VMware Configurations Maximum Tool URL

VMware has created a nice friendly URL - https://configmax.vmware.com to help you quickly look at the configuration maximums across a few of their product ; NSX Data Center for vSphere, vSphere, VMware NSX-T, vRealize Operations Manager and VMware Site Recovery Manager. I assume VMware will add more as time goes by.

As you can see from the screenshot I have selected vSphere as the product and the version is 6.7. Under All Maximum you can select which maximums you want to view. From my screenshot I have selected Virtual Machine Maximums and to the right of the screen you can see all the maximum related to virtual machines. You can select to display other maximums as well and click View Limits to have the data updated, use the collapse all button to help collapse all the section of  your selected configuration maximums . There is a button to export all maximums to pdf  which exports all the maximums and not just what you have filtered down for display on the screen. It would be good if that function was to export what you had currently displayed on screen.

Another great feature of this site is that you can compare limits of different versions of the product which you can access by selecting Compare Limits button at the top of the page. So for example I have again select vSphere as the product and the base version I wanted to compare is 6.0. On the right hand side of the screen I have selected to compare with vSphere 6.5 and 6.7. You can add as many version as you want that can be compared and hit the Compare button. 

A new screen is displayed with the details of the version of vSphere we selected to compare. Again there is a button to export this information to csv file.

As you can see this site can be useful for when you are designing or upgrading a new environment so that you know what the new maximums are. It is also useful when you are taking your VCP exam too.

vCenter Server Appliance root expiry changed from 365 to 90 days

When you deploy a new vSphere 6.7 vCenter Server Appliance the root password validity period by default is now 90 days. 

This has changed from vSphere 6.5 which was at 365 days. 

If you was doing an upgrade then the settings you have configured are carried over. Just remember that for new deployments the root password validation has changed from 365 to 90 days. 

There is no change to vSphere single sign on which is still set at 90 days.

Disabling Server Manager from startup at logon

One of the first things I do when I first logon to a 2016 server is always to disable server manager from loading at logon. Reason for me? annoying and not a tool I always need each time I log on to a server.

There are a couple of places you can disable this feature and I will walk through a few

To disable it for your current logged in user you would go to Manage > Server Manager Properties

Tick box Do not start Server Manager automatically at logon and click OK and this setting will apply for the currently logged in user.

Another GUI method would be to use group policy to apply the settings for all users that use the computer. On a workgroup server at the command prompt or at the run command type in gpedit.msc. This will load up the group policy editor for the server you are logged into. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Server Manager. Here you will find the setting Do not display Server Manager automatically at logon and its status by default is Not Configured.

Click on the setting and change the value to Enabled and click OK

If you do a gpupdate /force at a command prompt or restart the server then go back in to Server Manager then Manage > Server Manager Properties you will see that Do not start Server Manager automatically at logon is greyed out and the user is not allow to make any changes.

To apply the setting to a server that has joined a domain then you would most likely need to speak to the person/team that manages your group policies for your domain. Tell them the setting you are looking to change is at Computer Configuration >Policies >Administrative Templates > System > Server Manager and the setting Do not display Server Manager automatically at logon

The next method is to directly edit the settings via registry which makes it more scriptable if you are applying this setting to a workgroup server. Microsoft provides a spreadsheet where it details all the group policies settings that you can apply and where they exist in the registry. You can download the spreadsheet from here.

To disable server manager from starting up upon logon, the path in the registry is HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Server\ServerManager with the name of DoNotOpenAtLogon and DWORD value of 1. The command line to modify this would be:

Reg Add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Server\ServerManager /v DoNotOpenAtLogon /t DWORD /d 0x0 /f

The above command has the same effect as using the group policy editor but if you now launch the group policy editor you will notice that the setting is not reflected there. There are lots of talk around this on the web where when you apply the settings directly via registry you do not see the chamges reflected in group policy editor. I did find an article ( http://brandonpadgett.com/powershell/Local-gpo-powershell/) which explains why and the working around which I haven’t tested but the feedback seems good.

I found another location in the registry at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ServerManager\DoNotOpenServerManagerAtLogon which does the same thing, so what’s the difference with this setting? From my initial testing it seems like this setting is only applied to a new user profile that gets created on the server when they log on. If the user has already logged on before you made the changes then the settings will not be applied to that profile. By using this setting in the registry it seems to give the user a choice if they want to enable or disable server manager from startup during logon. If you used the other methods and you enable the setting then the user can not change it. This might be a better option for people as when a server admin logs on for the first time they will not get server manager loading but at least they can check the setting if they have a preference.

Running ESXi 6.7 on Ravello

As with my previous article I talked about deploying ESXi 6.0/6.5 onto the Ravello platform and it was pretty straight forward as you are provided with  a base template of an ESXi which you just add to your application canvas, attach the ISO and off you go.

With 6.7 on the Ravello platform you will most likely experience this Purple Screen Of Death if you try to just use the ESXi template. After many googling and looking around forums there was a solution !!

Now there are some caveats that I found if you wish to deploy ESXi 6.7 to one of your existing applications. If your application is not published to "US East 5" or US Southwest 1" then the method below will not work. You will need to create a new application to host your ESXi 6.7 host. It appears that only hardware that are hosted in "US East 5" and US Southwest 1" supports running ESXi 6.7.

So as with my previous article you would still use the ESXi template but we will make some modifications so that it will run on the platform.

• On the System tab of the VM change the Platform to default. Change the Display to Standard VGA and click on Save

• On the General tab scroll to towards the bottom and select Advanced Configuration

• On Advanced Configuration page under cpu-model enter in SandyBridge (Capital S and B) and for preferPhysicalHost enter value true and click "OK"

• Follow the rest of the steps from my other article to mount ESXi 6.7 ISO followed by publishing or updating the application and you should be good to go. You may get this screen below during installation warning that the CPU on the host may not be supported in future releases of ESXi. Just press Enter to continue with the installation.

Happy lab'ing for all

Running VMware on Ravello

One of the many benefits of being a vExpert is the freebies that you get from vendors. Ravello from Oracle is one of them where you are able to run your VMs on their hypervisor in the public cloud space. One of the selling points is that you can just copy your vmdk files up to the system and you don't need to reconfigure your VM hardware and settings to get it running. The platform also allow you to run a hypervisor such as ESXi as a VM which means I can have a lab on the move in the cloud. With all freebies there are some gotcha which is I only get 1000 CPU hours per month and can run only 20 concurrent VMs but as its for a lab/testing this is more than enough.

In this article I will run through the steps to just get a ESXi 6 host up and running on their platform and if you want to try it they offer free trial here

• So once you signed up you head over to https://cloud.ravellosystems.com to login to the management portal

• Once you are logged in we would need to go to Library > Disk Images so that we can upload our ESXi ISO onto the platform
  
• You will see that there are few Linux images there already provided by the platform. To import/upload our ISO click Import Disk Image
  

• You will be taken to the VM Import tool page and will get a screen like this if you haven't installed the Ravello VM import tool yet. First select which OS you would like to install the tool to (Mac or Windows). Then select if you would like the GUI version or CLI. For this article I am going to run through installing on Windows and GUI version so I clicked on Download GUI VM Import Tool for Windows
  
• Run the downloaded executable file (ravello_win.exe) and at the first screen of the setup wizard click Next
  
• Leave the install path as default unless you want to change it and click Install
  
• Click Finish once completed
  

Your default web browser should automatically fire up this page and you can see that the URL points http://127.0.0.1:8881. For some reason this doesn't seem work with my Microsoft Edge browser so use one of the other ones if it doesn't fire up for you and type in the same address. Also check that the service is running by looking task tray. If it's not there then locate the program and try again. Type in your username and password for your Ravello account and click Log In to continue

• Once logged in you will be presented with this screen, click on Upload
  
• At this screen you can see that there is 5 options that you can select in terms of what you can upload. The one we need to select is Upload a disk (ISO, VMDK, QCOW) and then select Start
  
• Browse to your ISO location and highlight the one you wish to upload then select Upload
  
• You should now be directed back to the first screen and you will see your ISO listed. Check under the Progress section and once it hits 100% then your ISO has been uploaded. Close the browser or select your user name in the top right window of the browser and select Log Out

• Head over to https://cloud.ravellosystems.com in a new browser window and sign in again if prompted. Go to Library > Disk Images
  
• You should see your image/s that you have uploaded so in my example you can see that I have ESXi 6.0/6.5 and 6.7 iso uploaded
  
• We have to create what they call an "application". It's is where you group all the servers that you are going to build to make up an "application" but you can use it anyway you want so we will click on Application and then Create Application
  
• We give our application a name which I am using "Lab" and the other fields are optional. Leave From Blueprint blank then select Create
  
• An application canvas should appear and you should see a list of Available VMs. If you don't then click on the "+" sign in the canvas tab. The kind people at Ravello have already created a template which has all the settings needed to run ESX 6 so if you select Empty ESX and drag it to the blank canvas
  
• Click on the "Empty ESX" to get further information displayed about the VM settings. You can see from the summary tab that by default it has 4 CPUs, 8GB RAM and 100GB storage which is sufficient to just get a base ESXi up and running. There is also 2 network connections and one of them has a external IP so that you can access this host from the internet

• Select the General tab and change the name, description and hostname to your liking. A Save and Cancel buttons will appears at the bottom if you have made some changes so select Save
  
• Select the Disks tab and under CD section click on Browse
  
• We will now see our disk image library where we select the ISO that we have uploaded earlier. Once you have selected your ISO click Select
  

The save and cancel buttons appears so select save

• Once it has been saved you will notice that a Publish button appears towards the top click on it
  
• A new pop up window appears detailing the compute information we have for this application. I have highlighted the section "Advanced" where you can decide if you would like all the VM/s to start automatically within this application once you publish this application. As this is a vExpert account the application is scheduled to automatically stop in 2 hours time. Click on Publish
  
• Once you have clicked on publish you will see the icon of the computer change to an hour glass which means the platform is provisioning the VM/s

• Once the computer icon changes to a play sign it means the VM is up and running ready fot you to use
  
• Ensure you have highlighted the VM and on the right hand side of the browser window you should see that you can click on the Console. Click on the Console button get console access to the VM via the web browser
  

• As you can see from the console screen in the browser it is loading my ESXi installer so we can install our host
  
• Once you are at the screen to reboot shown below DO NOT reboot yet as we need to eject the CD
  
• Go back to your Ravello application in the other browser window. Select the VM you are using. Go to Disks tab click Eject , the Save and Cancel button appears so select Save

• Once it has been saved you will notice that a Update button appears towards the top click on it

• A new pop up window appears click on Update
  
• The VM icon will change to an hour glass which means it is applying the changes we have made. Wait for this to turn back to a play icon before moving on to the next step
• Now go back to your console screen of the VM to reboot the server. If you don't do the steps above then your VM on reboot will always boot the loader from the CD

Hope this has some use for some one to test Ravello and be able to take their lab on the move saving some investment for hardware and electricity bills.

Increasing disk space on VCSA

Over time your VCSA will run out of disk space and you will need to increase the disk space. I will describe how I have performed this on one of my PSC as I was alerted by my monitoring system. My environment is vSphere 6.0 U2.

• Log on to your PSC controller using the root account. 
• Run "Shell.set" 
• Run "shell "
• Run the command "df -h" and you should get an output like the one below. 

You can see that I have ran out of disk space on mount point "/storage/log". At this point I would go to the VM in web client to increase the relevant disk but when you look at the disks attached to the VM (11 in total) I can't tell which disk has the mount point of "/storage/log". After searching on VMware KB site I found an article which list which mount point resides on which disk

So now you can see "/storage/log" is using "vmdk5" so now I can go and modify the disk size of "vmdk5"

• Hop back to the SSH session you have to the PSC, run the following command "cd /usr/lib/applmgmt/support/scripts/"
• Now run command to increase the disk space "./lvm_cfg.sh storage lvm autogrow" and if you are successful you will see a message "Command executed successfully"
• Run df -h and now you should see the mount point "storage/log" space increased 

Here is the official article from VMware KB2126276

Credential Guard/Device Guard preventing Workstation VMs to power on Windows 10

Like most people we all have VMware workstation on our laptops so that we can test new software or changes before going live. Recently my company enabled Credential Guard/Device Guard and it stopped my VMs from powering on. There is an article from VMware which documents how to turn off Credential Guard/Device Guard which works like a treat. Do follow all the steps especially if you have bit locker enabled on your laptop. If you don't remove Hyper-V correctly then you will get the famous blue screen.

KB article to help disable Credential Guard/Device Guard
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2146361

KB article from Microsoft to help if you do encounter a blue screen of death
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ie/help/3189068/restart-failure-if-device-guard-or-credential-guard-isn-t-disabled-cor 

Update : The VMware KB article now refers you to this Microsoft article where it guides you on how to turn on/off Credential Guard manually or via a powershell script which you can download. Please remember if you are running this fix on a workstation that has domain GPO applied then you may need to check with your GPO admins that they are not re-applying the credential guard settings again via GPO. 

Microsoft Credential Guard Article
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/identity-protection/credential-guard/credential-guard-manage

VMware End of Support Product Overview Page

There is a quick summary page for VMware products that will be ending sometime this year (2018). This will help you quicker identify which product you need to start planning for upgrades or decommissioning

https://www.vmware.com/support/products-reaching-endofsupport.html