Recently I had to troubleshooting a storage issue in a VMware vSphere environment. It turned out that the situation could be defused when the ESXi host enters Maintenance Mode automatically when a certain error log entry is generated. So I set to work and automated the task. To do so, VMware Aira Suite is quite useful. The process actually requires most of the products of […]
How to remove a vCenter from Enhanced Linked Mode
Sounds like a simple task to remove a vCenter from Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM). Basically ELM enables more vCenter instances to use a single SSO-domain. Most solutions I found talked about offline respectively dead vCenter instances. But I was looking for a solution to get a running vCenter out of ELM. And it should stay online after the removal! Fortunately, there is a simple way […]
vCenter 7 update fails with error
Recently I wanted to update my VMware vSphere vCenter in my lab environment from vSphere 7 U1 to U3 latest release. Unfortunately each vCenter 7 update try fails with “install hook failed” error at 80 %. Since this troubleshooting and trial and error was very time consuming, I thought it was a good idea to share the solution. Hoping this post will save you the […]
VMware Aria Operations – go beyond standard Super Metrics
This post is about Super Metrics in VMware Aria Operations (also know as: vROPs and vRealize Operations Manager) and how to go beyond the standard calculations. Super Metrics are a powerful feature for creating own metrics. Anyone who has ever worked with super metrics knows that it is not always easy to find the way to the goal. In this post I want to show […]
Options for Updating VMware Tools at Scale
Recently I wrote a detailed blog post about VMware Tools and the options available to update them at scale. Because this post was published on VMware’s blog Customer Experience and Success, I cannot publish the same post here. Therefore, I am summarizing my article here and providing the link to it. The first part deals with understanding VMware Tools Updates. It focuses on compatibility, what […]
Issue with vSphere vCLS VMs
This short post is about an issue in VMware vCenter that causes vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VMs fail to deploy. Because of this cluster functions like Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) doesn’t work. My post shows a solution for this problem.
Does Microsoft KB5021131 break vCenter login?
Microsoft published a security update for Windows. If you see my blog posts, you will see, I am no Microsoft-guy. But there are some rumors about KB5021131. Does it break VMware vCenter login? What is KB5021131 about Microsoft will enforce applications to use the more secure AES algorithm for Kerberos encryption instead of the unsecure RC4-HMAC. For sure a good idea! Statement from KB5021131: This […]
VMware Security Hardening Guides and how to check compliance
In times of Ransomware , security breaches and exploits it is more and more important to harden every layer of IT infrastructure. This blog post is about hardening options of VMware layers. I will describe the concept of the VMware Security Hardening Guides and how to check compliance with VMware Operations Manager.
How to isolate NBD backup traffic in vSphere
A new feature in vSphere 7 is the ability to configure a VMkernel port used for backups in NBD (Network Block Device) respectively Network mode. This can be used to isolate backup traffic from other traffic types. Up to this release, there was no direct option to select VMkernel port for backup. In this post I show how to isolate NBD backup traffic in vSphere. […]
Scripting Veeam SureBackup with tag-based backup jobs – Workaround
This post might be interesting for anyone who scripts Veeam SureBackup in any form. In this case you probably use the script of Luca Dell’Oca: How can you test 1000 VMs with Veeam SureBackup? This script is great and works just fine! A limitation here is that it is not possible to change default timeouts for boot and application initialization. Honestly this was a limitation […]
Veeam Vanguard
Veeam Legend
VMware vExpert
Follow me
