In my lab NSX Manager 4.1.x is deployed and licensed with a vExpert based NSX Enterprise evaluation license. In this case I wanted to check the IDS / IPS feature for testing. Part of the configuration consists of updating the IDS / IPS signature. Updating started with the message “Updating IDS Signatures.” but failed with the error “Installation Failed.“. When this happens, the most probably reasons are: The NSX Manager cannot access the internet to download the signature file The appropriate NSX License is not added to NSX Manager or s expired In my case it was the latter. The license “NSX ..read more

During re-install of my Cloud Director lab, I noticed that the configuration of ovftool (officially named OVF Tool) is not documented (for Linux). In this vSphere tidbit I show you how. It’s good to know that ovftool on Linux is not available in some form of Linux package and is therefore not found in any repository. Basically its a zip file that needs to be downloaded. From a convenience point of view the ovftool folder should be added to the PATH variable to make it available in any folder. If you ask yourself what ovftool is, the user guide explains it: Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is ..read more

In November 2022, I wrote a post on my endeavor about installing PowerCLI on my Windows box. I needed PowerCLI 13 ImageBuilder feature, which was the only way to add the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi fling to a custom ESXi ISO image. Check these posts here: PowerCLI 13 update and installation hurdles on Windows Create ESXi 8 Customized ISO Installer Over a year has passed and I wanted to do the same on my Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur) based Linux laptop. I quickly found out it’s the same hassle with little documentation from VMware. Installing PowerCLI is the easy part. Configuring it to ..read more

vCenter raised several alarms because its /storage/log partition was full. The errors were: Alert: Log Disk Exhaustion Alert: RBD Health Alarm Warning: PostgreSQL Service Health Alarm Find the large logs Logging into the vCenter appliance using SSH is a good starting point for troubleshooting. root@vcenter [ ~ ]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on ... /dev/mapper/archive_vg-archive 49G 29G 19G 61% /storage/archive /dev/mapper/core_vg-core 25G 2.6G 21G 11% /storage/core /dev/mapper/log_vg-log ..read more

When logging into my Lab vCenter the other day, I noticed one of my lab hosts showed an red “ESXi Host Certificate Status” alarm. That was the case because the host was 5 years connected to vCenter and therefore the hosts certificate was expired. Luckily fixing the Host Certificate Status alarm is quite easy since the vSphere 6.x days. Select the host and go to “Configure > System > Certificate” and use the “Renew” button. By using the “Renew” option, vCenter generates and and applies a new certificate to the host. During the process the host will briefly disconnected from vCenter. In ..read more

My latest homelab addition is the Maxtang NX6412 NUC which was given by VMware, together with Cohesity (many thanks!) at VMware Explore EU (in the US co-sponsored by NetApp) to all vExperts who registered for the gift. After adding RAM and a SATA SSD, it was time it ran vSphere 8. The specs of this neat, passive cooled box are: Intel Celeron J6412 (4c @ 2.0 GHz, 2,6 GHz boost) 10w TDP 2x DDR4 PC-3200 SO-DIMM slots 2x 1Gb Realtek 8111H PCIe NIC Wifi, Bluetooth 2x HDMI 2.0 3x USB 2.0 (of which front facing USB-C type) 2x USB 3.2 The issue with the Maxtang NUC is that both PCIe based Realte ..read more

Many enterprises and service providers use Fortinet products like FortiGate, often running them as a VM’s. If running them virtually on vSphere, what are the current supported versions? FortiOS supported vSphere versions The vSphere 8 support status for FortiGates in VM factor (including the pay-as-you-go variant) was until recently not clear in the Fortinet documentation. After consulting a contact at Fortinet, he responded that FortiOS starting with version 7.2.0 is supported for vSphere 8 and that the release notes are updated accordingly. In a nutshell the supported vSphere versions for F ..read more

Once in a while new hardware is released that makes a difference. Such a device is the Intel Optane series of high-performance SSD’s for professional use, which was released in late 2017. In this case I’m talking about the Intel Optane P4800X and P5800X and their consumer counterparts (900P and 905P). All drives are based on the 3D XPoint Technology that Intel co-developed with Micron. In contrary to regular SSD’s, Optane drives like the P5800X brings ultra low latency, high durability and high performance to the table. Effectively Optane is a technology that both has aspects of DRAM and regu ..read more

You may recognize this. You’ve updated your ESXi hosts via vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) or similar method, the host rebooted during remediation and… that’s it. Your host is not reachable anymore. That happened to my lab server last week, while updating it to the latest ESXi 8.0 patch release. So what went wrong? In short, this happens when ESXi does not have inbox drivers for your NIC and the vLCM Image configuration does not has the async NIC driver added. When the hosts is rebooted during the remediation process the issue is obvious. So how to install a new NIC driver if the hosts is not ..read more

NSX 4.0 onwards only supports vSphere 7 and later. In my homelab I’m still running ESXi 6.7 joined to a vCenter 8. It’s because the RAID controller in my host is unsupported in ESXi 7+ and has no native drivers. Running an older ESXi version is fine for me since I do most testing on an nested vSphere 8 lab. The issue During the rebuild of my homelab I want to run NSX 4.0. The NSX Manager deploys and runs just fine as VM on ESXi 6.7. The Edge nodes are another thing. When deploying an Edge node on ESXi 6.7 U3 (latest) via NSX Manager it fails with the error: Ovf deploy for vm <edge name> ..read more