Homelab

Changing ESXi Passwords via Host Profiles

I recently had an issue where I couldnt get into one of my ESXi Servers as I did not know the Password. I could get into vCenter and so forced a reset of all root user password via Host Profiles.

In vCenter, select Home > Host Profiles

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Backup your VCSA vCenter 6.5

I am jut int he process of migrating to a new VCSA 6.7 and wanted to test the Backup and Restore Process

In the VAMI – the Web based management console for the VCSA, there is an option for Backup

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Enter a Destination for the Backup to go to, I created an FTP Server as it is a test but you can use the HTTP/S, FTP and SCP Protocols. (more…)

“The network bridge on device ‘VMnet0’ is not running”

I recently went into my VMware Workstation based lab and found that a few of my VMs did not have Internet or LAN Access. When looking at the Settings of the VMs, the Network Adapter which was supposed to be Bridged, was not showing as “Connected”

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When I tried to “Connect” It, I would recieve: “The network bridge on device ‘VMnet0’ is not running. The virtual machine will not be able to communicate with the host or with other machines on your network. Failed to connect virtual device ‘Ethernet0’” (more…)

Adding a Virtual Router into Home Lab using VyOS

I wanted to add a Virtual Router into my portable Lab – the reason for this was, I want to have a bunch of my VMs on a Private Network for testing – but no and again I want to patch them or give them temporary access to the Internet.  For this I am going to use a VyOS Virtual Machine and test with an Ubuntu Server I have.  I am using VMware Fusion on my Mac but the same process can be used in Workstation but using the Network Editor

For this example, I have created a Custom Network 192.168.10.0 and called vmnet3

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VIRTUAL LAB – PART 7 – Adding Shared Storage

Now we have the Networking in place, we need some Shared Storage.  Im going to refer to a few older posts of mine to set this up with FreeNAS which works really well.  I may look at other solutions at some point but for now this does exactly what I need.

Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt1
Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt2
Installing FreeNAS into VMware Workstation Pt3 (iSCSI)

This should be enough to get going (May add some NFS Later)

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VIRTUAL LAB – PART 6 – ESXi and vCenter Networking

This post will cover the setup of the Hosts networking.  I plan to simulate (as much as possible) a real world deployment, so separating all traffic over different networks.  This will mean adding a few additional Interfaces to each Host and deploying a few Virtual Switches to them also.

The first thing I need to do is add a few Network Interfaces to each of my Hosts, Im going to add 3 Interfaces; 1 for Shared Storage, 1 for FT and 1 for vMotion.

Open up Virtual Machine Settings and select Add…

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Select Yes if the User Account Control appears (more…)

VIRTUAL LAB – PART 5 – vCenter Setup

So my VCSA is now up and running, I just need to go into vCenter and do some config

  • Licenses
  • Create Datacenter, add Hosts etc..

First thing to do is log in using URL structure: https:////vsphere-client

NOTE: If you just go to the IP of your vCenter it will give you options to use either HTML5 or Flash

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I selected the Flash client which uses the URL above

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VCSA (vCenter) Log Locations

Here are a few log files I found useful when deploying the VCSA (vCenter Appliance)

  • /var/log/firstboot
    • rpmInstall.json – A JSON formatted file containing status messages.  Contains progress information, and error messages.
    • cloudvm.log – Log messages created throughout the vCenter Server Appliance installation process.
    • firstbootStatus.json –  A JSON file containing the current status of the installation process.