VMware 4 - Mike Tabor

VMware releases patch for glibc vulnerability on ESXi 5.5
February 23, 2016February 25, 2016 VMware
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You may remember not to long ago, the GHOST vulnerability found in glibc, a GNU C library. Well a new glibc vulnerability (CVE-2015-7547) has been discovered and it affects VMware ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 in addition to all versions of VMware virtual appliances running Linux such as vCenter, Orchestrator, vRealize, etc.

VMware has just released patch ESXi550-201602401-SG for ESXi 5.5 and ESXi600-201602401-SG for ESXi 6.0 which fixes the glibc vulnerability, ~~a patch for ESXi 6.0 has yet to be released~~. VMware has however posted workarounds for affected virtual appliances.

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HTML5 Embedded Host Client, this looks promising
February 18, 2016February 17, 2016 VMware
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It’s no secret many people have really disliked the vSphere web client, it’s very sluggish, clunky, and based on flash (flash comes with it’s own security issues). It was rumored and highly hoped that vSphere 6 might be re-written in HTML5, but sadly this didn’t and hasn’t happened yet. While vSphere 6 did improve a bit on the web client the issues many people have had with it in the past still remain today.

Enter the VMware HTML5 Embedded Host Client fling. I’ve been using and following this fling for a while now and have really enjoyed it and with each release it keeps getting better and better.

The Embedded Host Client fling is based on HTML5 which allows it works great across all kinds of platforms, it’s fast, responsive, and doesn’t require any plug-ins – YES the VM console works great. If this happens to be a look of what’s to come in a new VMware vSphere web client, then a client is looking very promising!

If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. It’s extremely easy to install and doesn’t even require a reboot just follow these simple instructions.

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Power off an unresponsive VM using ESXTOP
February 2, 2016February 3, 2016 VMware
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Just recently we have some hardware issues in our primary datacenter and during that time had a few VM’s that became unresponsive and needed to get them back online. The VM’s had stopped responding to the normal vSphere commands to reboot, shutdown or even restart. I didn’t want to power cycle the entire ESXi host and instead just power off an unresponsive VM.

Here is a quick and easy way to do just that using ESXTOP.

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vCenter server service won’t start after upgrading 5.5 to Update 3b
January 5, 2016 VMware
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Just a quick heads up! Over the last week I’ve been upgrading our vCenter servers from version 5.5 to the most recent 5.5 Update 3b version and have ran into a small hiccup.

The upgrade of SSO, Web Client, Inventory Service and even vCenter server all went as expected without any issues. Then I rebooted the vCenter server and after the reboot noticed that the vCenter server service hadn’t started and when I tried to start it manually I then received the following error:

Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

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Another CBT bug found in VMware ESXi 6.0
November 12, 2015November 29, 2015 VMware
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VMware just published KB 2136854 regarding a new bug found in ESXi 6.0 that causes virtual machine backups, which use Changed Block Tracking (CBT), to be inconsistent. VMware says the cause of the issue is this:

This issue occurs due to an issue with CBT in the disklib area, this causes the change tracking information of I/Os that occur during snapshot consolidation to be lost. The main backup payload data is never lost and it is always written to the backend device. However, the corresponding change tracking information entries which occur during the consolidation task are missed. Subsequent QueryDiskChangedAreas() calls do not include these missed blocks, hence a backup based on this CBT data is inconsistent.

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How to unlock vRealize Orchestrator default account
September 24, 2015September 24, 2015 VMware
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Earlier this month I posted how on how to fix the weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key issue in VMware vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.2 appliance. Another issue I’ve ran into is how to unlock vRealize Orchestrator default account. It seems you can lock the account after to many failed attempts but once locked the account does not seem to unlock… or at least for me after waiting more than a couple hours.

Luckily unlocking the vRealize Orchestrator default account is pretty straight forward.

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VMware vSphere 6.0 Update 1 available
September 16, 2015 VMware
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VMware has released vSphere 6.0 Update 1, ESXi 6.0 U1 and updates for several other VMware products:
- VMware vCenter Server 6.0 Update 1 Release notes / Download
- VMware ESXi 6.0 U1 Release notes / Download
- VMware Data Protection 6.1 Update 1 Release notes / Download
- VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 Release notes / Download
- VMware vCloud Director 8.0 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Automation 6.2.3 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.1.0 Release notes / Download
- VMware vRealize Orchestrator Appliance 6.0.3 Release notes / Download
- VMware vSphere Data Protection 6.1 Release notes / Download
- VMware vSphere Replication 6.1 Release notes / Download
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How to fix vRealize Orchestrator 6 appliance, weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key
September 9, 2015September 11, 2015 VMware
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I’ve recently deployed the vRealize Orchestrator appliance (6.0.2) and noticed right away that my default browser Firefox, would not load the Orchestrator appliance web panel. Firefox always complained about a weak Diffie-Hellman key.

“An error occurred during a connection to ip-address:8281. SSL received a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key in Server Key Exchange handshake message. (Error code: ssl_error_weak_server_ephemeral_dh_key)”

At the time I simply ignored it and just tried Google Chrome which it worked fine. That was until the latest release also broke with the same type of error message:

“Server has a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public key“.

I now had a problem and contacted VMware support, below is the very easy fix to make vCO 6 work in both the latest version of Firefox and Chrome!

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VMware Workstation 12 Pro Released
August 27, 2015October 13, 2015 VMware
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VMware has just released a new version of Workstation in VMware Workstation 12 Pro. Workstation 12 Pro provides full support for Windows 10, including features such as Cortana and universal applications. As well as even larger virtual machines with up to 16 vCPU’s and 64GB of memory. Workstation 12 Pro even supports 4K displays and DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3

You can even seamlessly drag and drop virtual machines between your PC and your internal cloud running vSphere, ESXi or another instance of Workstation. In addition, easily connect to vCloud Air and upload, run, and view virtual machines right from the Workstation 12 Pro interface.

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How to upgrade vCenter server appliance
August 4, 2015 VMware
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Prior to VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.x, upgrading or patching vCSA was as simple as a few button clicks in the appliance UI. Gone are those days, as VMware has replaced the appliance UI with a DCUI and the web based install wizard during setup.

The good news is, upgrading or patching the vCSA 6.x is still pretty simple via the command line!

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