VMware : Using Ansible to update VMware vSphere

In any environment, small or large, it’s always considered best practices to keep a platform up to date especially with all the CVE we have seen recently.

With Update Manager or Lifecycle Manager, ESXi patches shouldn’t be that painful. But planning to patch your environment composed of many hosts, on different vSphere Clusters and vCenters may be a challenge for a sysadmin.

Ansible has by default a lot of VMware modules that can help to automate VMware vSphere tasks and

VMware : Tip of the Week #2

Correctly identifying an issue is the most critical step in troubleshooting.. Most of the time we are using either linux grep, sed, awk commands piped together, or find function in a text editor. VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics for vSphere is a new tool that can help you to log analysis and every vSphere administrator should use it.

This tool is designed to help you diagnose and detect issues using log bundles of your VMware platform (vCenter and ESXi Logs).

 You can

VMware : How to resolve a vSphere TPM error on VxRAIL

A TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is a computer chip/microcontroller that can securely store artifacts used to authenticate the platform and since version 6.7 vSphere support TPM 2.0.

If you have a host on you VxRAIL cluster with an alert in vCenter stating TPM 2.0 device detected, the steps below must be performed on each affected node to resolve this error (one at the time):

Before you start, place the host into Maintenance Mode in vCenter using Ensure Accessibilty.

In

VMware : How to factory reset a VxRail node

If you think your node is not running properly as it should be, or you simply need to move a node from one cluster to another,  it might be a good opportunity to perform a factory reset of your host.

Follow the directions below to perform a factory reset in VxRail node:

Enjoy! 

Nutanix : Files and VMware vRealize Automation integration

Nutanix Files is a native part of the Nutanix Enterprise portfolio and like any other Nutanix products, Files expose a REST API that can be used to automate many operations.

In the video below, we will cover how to extend many functionalities of Nutanix Files with both VMware vRealize Automation and vRealize Orchestrator in order to add a File as a Service in the vRA catalogue.

To do this, we integrate 3 platforms: Nutanix Files, vRealize Orchestrator, and the vRealize

VMware : 07 features that maybe you didn’t know about vSphere 7.0

There are more than one reason to plan vSphere 7 upgrade and a lot of features and capabilities with this new version.

Below are 7 features that you may didn’t know about vSphere 7.0

#1-VCSA-BACKUP:

VCSA backup status directly on the vCenter html5 client, which shows the last file-based backup and the health status of vcsa.

#2-vCenter Server profiles:

4 new API calls : List, Export, Validate and Import can be consumed with DCLI, PowerCLI, or other automation tools to

VMware : vSAN troubleshooting

You don’t need to be an expert to perform a basic vSAN troubleshooting and many problems could be easily resolved without the need to open a case. All you need is a good process.

Here is a simple procedure that might be useful when you find out you have a problem

First of all, you need to identify the problem, and ideally, you want to provide as much accurate information. For that, you need at least, to ask the following

VMware : vSAN architecture components

The main components of vSAN architecture are the following:

  • Cluster-Level Object Manager (CLOM)
  • Distributed Object Manager (DOM)
  • Log Structured Object Manager (LSOM)
  • Cluster Membership, Monitoring, and Directory Services (CMMDS)
  • Reliable Datagram Transport (RDT)

The vSAN cluster can be compared to a house building where each component has a specific role.

The CLOM process runs on every vSAN node:

              • validates that objects can be created based on policies and available resources.

VMware : Quick Tip – PowerCLI SSL connection could not be established

When trying to connect to a vCenter with PowerShell / Powercli  the following error might occur.

This error happens when your vCenter is using a certificate that’s not trusted by your device.

So you have 2 solutions, the first and the best one change your vCenter certificate to a trusted one.

The second but not the preferable, ignore invalid certificates and you can do this with the command below:

Set-PowerCLIConfiguration -InvalidCertificateAction Ignore -Confirm:$false

After this command, you will be able to connect to

VMware : VCDX journey – Thank you !!!!!

I was with family in Serbia enjoying time off, when I received this email from the VCDX team.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to receive anything that day, it was already 04 PM and I remembered receiving result in the morning on my 2 previous attempts, so I definitely didn’t expect that coming!! 

I had to read that mail a few times, just to be sure I was reading correctly and the name was mine. 
The journey wasn’t easy