Joining VCSA to Active Directory

Joining Active Directory with vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has been simplified with every generation of VCSA.

I will show the workflow how to connect a VCSA 6.7 to an Active Directory source. The process differs a little, depending whether you’re using the HTML5-Client or the Web-Client (Flash).

Requirements

  • VCSA hostname has to be FQDN and may not be an IP address.
  • You need to login with a member of systemconfiguration admins, which administrator@vsphere.local is by default.

Workflow

The workflow is divided into three steps

  • Join VCSA to ADS
  • Reboot
  • Add ADS as identity source

Continue reading “Joining VCSA to Active Directory”

vCenter Appliance Migration Upgrade

Relink VM MoRef IDs to Veeam Backup Restore-Points

In this post I will show how to use Veeam Migration Utility in cases when you have to migrate a whole cluster to a new vCenter, but you can’t afford to cut existing backup chains.

The Good

Upgrading a vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has become a commodity in recent times. All you have to do is to run an upgrade wizard and point to the old VCSA. Thanks to VMware developers it’s one of these “Next-Next-Finish” deployments. At the end you’ll have an upgraded vCenter with same settings, name, IP, and (if you like) historic data.  This is great! I can remember vCenter on Windows upgrades that were a PITA.

The Bad

In some rare (but ugly) occasions you simply can’t use the wizard and you have to migrate your hosts to a completely new VCSA without data migration. You’ll have to rebuild every setting, datacenter, cluster, folder, pool, group, rule, etc from scratch to match your old environment. Continue reading “vCenter Appliance Migration Upgrade”

VCSA and SCP

Using WinSCP with vCenter Server Appliance

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”