VMworld 2019 – On-Demand Library Launch
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The On-Demand Library for this year’s VMworld in San Francisco is now live with all sessions available to stream. Simply visit the VMworld 2019 On-Demand Library and enjoy!
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North East England VMUG – 26th September 2019
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The next North East England VMUG will be taking place on Thursday 26th September at the Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle, and I’m excited to be presenting alongside so many fantastic individuals from throughout the vCommunity.
My session will be covering VMware NSX Data Centre for vSphere (NSX-V) and, more specifically, a real world look at micro-segmentation and the implementation of a zero-trust environment. NSX makes this fairly easy thanks to a number of built-in tools, and we’ll explore how we can use the NSX Application Rule Manager to visualise application dependencies in order to start fleshing-out our Distributed Firewall rules.
Continue reading → North East England VMUG – 26th September 2019
VMware vCenter Server Appliance – Reset Lost, Forgotten or Expired Root Password
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Patching my lab’s vCenter Server Appliance this evening raised an issue whereby the root password had expired. Unable to login via root, I can still administer the appliance via a vCenter’s SSO domain account (administrator@vsphere.local, for instance), however, attempts to perform any updates will not be possible until the appliance’s root account password is reset. This an easy exercise, however, this is not possible via vSphere UI or console, only bash.
Continue reading → VMware vCenter Server Appliance – Reset Lost, Forgotten or Expired Root Password
VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V) – Dynamic Routing via OSPF
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VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V) has been able to leverage dynamic routing via Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) for some time and, in this article, I detail the process of configuring OSPF on both an Edge Services Gateway (ESG) and a downstream Distributed Logical Router (DLR).
OSPF, a Link State Protocol and member of the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) family (which also includes Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS), and Enhanced Internal Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)), enables all participating routers to dynamically exchange network topology information to calculate the best shortest path (cost) of a route’s destination.
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VMware vExpert 2019 – Second-Half Applications Now Open
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Twice each year VMware’s vExpert program opens its doors to applications throughout the IT and tech community. That second door opened just recently on June 7th 2019. The vExpert community is a group of like-minded enthusiasts, bloggers, book authors, VMUG leaders, speakers, tool builders, and community leaders.
If you are already busy in the community and are contributing in some way, this will without doubt open doors for you, give you priority access to VMware information and, of course, there are the usual vExpert licensing benefits.This has opened a huge amount of doors for me over the past two years, and has been a key driver in forming a number of fantastic relationships and creating some amazing opportunities. In my eyes, the VMware community in general is the most amazing community out there. Full of amazing, knowledgeable people, so why not join in?
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Integrating VMware Horizon with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication Server
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For those already consuming Microsoft Office 365, then you will undoubtedly (to some level) be utilising Azure Active Directory. Azure AD comes with an array of tools, some of which aren’t confined to public cloud; some can even aid and strengthen your on-premises applications. One such tool is the Azure Multi-Factor Authentication Server, an on-premises 2-factor authentication mechanism which can integrate with on-prem VMware Horizon environments.
The Azure MFA Server enables us to further enhance the security of numerous applications capable of integrating with 2FA authentication, and VMware Horizon has been able to integrate with such solutions for some time. This additional level of security is a much sought after function which serves to further secure public access to internal desktop pools.
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VMware NSX-T Data Center Migration – Part 2 – NSX for vSphere (NSX-V) Preliminary Checks
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Welcome to the second article in the series detailing a migration of VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V) to NSX-T Data Center. In this article I focus on the preliminary checks to ensure the NSX-V environment is fit for migration.
In part 1 (VMware NSX-T Data Center Migration – Part 1 – Deploy Manager Appliance) I covered the process of deploying the NSX -T Data Center Manager Appliance, as well as a number of prerequisite tasks required to prepare the new NSX-T environment for the eventual migration (coming in part 3).
In this article I detail a number of preliminary checks within the NSX-V environment (including ESXi hosts, vSphere Distributed Switches, VXLAN configuration, VTEP, NSX Controllers, Edge Services Gateways, etc.) to ensure all is well prior to the migration process itself. Where any issues are identified, these must be resolved prior to the migration process.
VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.5 Released
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On 18th April 2019 we saw the release of VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere (NSX-V) 6.4.5. With this release we are afforded increased feature parity between the vSphere Client (HTML5) and the now-legacy vSphere Web Client (Flex), although be advised, there are still a number of unsupported functionality.
Continue reading → VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.5 Released
VMware NSX-T Data Center Migration – Part 1 – Deploy Manager Appliance
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Welcome to the first in a new series of articles detailing the migration process of VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere to NSX-T Data Center. The migration to NSX-T will be split into three steps:
- Part 1 (this article) – Deploy NSX -T Data Center Manager Appliance, and prepare this new NSX-T environment for the migration of NSX Data Center for vSphere by adding a Compute Manager, and creating an IP Pool for Edge Tunnel End Points (TEPs).
- Part 2 – Prepare NSX Data Center for vSphere for migration to NSX-T, including ESXi host, vSphere Distributed Switch, and NSX-V pre-flight checks (VXLAN, VTEP, Controllers, Edge Services Gateways).
- Part 3 – Migrate NSX Data Center for vSphere to NSX-T Data Center.
Note – In this article, the process of deploying the VMware NSX-T Data Center Manager Appliance can be considered the same as whether you are a) deploying into a greenfield environment void of any NSX, or b) migrating NSX Data Center for vSphere to NSX-T.
Continue reading → VMware NSX-T Data Center Migration – Part 1 – Deploy Manager Appliance
Networking and Security Extension Missing After VMware NSX Upgrade
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Following a recent upgrade of VMware NSX Data Centre for vSphere from 6.4.1 to 6.4.4, the option to access NSX’s Networking and Security extension from within the vSphere Client (HTML 5) had simply disappeared. This left me scratching my head a little, more so as I’ve completed this upgrade (what seems) a million times.
Scenario-wise, I had completed the initial NSX Manager upgrade, but after logging in to the vSphere Client, I noted the Networking and Security extension failed to display.
Continue reading → Networking and Security Extension Missing After VMware NSX Upgrade