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6.5

VMware ESXi 6.5 - IO Devices not certified for upgrade

vmware-hcl-65Beside Server Hardware, also double check if your IO Devices (eg. NIC, HBA,..) are supported when updating ESXi hosts from VMware vSphere 6.0 to 6.5. The following devices were supported in vSphere 6.0 but are according to VMwares HCL not (yet) supported in vSphere 6.5.

  • Not supported does not say that it does not work.
  • The list has been created with the help of my IO-Devices HCL in JSON Format.
  • Did I miss something? Please comment.

Read More »VMware ESXi 6.5 - IO Devices not certified for upgrade

Script to add vSphere 6.5 VMCA Root Certificate to Trusted Certs Store

When running vSphere 6.5 deployments in default (recommended) mode, VMware Certificate Authority is its own root certificate authority. Everything fine and secure with this configuration, but your browser displays a warning because the root certificate is not trusted.
there-is-a-problem-with-this-security-certificate

I made a little script (VBS) that pulls the CA certificate from a vCenter Server or Platform Services Controller and adds it to the local trusted root certificates store. When the root CA is trusted, browser warnings are gone.

Read More »Script to add vSphere 6.5 VMCA Root Certificate to Trusted Certs Store

Homelab: Downsizing vCenter Server Appliance 6.5

In vSphere 6.5 the smallest supported memory configuration for the vCenter Server Appliance has been raised from 8GB to 10GB. The smallest "Tiny" deployment size allows up to 10 ESXi Hosts and 100 Virtual Machines. Resources in Homelabs are limited and you might want to lower the memory consumption of the vCenter Servcer Appliance. This article explains how to lower the resource consumption to be able to lower the memory to about 6GB without noticable impacts.

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How to add AD Authentication in vCenter 6.5/6.7

The vCenter Server has an internal user database that allows you to add and manage users with the vSphere Web Client. Users management and Single Sign-On is provided by the Platform Service Controller which is available since vSphere 6.0. In a large environment, you might want to connect your virtualization infrastructure to a centrally manage Active Directory.

This article explains how to add AD authentication in vSphere 6.5 and how to get the "Use Windows session authentication" checkbox to work with the enhanced authentication plugin. This works for both, the vCenter Server 6.5 installed on a Windows Server and the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA).

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How to Join the vCSA 6.5/6.7 to an Active Directory Domain

In vSphere 6.5 the underlying operating system from the vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) has been changed to VMwares PhotonOS. With the new OS, you can still join an Active Directory domain to comply with company policies, or if you want to use windows session authentication. Joining an Active Directory domain is included in the infrastructure node configuration which is part of the Platform Services Controller. Please verify standard AD requirements like time synchronization and naming prior to joining a domain.

If you want to log in with the "Windows session authentication" checkbox, you have to add the appliance running the Platform Services Controller (PSC) to the domain. For embedded deployments, join the appliance running both, the vCenter and the PSC to the domain.

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The Physical block size reported by the device is not supported

Since my ESXi hosts are upgraded to VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5, the vmkernel.log is constantly spammed with warnings reporting that the physical block size from my LUNs, provided by a FreeNAS storage, have an unsupported block size.

WARNING: ScsiPath: 4394: The Physical block size "131072" reported by the path vmhba64:C0:T4:L0 is not supported. The only supported physical blocksizes are 512 and 4096
WARNING: ScsiDeviceIO: 6462: The Physical block size "131072" reported by the device naa.6589cfc0000000572b71f35019e9c31f is not supported. The only supported physical blocksizes are 512 and 4096

I'm using FreeNAS-9.10.2 with iSCSI LUNs backed by a ZFS volume. The physical blocksize is reported as the ZFS recordsize which is 128K by default.Read More »The Physical block size reported by the device is not supported

ESXi 6.5 - ESXCLI Command Mindmap

esxcli-splashIn vSphere 6.5 the command line interface esxcli has a new namespaces and 93 new commands. Esxcli is a complete set of commands that you can use for troubleshooting, configuration or kickstart files. I have created and printed a mindmap to navigate through the namespaces more quickly. This post covers only basic namespaces, available on all ESXi 6.5 hosts. If you've installed additional software you might see more namespaces. I've also created mindmaps for ESXi 5, ESXi 5.5 and ESXi 6.0.

ESXCLI in version 6.5 has 16 namespaces:Read More »ESXi 6.5 - ESXCLI Command Mindmap