VMworld Europe 2014 – Day 3 round up

Well I was planning on posting this on Thursday night, but after the flight back to Gatwick, the drive home and the unpacking, I was just too knackered to sit in front of my laptop and write a blog entry...... yesterday I got bogged down with sorting out some stuff for work which means I'm posting this update … Continue reading VMworld Europe 2014 – Day 3 round up

Shellshock Vulnerability

So last week it was reported that a serious vulnerability was discovered in Bash (Bourne-Again SHell) which is pretty much core to a lot of Linux/Unix OSes - including Apple's MacOS. The bug, dubbed Shellshock, is supposed to be more serious than the previous OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability that was discovered earlier this year. It allows … Continue reading Shellshock Vulnerability

vSphere and vCenter Server 5.5 update 2 released

.... so instead of giving us all vSphere/vCenter Server 6.0, we're treated to another update of 5.5...... =( https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-vcenter-server-55u2-release-notes.html https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-esxi-55u2-release-notes.html Anyways, the new update now supports hosts with up to 6TB of RAM.... yes, that's 6 terabytes!!! (I'll be interested to find out if any of my clients will take advantage of this!!) vCenter Server … Continue reading vSphere and vCenter Server 5.5 update 2 released

Has your root password for your vCenter Server Appliance expired? No problems, check out this KB!!

So it slipped my mind that the root/admin passwords for the vCenter Server Appliance expires after 90 days by default..... and when I tried to access the admin webpage today in my demo environment so that I could update the appliance, I couldn't log in...... dammit.....!Surprisingly this must be a really common issue with customers … Continue reading Has your root password for your vCenter Server Appliance expired? No problems, check out this KB!!

vSphere Patch released to resolve APD errors

Finally VMware have patched the problem with the previous vSphere update that ended up causing All Paths Down errors with NFS storage which I blogged about here: https://thevirtualunknown.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/intermittent-nfs-all-paths-down-on-esxi-5-5-u1-upgrade/ ESXi 5.5 Express Patch 04 has resolved this issue and so any customers with NFS storage should be able to safely patch their VMware environment to resolve the … Continue reading vSphere Patch released to resolve APD errors

Resolving OpenSSL Heartbleed for ESXi 5.5

Following on from my previous blog I realised that I didn't actually put up the KB to explain how to patch ESXi 5.5 to combat the Heartbleed vulnerability. Detailed instructions on the patches required and how to re-mint the Open SSL certs can be found on the following KB: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2076665

Thick Provisioned virtual disks – Eager or Lazy?

It's been a while since I posted anything, and that's just mainly down to how busy I've been since the turn of the new year!!I guess it's good to be busy as it occupies the mind! =)Although really busy, the MTI TAMs still managed to fly over to Cork to visit EMC's factory..... it was … Continue reading Thick Provisioned virtual disks – Eager or Lazy?

Site Recovery Manager SSL error

Recently had to regenerate the SSL certificates on my vCenter Server Appliance as I had noticed they were originally created with localhost.localdom as the DNS name. Quite easy to regenerate the SSL certs, just log onto the admin page of the vCSA (http://ip-address:5480) and log in as root. Click on the Admin tab and by Certificate regeneration … Continue reading Site Recovery Manager SSL error

Getting Network Adapter information using PowerCLI

So recently I was asked for a list of MAC addresses for all the VMs in my demo environment... Didn't really want to do this manually by going into each VM and checking the hardware settings, so thought I'd see if I can find some PowerCLI commands that will do the job...... After a short … Continue reading Getting Network Adapter information using PowerCLI

VMware vSphere 5.5 launched

Typical Sod's law..... I've been eagerly waiting to get my hands on vSphere 5.5 ever since VMworld 2013 US - unfortunately I'm not one of the lucky ones who had Beta access or pre-launch access (like some of the more renown VMware bloggers) - and the week that I decide to head off on holiday to … Continue reading VMware vSphere 5.5 launched