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Howto: vCenter 5.1 SSO with trusted Active Directory

There are a lot of pitfalls when you want to deploy or update to VMware vSphere 5.1. Beside the vSphere Web Client, the most discussed new component is the new authentication engine called Single Sign On (SSO) which is mandatory for the vCenter Server. I've already written about a simple deployment scenario where a vCenter Server (Appliance or Installable) can be authenticated against a single Active Directory domain. In this post i am going to explain the changes and straits when using multiple trusted Active Directory Domains.

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Howto: SSO - Simple AD Authentication with VMware 5.1

With vSphere 5.1 a new component called Single-Sign-On (SSO) has been introduced. The new SSO service is mandatory since 5.1. There is no way around, you have to use it. The good thing about it is that it has various authentication options and can be deployed in an redundant fashion. Unfortunately it adds a lot of complexity to your configuration but if you understand all of it's components and functions, you won't  miss it.

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How to Setup Port Forwarding in VMware Workstation 9

This small walkthrough explains how to configure a port forwarding in VMware Workstation 9. The same procedure should also work for VMware Workstation 8, 7 and 6.

Why do you need port forwarding in VMware Workstation? The main purpose is to make virtual machines available on the network. You could simply use bridged networking, but sometimes NAT fits better to your requirements. If you want your virtual machine to be available no matter what network you are connected to or if you are limited in IP addresses you might have a valid use case for using NAT and thus port forwarding. Read More »How to Setup Port Forwarding in VMware Workstation 9

Migrate E1000 Adapter to vmxnet3 with Linux Virtual Machines

When you select Debian or Ubuntu as Operating System during the creation of virtual machines the wizard automatically selects E1000 as virtual network adapter. To get better network performance it is a best practice to change this to vmxnet3. But what if the virtual machine is already installed and running? The Adapter Type is grayed out, even when the virtual machine is powered off. How to change the Adapter Type later?Read More »Migrate E1000 Adapter to vmxnet3 with Linux Virtual Machines

Free Active Directory for your VMware Lab using Samba 4 (UCS 3.1)

Are you looking for a free alternative for a Windows based Active Directory controller? The recently published version 4 allows Samba to be an Active Directory domain controller, participating fully in a Windows Active Directory Domain. This is a great replacement for a Windows based AD Controller if you want to use Active Directory features in your Lab.

With the new release of the Univention Corporate Server 3.1 (UCS) you can deploy your Samba 4 Controller in a few minutes. The quickest way is to use the preinstalled VMware Images.Read More »Free Active Directory for your VMware Lab using Samba 4 (UCS 3.1)

vSphere Health Check Report with ESXi 5.x (Minimum Permissions)

If you are using VMware vSphere Health Check Report v5.0.2 by William Lam in your environment you might get incomplete reports after upgrading to vSphere 5.x. This applies only when you use the script with minimal privileges set. The report is broken (missing VM and Host information) and running the script with --debug 1 throws an error message.Read More »vSphere Health Check Report with ESXi 5.x (Minimum Permissions)

VMware Support Upload Script

Tired from uploading VMware Support logs to VMware tickets i wanted to do this job with just one click. I wrote a script which can be used to upload files to VMwares FTP server quite fast. The script uses the FTPupload howto from KB1008525. Please open a ticket with VMware prior to start this script, to get a support request number. You need the ticketnumber to run the script.Read More »VMware Support Upload Script

ESXi: Change vmnic / vmhba numbering

If you change your hardware configuration without reinstalling your hypervisor you might run into an issue with the nic or hba port numbering. The ESXi host writes the PCI bus to vmnic mapping to a special configuration file. If you change the pci slot from your dual port nic for example you end up with 2 new vmnics.

The configuration file is located at /etc/vmware/esx.conf

Change vmnic numberingRead More »ESXi: Change vmnic / vmhba numbering