hostasaurus's Posts

Still having this issue in vCenter VCSA 6.5.0e build 5705665.  Using Firefox/Flash interface since it's the only one I can find that actually works.  Trying to deploy an EMC OVA file.  I get this... See more...
Still having this issue in vCenter VCSA 6.5.0e build 5705665.  Using Firefox/Flash interface since it's the only one I can find that actually works.  Trying to deploy an EMC OVA file.  I get this wonderfully useless message:
I haven't added a me too to this thread in a while so figured it's due after a recent upgrade to 6.5.  Here's how my day is going vmware.  I have one simple task I'd like to perform this morn... See more...
I haven't added a me too to this thread in a while so figured it's due after a recent upgrade to 6.5.  Here's how my day is going vmware.  I have one simple task I'd like to perform this morning, and that's deploy a VM from an OVA file.  Want to know how that's going? Well, my normal browser, Chrome, can't do it.  Chrome doesn't support Adobe Flash, and the half broken HTML5 interface doesn't support OVA files.  I'm on a Mac.  I can't install Flash even if I wanted to because our corporate policy forbids Adobe Flash on our workstations.  Okay, let me RDP to a Windows server where we've permitted Flash usage solely for this f'ing vmware nightmare.  Oh, the latest IE has Adobe Flash built in now, but it's not quite the same Adobe Flash as, well, Adobe Flash, so no it won't actually work even if you turn off all the IE security BS, turn off ActiveX filter, trust the necessary URL's.  I wasted 20 minutes figuring out how to even get the enable flash add-on to show up in the IE add-ons list to even get to the point of discovering it doesn't work.  Okay let's install FireFox since it seems to be the last browser that will actually still run Adobe Flash; good move vmware, your entire product is dependent on a random open source web browser continuing to be available, and a company/product (Adobe) whose security track record is about as piss poor as they come. So I've got Firefox installed.  Cool, now I'm allowed to download Flash instead of being told it's built in and I don't need it.  And oh joy, that worked, but wait, we're not done yet, I still can't deploy an f'ing OVA file because now I need to install the Client Integration Plugin.  Fantastic, now I've installed so much crap on my computer I've recreated the fat client in a web browser, minus the reliability, minus the ease of use, minus the speed. Are you f'ing kidding me?
Hi all, have a large production environment of 5.5 enterprise plus.  Some of our VM's need to use jumbo frames and our live distributed switch doesn't have the MTU set for that.  I would prefer t... See more...
Hi all, have a large production environment of 5.5 enterprise plus.  Some of our VM's need to use jumbo frames and our live distributed switch doesn't have the MTU set for that.  I would prefer to not make any changes to the VDS settings, and none of the VLANs it handles need jumbo.  I have found instances of people advocating for not adding more than one distributed switch but not any solid evidence as to why it is or isn't bad.  Is it safe to add a second distributed switch?  If there's no strong reason not to, I'd prefer to add a new one and set it to use jumbo, then add the relevant VLAN to it so I don't impact the other live traffic. Thanks
Found this thread while debugging less than ideal network performance on a Dell R530 with the dual port Dell-branded version of the X710.  I was able to get the firmware up to 5.02, not easily si... See more...
Found this thread while debugging less than ideal network performance on a Dell R530 with the dual port Dell-branded version of the X710.  I was able to get the firmware up to 5.02, not easily since the servers are vsphere and Dell only packages their version of the firmware in windows and RHEL format, so had to boot a CentOS Live dvd just to flash it.  In any case, thanks to this thread, I found disabling LRO and TSO improved the iSCSI performance I was primarily interested in; gained about 500 Mbit/sec in either direction.  Still seeing better out of our Cisco UCS servers, but that wasn't suitable for the project I'm working on so just going to live with it and hope for continued improvements.
Ah, thanks; will investigate further.  I gave up and reinstalled RHEL fresh but will investigate this again and will post if I figure out how to get it working.
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to disable secure boot functionality in a guest running in EFI mode?  I just converted a CentOS 7 box to RHEL 7, not realizing it was going to replace the efi ... See more...
Can anyone tell me if it's possible to disable secure boot functionality in a guest running in EFI mode?  I just converted a CentOS 7 box to RHEL 7, not realizing it was going to replace the efi and grub files, which resulted in an unbootable guest; each attempt just dumps you into the MOK manager to import a key or hash to allow booting.  Still not quite sure why this occurred given the same shim file that's signed by MS should be used for either distro.  I booted off a rescue image and reinstalled the RHEL kernel, didn't help, reinstalled efiboot and shim packages, didn't help.  Simply turning off secure boot in the 'bios' or efi manager would fix this, but I'm guessing vmware hasn't implemented this yet?
Hi all, does anyone know if there's a way to zero a vmdk when deleting a VM via the thick client or web interface?  We've switched to XtremIO storage, so the problem is that when deleting a VM, v... See more...
Hi all, does anyone know if there's a way to zero a vmdk when deleting a VM via the thick client or web interface?  We've switched to XtremIO storage, so the problem is that when deleting a VM, vcenter/vsphere may delete the vmdk file from VMFS' perspective, but that unique data that was once a VM remains as allocated physical storage on the XtremIO unless we're lucky and a new VM's vmdk uses vmfs space previously inhabited by a now-deleted VM.  This results in us having absolutely no idea how much physical storage is truly left on the array; do we really have 50% from each vmdk replacing a previous one and using the same blocks, do we really have 90% because future vmdk's would be put on top of space that's currently used from XtremIO's perspective, etc. I supposed the only way to really know what you have left on your xtremio would be to live migrate all your vm's to a new LUN, zero the entire LUN, move things back, until you've gone through them all.  This of course does not take into account waste at the guest file system level from deleted files. Thanks!
Another week, another 30+ Flash bugs... Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:1603-01 Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementa... See more...
Another week, another 30+ Flash bugs... Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:1603-01 Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementary Advisory URL:      https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-1603.html Issue date:        2015-08-12 CVE Names:         CVE-2015-5127 CVE-2015-5128 CVE-2015-5129                    CVE-2015-5130 CVE-2015-5131 CVE-2015-5132                    CVE-2015-5133 CVE-2015-5134 CVE-2015-5539                    CVE-2015-5540 CVE-2015-5541 CVE-2015-5544                    CVE-2015-5545 CVE-2015-5546 CVE-2015-5547                    CVE-2015-5548 CVE-2015-5549 CVE-2015-5550                    CVE-2015-5551 CVE-2015-5552 CVE-2015-5553                    CVE-2015-5554 CVE-2015-5555 CVE-2015-5556                    CVE-2015-5557 CVE-2015-5558 CVE-2015-5559                    CVE-2015-5560 CVE-2015-5561 CVE-2015-5562                    CVE-2015-5563 CVE-2015-5564
Apparently fixing this isn't a priority.  Just installed a fresh build 6.0.0, 2809209 standalone and while the fat client will accept an NTP server, and apparently stores it somewhere because the... See more...
Apparently fixing this isn't a priority.  Just installed a fresh build 6.0.0, 2809209 standalone and while the fat client will accept an NTP server, and apparently stores it somewhere because the value survives a reboot, the value never ends up in ntp.conf.  I had to add it via ssh.  I didn't try the web client since using that piece of garbage is slower than enabling ssh, logging in, editing and starting.
This does not happen often, but often enough to be extremely annoying and time consuming.  We have a vCenter 5.5 Enterprise Plus setup with a ~20 ESXi hosts.  Every so often, a host will become i... See more...
This does not happen often, but often enough to be extremely annoying and time consuming.  We have a vCenter 5.5 Enterprise Plus setup with a ~20 ESXi hosts.  Every so often, a host will become isolated for reasons unknown.  Vmware support believes it to be related to firmware versions on the hosts' virtual NIC's as they're part of a Cisco UCS setup, so that's being worked on independently.  Anyway, when this occurs, the VM's will typically still be running fine.  If I get on the console of the host that is isolated, sometimes it will let me log in, sometimes it won't, sometimes it will but only after a solid 10 or 20 minutes of waiting after hitting enter from the password prompt.  If I try to restart the agents, it will usually show as "Stopping..." but I've let it wait hours after that and it has never progressed any further. That being the case, when this occurs, our standard process is to shut down all the VM's running on that host manually by logging into them directly and stopping the OS, since vCenter, vSphere and the vmware tools are all useless at this point from an automation standpoint.  This is of course a pain and labor intensive.  We have to do it though because if we just bounce the host, sometimes the guest filesystem will need repair when the guests come back up, or, the guest won't reboot on another node until you get in via ssh and clear a lock. Bounce the host, and the next big assortment of issues begins.  First question; with the host reset, is there a way to speed up the remaining hosts going through the HA election process so we can more quickly arrive at the state where the VM's can be selected for power on?  It seems to take forever if we leave the questionable host down, but still takes a while even if we let it boot back up and re-join. In either case, once we're at the point of powering guests back on, which of course isn't automatic, we often run into the issue of each guest raising the question of was this VM moved or copied?  We have to manually go into each one to answer.  Any way to optimize that process? Finally, another issue we see is networking not coming up as 'connected'.  If you try to edit and check connected, the error "Invalid configuration for device '0'" shows up, as described in this article: VMware KB: Enabling a virtual NIC for a virtual machine in a vDS portgroup after a storage migration fails with the … My solution to that is typically power guest back down gracefully since tools are now running and accessible, vmotion it to another host, boot back up, and then it seems to find a working port. I would love any and all suggestions on how better to deal with the above issue.  If we didn't need vm monitoring on some of the vm's, it almost seems like HA causes more downtime than it protects from, in an imperfect world where hosts may have issues occasionally.  Thanks!
Whoever at Vmware is responsible for this: needs a kick to the groin.
Two critical flash vulnerabilities in the same month; it must be my birthday! =====================================================================                    Red Hat Security Advisor... See more...
Two critical flash vulnerabilities in the same month; it must be my birthday! =====================================================================                    Red Hat Security Advisory Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:1184-01 Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementary Advisory URL:      https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-1184.html Issue date:        2015-06-24 CVE Names:         CVE-2015-3113 =====================================================================
I can almost set my watch by the monthly critical Flash vulnerability discoveries and patches: Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:1086-01 ... See more...
I can almost set my watch by the monthly critical Flash vulnerability discoveries and patches: Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:1086-01 Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementary Advisory URL:      https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-1086.html Issue date:        2015-06-10 CVE Names:         CVE-2015-3096 CVE-2015-3098 CVE-2015-3099                    CVE-2015-3100 CVE-2015-3102 CVE-2015-3103                    CVE-2015-3104 CVE-2015-3105 CVE-2015-3106                    CVE-2015-3107 CVE-2015-3108
Hey, everyone go through your weekly Flash updates since yet another batch of security vulnerabilities have come out: =====================================================================    ... See more...
Hey, everyone go through your weekly Flash updates since yet another batch of security vulnerabilities have come out: =====================================================================                    Red Hat Security Advisory Synopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security update Advisory ID:       RHSA-2015:0813-01 Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementary Advisory URL:      https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0813.html Issue date:        2015-04-15 CVE Names:         CVE-2015-0346 CVE-2015-0347 CVE-2015-0348                    CVE-2015-0349 CVE-2015-0350 CVE-2015-0351                    CVE-2015-0352 CVE-2015-0353 CVE-2015-0354                    CVE-2015-0355 CVE-2015-0356 CVE-2015-0357                    CVE-2015-0358 CVE-2015-0359 CVE-2015-0360                    CVE-2015-3038 CVE-2015-3039 CVE-2015-3040                    CVE-2015-3041 CVE-2015-3042 CVE-2015-3043                    CVE-2015-3044 ===================================================================== I love being forced to use something incredibly insecure; keep up the good work!
Wow, two whole months since the last critical Flash vulnerability; guess it's getting better.  Great choice vmware.                    Red Hat Security AdvisorySynopsis:          Critical: fla... See more...
Wow, two whole months since the last critical Flash vulnerability; guess it's getting better.  Great choice vmware.                    Red Hat Security AdvisorySynopsis:          Critical: flash-plugin security updateAdvisory ID:       RHSA-2015:0697-01Product:           Red Hat Enterprise Linux SupplementaryAdvisory URL:     https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2015-0697.htmlIssue date:        2015-03-17CVE Names:         CVE-2015-0332 CVE-2015-0333 CVE-2015-0334                   CVE-2015-0335 CVE-2015-0336 CVE-2015-0337                   CVE-2015-0338 CVE-2015-0339 CVE-2015-0340                   CVE-2015-0341 CVE-2015-0342
I'm pleased to announce that our product is still based on technology that gets hacked constantly, which means many companies forbid its use on their management networks; too bad.  It's like this... See more...
I'm pleased to announce that our product is still based on technology that gets hacked constantly, which means many companies forbid its use on their management networks; too bad.  It's like this thread doesn't exist; well like this thread and html5 both don't exist.
unsichtbare wrote: Even if I wanted to use the web-client, I still need the C# client for specific tasks I ONLY use the web client for tasks that have no parallel in the C# client. T... See more...
unsichtbare wrote: Even if I wanted to use the web-client, I still need the C# client for specific tasks I ONLY use the web client for tasks that have no parallel in the C# client. Thanks VMware for making me regularly use two client platforms to access my environment. It's even worse if you use the EMC plugins.  I have to bounce back and forth between the two clients all the time because some features made it over here, others are over there, EMC adds new features to the web client while ignoring the c# plugin, but some feature is still only in the c# plugin, etc.  It's so friggin' annoying. 
I would like to believe the idea behind the web client was to enable desktop-independent management of vcenter.  In reality, writing it in Flash was completely stupid since Flash is not exactly u... See more...
I would like to believe the idea behind the web client was to enable desktop-independent management of vcenter.  In reality, writing it in Flash was completely stupid since Flash is not exactly ubiquitous, especially on management networks and workstations where many companies forbade it after the endless, and continuing, string of vulnerabilities, or it simply doesn't work on the browser/OS the admin is using. If it wasn't implemented so horribly, it actually would not have been a bad idea, sans the fact that when the web services are broken on vcenter, or vcenter is down, you're screwed and will be going back to the thick client to correct things/reboot vm's via the hosts directly.  Now, instead of admitting they were wrong and bringing the thick client current while starting from scratch on a web client, everyone is left to suffer and wonder if anything will ever improve while they release a string of new vWhatever product renames.  I feel like going shopping for some soft corinthian leather.
Yes, it can only manage version 8 features, and it gives you an obnoxious dialog box every single time you edit a vm now reminding you that you're only able to edit version 8 settings, just to en... See more...
Yes, it can only manage version 8 features, and it gives you an obnoxious dialog box every single time you edit a vm now reminding you that you're only able to edit version 8 settings, just to ensure your day is even less efficient.  But it's at least still more efficient than trying to use the web client. An example of something you can't edit with the thick client would be a SATA controller and drive, since that's a v10 feature.  Of course, if you have VM's with those features, and had built a bunch of custom perl code using VMware's own SDK, that's all broken too since they didn't bother to update the SDK to include the new features either, so they're doing a fantastic job at breaking everything people use to be more efficient.