH. This type of message is something you see on most any company or government computer before you login.

There are two message types that can be used to achieve this, the first being login banner (/etc/issue) and MOTD (/etc/motd). The difference between the two are where they are shown. The login banner is shown between the username and password inputs during login, while the MOTD is displayed after a user has successfully logged into SSH.

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Improve Linux VM IO performance by disabling IO Scheduler

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For a little while now we’ve been seeing RedHat Linux virtual machines performing poorly. Tasks would take considerably longer on the Linux VM’s then other Windows VM’s. After digging around I eventually found that RedHat has it’s own IO scheduler that runs in the background. On a physical box this wouldn’t be a big deal, but as a virtual machine everything is already being processed by VMware hypervisor. The fix, disable the IO Scheduler!

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Increase incremental backup speed by enabling CBT

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In a recent VMware environment I was working in, we noticed that our incremental backups was taking a long time (like up to 7-8 hours) to complete. After digging around it was found that VMware actually has a feature built-in since version 4 called Change Block Tracking (CBT). CBT will track any blocks that were changed since the last backup and tag them and stores the information in a -CTK file. The obvious benefit is that now the third party software only backs up the changed block and not the entire VM each time, reducing the amount of data being backed thus speeding up backups and even lowers the CPU utilization on the VM host.

CBT is disabled by default though there are some backup tools that will enable it automatically or you can enable it manually which can easily be done following these steps:

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Edit Virtual Hardware 10 VM’s with vSphere 5.5 U2 client

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When ESXi 5.5 came out so did a new virtual hardware version, 10, as well. However the ability to edit virtual machines have have been upgraded to virtual hardware 10 was restricted to only the vSphere web client. In some cases people have put off upgrading to virtual hardware 10 either for dislike of the web client or knowing you cannot edit the VM in the event of the web client being down.

That all changes today, VMware has just released vCenter 5.5 Update 2 today and one of the “resolved issues” in today’s release notes is the ability to now edit virtual machines with Virtual Hardware 10 using the vSphere thick (C#) client.

edit virtual hardware 10

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Upgrade VCSA 6.5 to VCSA 6.7 Update 1

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VMware vCenter 6.7 U1 has recently been released. Last week I posted how to upgrade VCSA 6.7 to 6.7 Update 1, this post will walk you though upgrading VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 to VCSA 6.7 Update 1!

When doing a VCSA version upgrade the upgrade process is much different, than going from say 6.7 to 6.7 U1. When going from 6.5 to 6.7 the upgrade is actually broken up into two stages.

The first stage involves deploying a brand new vCenter 6.7 appliance. Then the second stage will copy the data from your 6.5 VCSA into the newly deployed 6.7 VCSA from stage 1.

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VMware Workstation 12.5.5 released, fixes Pwn2Own exploits

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VMware Workstation 12.5

VMware has just released Workstation 12.5.5 which includes bug fixes as well as fixes for several vulnerabilities found in this years Pwn2Own contest, which two hacking teams, 360 Security (@mj011sec) and Team Sniper was able to successfully complete a virtual machine escape.

While these are serious exploits, VMware has said they are not aware of any active exploitation of the vulnerabilities that has now been fixed in 12.5.5.

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