I have been working on doing a vCenter Consolidation Project. This has meant recreating multiple permissions groups. I couldnt find an easy way to apply permissions at a datacenter so I updated this script to be used. Pre-Requsites VMware PowerCLI Link to Script Set-vCenterPermissions.ps1 permissions.csv Preparing to Execute the Script The script is pretty straight forward, just need to update columns in the CSV such as Datacenter, Group and Role.

I am honored to have been selected as a VMware vExpert once again for 2017! This is my fifth year as a vExpert (2013,2014,2015,2016 and 2017). It has been great to see the community grow and the amount of vExperts increase. I did a quick count, and in 2016 we are up to 1464 vExperts!

Warning: A few others and myself have noticed that when updating a VCHA Cluster to 6.5U1 it resets the hostname to localhost.localdomain stopping vCenter Web Client from Loading. It seems to be isolated to Advanced Deployments and not Basic. I would recommend destroying your VCHA Cluster, updating, then redeploying in this scenario. Warning2: It also seems that if you try to redeploy VCHA Advanced after an upgrade, it still resets the hostname, I have a case opened and will update here as neccessary.

One of my favorite new features of vSphere 6.5 is definately vCenter HA. I was checking out alerts when I noticed i had an alarm for vCenter HA being degraded. Looking through the GUI, I was unable to find anything in regards to why the Health was a warning and why the components would not sync. Then I remembered a previous case I had opened for VCHA. There is a log file located in /var/log/vmware/vcha

Can you easily export PowerDNS zones using a MySQL DB? The answer may not be as easy as it seems. I have been working on a Migration from PowerDNS using a MySQL DB. We have a custom solution which gets updated and gets pushed to Akamai. The problem is, this custom solution requires all the zones to be in bind format. Doing some research I found out there is no easy way to get these zones into a bind zone file.

I had a use case I wanted to investigate in regards to the new VCHA that is part of VMware vCenter Server 6.5. One thing I noticed, is when you have VCHA configured, there is no way to know which node of the HA cluster you are connecting to without being logged on. As people have noted before William Lam’s - How to Customize Webclient Login UI I figured since I am using the embedded SSO, I could update the login page to show any information for that particular node.

So VMware Flings have been on a roll recently. They have released what they call “VMware Content Library Assistant.” This is a java based CLI app, that connects to your vCenter and searchers for your templates and then automatically creates and uploads them. You can find the fling at the following URL…https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-content-library-assistant) Once you download the fling, you can just run the following command. 1java -jar sphere-content-library-assistant-1.0.jar -s servername -u username -p password In my case my java home isn’t setup on my mac …

I have been using Ubiquiti equipment for awhile at home and I figured i would finally write a blog post about it. Ubiquiti equipment is “enterprise class” equipment for the consumer. I figured I would create a post that goes over two ways of loading the controller. The first option will be installing it on Ubuntu on bare metal or a VM, the second option is a docker container. If you are installing this on a bare metal or virtual machine, i suggest a debian based image.

So as everyone has probably seen, vSphere 6.5 is now GA. One of the features i have been waiting for the most is vCenter HA. I have spent some time trying to get this working in my lab. Unfortunately after countless tries i was stuck. Thanks to folks in the vExpert Slack for helping me try to resolve this, but unfortunately this was a case for VMware Support. Every time I would try to configure vCenter HA using the Advanced Wizard, I would get the following error.

So as everyone has probably seen, vSphere 6.5 is now GA. As usual right away I have upgraded the homelab and have already found a neat new feature. When you are adding in your VMware licenses, you now have an option to Import License Keys Data… To start you need to generate a report from my.vmware.com. Log in and Navigate to Download Reports Click on the Available Reports dropdown, and select the Product Licenses, Details and History.