Tagged: VMware

VMware’s Automated Virtual Assistant 0

I’m Ava, VMware’s Virtual Assistant

I’m feeling old when I met Ava. Not too long, I had to use Google to find information about articles in VMware Knowledge Base. No one cared about us. But now, Ava will help guys to find anything faster. The name is like an Iranian name for girls (آوا). She’s so beautiful, so respectful but very young because it’s the beta version.

old 0

End of General Support for vSphere 6.0

If you are using vSphere 5.5 on your environment, please don’t read this post otherwise it will be useful for you. Currently, vSphere is most popular server virtualization software and any changes or notifications which published by VMware, has impact on may organizations IT infrastructure. What’s the newest? Answer: Say good bye to vSphere 6.0 .

Corruption in dlmalloc 0

ESXi Fails with “Corruption in dlmalloc” on HPE Server

“Corruption in dlmalloc” issue occurs because multiple esxcfg-dumppart threads attempt to free memory which has been used for configuring the dump partition. Thread A checks if there are entries to be freed and proceeds to free them, while within the same time frame, Thread B is also attempting to free the same entries.
Based on VMware KB2147888, this issue is resolved on ESXi 6 U3. But why issue is happening on ESXi 6 U3 or ESXi 6.5 U1 when they are installed on HPE ProLiant servers?

ovf 0

How to Export Big Virtual Machine (>2TB) as OVA or OVF

I guess, you know the instruction but let’s quick review. You can export virtual machines via some different tools such as vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client and others. All administrators do it today and familiar with OVA and OVF. It’s possible to export small virtual machines via vSphere Client, vSphere Web Client, PowerCLI. If you want to export virtual machine with 200~300 GB virtual disks (Thin or Thick), there is serious problem, just make sure that you have enough free space. But did you try to export big or monster VM as OVA or OVF?

GSM Community Edition - Report Comparison 4

Virtual Environments Vulnerability Assessment By GSM (OpenVAS) – Part 3

At the first part, we’ve reviewed GSM (Greenbone Security Manager – Formerly OpenVAS) as a security manager or assessment tool for discovering vulnerabilities on virtual environments, the second part was more functional and we talked more about GSM. You leaned that how can you create a target on Greenboone Security Manager and scan it to discover vulnerabilities.

As I said at the end of second part of the blog post, the third part is related to resolving security issues. Any software and specially operating systems have “Hardening Guide”. You must follow steps of hardening guide to reduce security vulnerabilities effect on production environments.

Virtual Environments Vulnerability Assessment By GSM (OpenVAS) - Part 2 0

Virtual Environments Vulnerability Assessment By GSM (OpenVAS) – Part 2

We have reviewed reasons of have Vulnerability Assessment or Vulnerability Manager in virtual environments and how these software help us to find vulnerabilities on any component of virtual infrastructure. We have reviewed OpenVAS or Greenbone Security Manager and talked about features and abilities.

Now, it’s time to use the GSM server that we had prepared on the previous part. In this part of blog post, we’ll configure a target (ESXi Server) on OpenVAS server, create a task for scan and find the result of scan.

I’ve installed ESXi 6U1 (3029758) on a virtual machine and there is no customized configuration, all configurations are default.

Vulnerability Assessment 1

Virtual Environments Vulnerability Assessment By GSM (OpenVAS) – Part 1

In virtual environments, any vulnerability has affect on virtual infrastructure and those who get the service including internal and external services. So at least, any organization should have process to identifying vulnerabilities. Identifying vulnerabilities needs tools in IT infrastructure to scan devices, operating systems and applications and find vulnerabilities (Especially security vulnerabilities).

Compatibility 0

vSAN Backup Products Compatibility

vSAN is hyper-converged solution which provided by VMware to reduce implementation and maintenance costs of virtualization solutions. Currently, many companies and organizations using vSAN and SAN together to delivering storage space for services.

VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.2 0

What’s New in VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.2

What’s New in VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.2 New version of NSX has been introduced by VMware and NSX for vSphere is now known as NSX Data Center for vSphere. VMware NSX Data Center for vSphere 6.4.2 adds usability and serviceability enhancements, and addresses a number of specific bugs. Networking and Edge Services Multicast Support: Adds ability to configure L3 IPv4 multicast on Distributed Logical Router and Edge Service Gateway through support of IGMPv2 and PIM Sparse Mode. Default Limit of MAC identifiers: Increases from 2048 to 4096 Hardware VTEP: Added multi PTEP cluster capability to facilitate environments with multiple vCenters Security Services Context-Aware Firewall: Additional Layer 7 Application Context Support (EPIC, MSSQL, BLAST AppIDs) Firewall Rule Hit Count: ​Monitor rule usage and easily identify unused rules for clean-up Firewall Section Locking: ​​Enables multiple security administrators to work concurrently on the firewall NSX Application Rule Manager: Improved scale to 100 vNICs per session, further simplifying the process of creating security groups and whitelisting firewall rules for existing applications. NSX User Interface VMware NSX – Functionality Updates for vSphere Client (HTML): The following VMware NSX features are now available through the vSphere Client: TraceFlow, User Domains, Audit Logs, Events & Tasks. Operations and Troubleshooting Authentication & Authorization: Introduces 2 new roles (Network...

security advisory 0

E1000 NIC Out of Bounds Write Vulnerability

VMware has detect vulnerability on some products against E1000 NIC. The issue may allow a guest to execute code on the host. If you have any running virtual machine on VMware Workstation 14.x and Fusion 10.x, you must stop them and apply patch to the mentioned products before running any other virtual machine.

Remote Direct Memory Access 1

[Review]: What’s Remote Direct Memory Access(RDMA)?

Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) provides direct memory access from the memory of one host (storage or compute) to the memory of another host without involving the remote Operating System and CPU, boosting network and host performance with lower latency, lower CPU load and higher bandwidth. In contrast, TCP/IP communications typically require copy operations, which add latency and consume significant CPU and memory resources.

VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) 1

[Review]: VMware vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO)

This is not a new features on last vSphere version but I went to write a post about that. We had to deploy different replication scenarios for our customers and some customers needs Point-In-Time Recovery (PiT) and The PiT solutions using VAIO actually so learning about the API is necessary for administrators.

The vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering (VAIO) were introduced in vSphere 6.0 Update 1. The VAIO framework and program were developed to provide VMware and partners the ability to insert filters for I/O into the data path of virtual machines. These “I/O Filters” enable VMware, and partners, to intercept and manipulate the I/O. This manipulation can provide open-ended data services, but thus far is limited to four use cases, two of which are currently exclusive to VMware and two which are open for partners. These use cases are: Replication, Caching, Quality of service (VMware only), Encryption (VMware only).

vSAN ReadyNode Configurator - vSAN OEM 0

[Review]: What’s vSAN ReadyNode?

vSAN ReadyNode are x86 servers, available from all the leading server vendors, that have been pre-configured, tested and certified for VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Software. Each ReadyNodes is optimally configured for vSAN with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, I/O controllers and storage (SSDs, HDDs or flash devices).