the Sky is the Limit
Where is the Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) file of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)?
The usual setup process utilizes a helper system (Win, Mac, Linux) to which the ISO is beeing mounted. In my case I had to import an OVA to Ravello-Cloud without using a helper system. Continue reading “Where is the VCSA OVA?”
In one of my last posts I’ve shown how to collect and monitor status logs of many different systems wit vRealize Log Insight. In this post I will show how to leverage Log Insight as syslog target for HPE switches.
Basically you can use Log Insight for any system that uses the syslog protocol, but there might be slight differences in the data structure of the transmitted datasets. For example some HPE FlexFabric 5000 series switches sent the year of the timestamp where Log Insight expected to find the hostname. Not very useful, because you want to know WHO sent that dataset.
The following commands on the switch shell will prepare the switch for logging to a remotehost and adjust the dataset to read properly by Log Insight. Finally you tell the switch which VLAN interface should be used to communicate with the loghost. In my simple example it’s VLAN interface 1. You’ll have to adjust values for loghost and interface according to your infrastructure.
system-view info-center enable info-center loghost s-vlog.mydomain.local port 514 info-center timestamp loghost no-year-date info-center loghost source Vlan-interface 1
I’m a big fan of PowerCLI one-liners. 🙂
Before performing updates, upgrades or any other maintenance on ESXi hosts, you should backup your ESXi host configuration. Setting up a new ESXi host as replacement is a no-brainer, but rebuilding a lost configuration can be a PITA and might take hours.
In the old times it was necesary to open a SSH shell connection or to use vSphereCLI to issue backup commands to ESXi hosts. Recently I realized that there is a very handy PowerShell commandlet to backup and restore the configuration. Continue reading “Backup and Restore of ESXi host configurations with PowerCLI”
Sometimes it’s necesary to exchange files with the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). Secure Copy Protocol is the tool of choice to do that job. Besides CLI commands there are handy programs like WinSCP.
While trying to establish a WinSCP connection to VCSA I’ve received communication errors. Whereas SSH connection worked without problems.
The problem is that WinSCP cannot use VCSA’s default shell as communication target. You have to switch default shell first before connecting. To do so, login to VCSA with SSH and activate Bash. Continue reading “VCSA and SCP”