How to upgrade your VCP-NV 6 to VCP-NV 2019

There’s an upgrade track from VCP6-NV to VCP-NV 2019 without taking an exam. It’s not easy to find this possibility. I will show all necessary steps to take and would like to thank Tim Burkhard (VMware Education Team), who pointed me into that direction.

Certification Walkthrough

First you go to VMware-Education and choose the VCP-NV 2019 track. Depending on your current certification status track requirements will be different. Only if you’re holding a current VCP6-NV certification, you’re able to upgrade without an exam. All others will have to pass the exam.

Choose VCP6-NV in the dropdown menu and read the requirements.

Continue reading “How to upgrade your VCP-NV 6 to VCP-NV 2019”

NSX-Manager Permissions and Groups

Using vSphere-Client 6.7 to synchronize NSX-Manager with Active Directory

Once you’ve deployed NSX-Manager to a vSphere 6.7 cluster, you may have noticed an error  on the dashboard.

“No NSX Managers available. Verify current user has role assigned on NSX Manager.”

Assuming you have configured vCenter connections correctly, there’s a simple explanation for the error (KB2080740).

Usually initial setup of NSX-Manager is done by the default SSO User administrator@vsphere.local. If you log into vCenter using that user, there will be no error on the dashboard. The point is that NSX-Manager has its own permissions and roles which are not coupled to vCenter permissions. That means a user with administrator rights in vCenter does not automatically get administrator rights in NSX-Manager. Without any permissions that user can’t even see NSX-Manager. Continue reading “NSX-Manager Permissions and Groups”

Runecast Analyzer: new release 1.8

Runecast extends functionality to NSX-V

A new release of Runecast Analyzer is scheduled for June, 26th. Version number 1.8 will come with a bunch of improvements and new features. Most important new feature will be support for the NSX-V platform.  Every important function of vSphere- and vSAN analysis will now be available for NSX-V too.

Feature List

  • The Analyzer now detects NSX issues on VMware NSX-V versions 6.2 – 6.4.x
  • Automated scan and evaluation of the NSX-V Best Practices violations.
  • Automatic NSX-V VMware Security Hardening profile analysis and reporting
  • NSX-V DISA-STIG profile analysis and reporting
  • Automatic discovery of the NSX Managers linked to VMware vCenters
  • Web-console performance improvements for bigger environments (dozens of ESXi hosts).
  • vSphere web console Runecast plugin NSX update with a new issue summary widget.

Links

 

vShield to NSX migration

Replacing deprecated vShield by NSX for vSphere

VMware vShield is part of the vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) suite. Its latest version 5.5 has reached EOGS (end of general support) in September 2016 and has been replaced by NSX for vSphere.

We still see quite a lot of vShield installations in productive environments. Mainly used for agentless guest introspection together with security solutions like Trendmicro DeepSecurity,  McAfee Move or others. Now that many customers consider migrating from vSphere 6.0 to vSphere 6.5, they have to face the fact that vShield is no longer supported from vSphere 6.5 onwards. And it is crucial to take product compatibility into account. There is a relationship between different vSphere, NSX and security product versions.

That’s why I show different migration paths in this blog article. Continue reading “vShield to NSX migration”