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Tag: vCenter Appliance

Spectre/Meltdown Vulnerability – How to Patch VMware vCenter 6.5

Spectre/Meltdown Vulnerability – How to Patch VMware vCenter 6.5

As per Security Advisory VMSA-2018-0007, VMware has begun releasing virtual appliance updates to address side-channel analysis due to speculative execution vulnerabilities. One of the first virtual appliances VMware has patched is vCenter 6.5. The latest release, vCenter 6.5U1f, patches the VCSA’s Photon OS to address Spectre-1 (CVE-2018-5753) and Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) vulnerabilities. Mitigations for Spectre-2 (CVE-2017-5715) are absent from the latest patch as Spectre-1 and Meltdown mitigations were ready to be released; whereas, Spectre-2 patches were still being prepared. UPDATE –…

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Reset vCenter SSO Administrator Password vSphere 6.5

Reset vCenter SSO Administrator Password vSphere 6.5

By default, the vCenter Single Sign-On password expires every 90 days. To prevent unexpected expiration, the vSphere Client issues a warning when the password is about to expire; however, if you find yourself in a situation where you cannot recall the password or the password has expired, it can be reset. The reset process is performed from an SSH session to vCenter. Reset SSO Administrator Password To begin, SSH to the vCenter Server Appliance and log in with the root account.

Configure vCenter High Availability

Configure vCenter High Availability

A great feature that was introduced in vSphere 6.5 was the ability to implement vCenter High Availability (VCHA). If you are unfamiliar with the vCenter High Availability, it is an active-passive architecture to safeguard your vCenter Server appliance from host, hardware, or application failures. How does it work? The VCHA deployment is comprised of three nodes; active, passive and witness. The active node is just that, the active vCenter Server Appliance instance. This node has two interfaces; a standard management…

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Upgrade ESXi to 6.5 using VMware Update Manager

Upgrade ESXi to 6.5 using VMware Update Manager

One of my favorite features in vCenter 6.5 is the built-in Update Manager. VMware Update Manager (VUM) 6.5 is used to patch and upgrade vSphere ESXi hosts, virtual appliances, VMware Tools, and virtual hardware. Previous versions of the vCenter Server Appliance required a separate Windows machine to run Update Manager. For many admins, this was a deterrent in deploying VUM. Now that the embedded Update Manager leverages the vCenter Server Appliance Postgres database, there is no additional vms to install…

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Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 to 6.5

Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 to 6.5

With VMware vSphere 6.5 being about 3 months into its release cycle, a lot of you may be gearing up to upgrade your environment. In this byte, we will go through the upgrade process from 6.0 to 6.5 for the vCenter Server Appliance. Like the 6.0 upgrade, this is a side by side upgrade. Meaning upgrading to 6.5 will be performed in two stages. The initial stage will deploy a new appliance. Followed by the second stage where your data…

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