VMware vCenter SSO Authentication via OKTA (with SCIM User Provisioning – Locally Driven)

VMware vCenter can use a multitude of authentication methods, such as LDAP, Active Directory and SAML (ADFS), however since vCenter 8.0 U1 the ability to integrate with OKTA for authentication has been added, which allows for adding MFA (multi-factor authentication) for enhanced security and detaching the vCenter appliance from Active Directory. When switching to use […]

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VMware Host Profile and the the option “uservars.suppressShellWarning” or “UserVars.SuppressHyperthreadWarning”

We had some older VMware hosts where there is a warning about a host being vulnerable to a particular CVE relating to the processor type, in this case the fix was not possible, but we still wanted to suppress the warning. When applying the normal Host Profile it was grumbling about this shell warning, so […]

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VMware Ansible – Getting Started Examples

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is managing infrastructure using a DevOps type methodology. Where the current configuration of your infrastructure is represented in code, any additions, changes or deletions are also made through this code. There are various methods to codify your infrastructure, some proprietary like AWS Cloudformation, others are generic like Ansible or Terraform. The […]

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VMware Software and Firmware Upgrade Strategy (HPE Focussed)

Keeping a VMware ecosystem up to date is a challenge. Ensuring you are running a supportable and stable combination of VMware ESXi, device drivers, extensions and hardware firmware is a lot of moving parts to keep “in synch”. Essentially the version of the device drivers needs to be supported by VMware ESXi, the version of […]

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VMware vLCM with HPE iLO Amplifier Error Adding Service Pack for Proliant (SPP)

A fairly common error with a fairly easy fix. When adding the Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) I was seeing this error message: “some error occured while online deport registration” The error appears here, the “important notes” gives you the clue to the fix. You need to ensure that your iLO Amplifier appliance(s) are not […]

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VMware vCenter – Extending Disk to Resolve Log Disk Exhaustion

If and when a log disk begins to fill up you will see messages such as “Log Disk Exhaustion on <vcenter name>”.  Within the vCenter console and VAMI you can see the log drive is running low on space. If you are using VMware HA for vCenter, i.e. two vCenter appliances, you will need to […]

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“Host hostname currently has no management network redundancy”

We had a VMware ESXi host start to display this following a networking instability issue. The host was checked and it did indeed have network redundancy, so this message was not correct, and appeared to be stuck warning about a condition that did not exist. Resolution is given in: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2008602, and in our case just […]

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Change Array to Group Scoped Targeting (HPE Nimble Storage)

The array OS 5.1.x and later supports iSCSI Group Scoped Target (GST) on iSCSI arrays (this is new), previous to this it was using VST Volume Scoped Targeting. GST reduces the number of individual host connections you need to configure and manage, which saves you time and also ensures you don’t hit limitations in the […]

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VMware Check Path Selection Policy for Datastores

The Path Selection Policy is set for devices to determine how the ESXi host will utilise the paths to the storage, for example, you can have “Fixed” or “Round Robin” or “Most Recently Used”, you can also have storage vendor provided ones such as “NIMBLE_PSP_DIRECTED”. The scripts and commands I’ve found keep mentioning “Multipathing”, if […]

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