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SSH

Deploy NSX-T Edge VM SSH Keys with Ansible

While working with NSX-T, there are many reasons to access edge appliances using SSH. Most troubleshooting options are only available using nsxcli on the appliance itself. During the deployment, each appliance has 3 user account: root, admin, and audit. Alle Accounts are configured with password-based authentication. In a previous article, I've already described how to deploy SSH Keys using nsxcli, which allows a secure and comfortable authentication method. In this article, I'm explaining how to use ansible to deploy SSH public keys to NSX-T Edges. This option allows you to easily manage keys on a large platform.

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VCSA6 Bash and SSH Key Authentication

The Linux Version of the vCenter Server is not new anymore but with vSphere 6.0 the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has overtaken the Windows Version in many aspects. The completely rewritten linked mode removes the need for a Windows-based vCenter and the scalability of both appliances are identical.

VCSA6 is delivered as appliance based on openSUSE. Nevertheless its a Linux, VMware want's you to use the GUI. Unless you are in a testing environment I would highly recommend to limit shell usage to the following usage scenarios:

  • During Service Requests under advice of VMware GSS
  • For advanced troubleshooting
  • When required for complex deployments (eg. PSC 6.0 High Availability)

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ESXi 5 Network Troubleshooting Commands

Check if a remote host is online and reachable.

~ # ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=13.701 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=10.176 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=9.055 ms

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 9.055/10.977/13.701 ms

Ping from a specific VMkernel adapter.

~ # ping -I vmk1 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=9.991 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=9.270 ms

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Identify Virtual Machine Locks & Find ESXi Hosts by its MAC Address

I recently had an issues where a virtual machine crashed. VM Monitoring (VM HA) tried to restart it, but did not succeed. The virtual machine was greyed out in the inventory and could not be started because it was locked. Unfortunately, it was not possible to identify which ESXi host holds the lock. This post explains how to quickly identify which server is blocking the Virtual Machine.

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