VMware

Prepare Certificate Authority for VCF Certificate Replacement

Shahrouz

In the previous blog post, we discussed the installation and initial configuration of Microsoft Certificate Service on a Windows Server and enabled Certificate Web Enrollment on that server. The second step to replacing the default self-signed certificate in VCF is to prepare the Certificate Authority with a new certificate template and assign a service account so that an alternative user can request the certificates instead of the default administrative accounts. With that said, let’s move forward with creating the customized certificate template.

When you request a certificate from a Certificate Authority(CA), the CA lets you choose from its templates store. We must create a template and publish it in the certificate store to create a customized certificate. Open the Certificate Authority snap-in from the CA server’s Administrative Tools to create the customized certificate. If you click Certificate Templates under your CA, you’ll see all the valid certificates in the certificate store.

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Installing and Configuring Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)

Shahrouz

One standard method of issuing valid certificates to infrastructure software solutions like VMware Cloud Foundation(VCF) is through an internal Microsoft Certificate Authority(CA). Most organizations that use Active Directory(AD) as a directory service also use AD Certificate Services to issue certificates when replacing the self-signed, auto-generated certificates. Even though this service might be installed and running in your infrastructure, this blog post explains how to install and configure it on a Windows Server machine to integrate with VCF infrastructure. After installing and configuring Certificate Authority, we should create a Certificates Template, integrate VCF with this CA, and finally request certificates and replace them through SDDC Manager,

In this post, we will install AD CS on a Windows Server 2022 joined to an Active Directory domain and configure Web Enrollment to allow users to request and retrieve certificates via a web interface.

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Setup SFTP on Ubuntu Server

Shahrouz

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a secure method for transferring files over a network. Unlike traditional FTP, which sends data in plain text, SFTP utilizes the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol to encrypt both the authentication information and the data being transferred. This encryption ensures that sensitive data remains protected during transit, making SFTP a preferred choice for secure file transfers in various environments.

Having an SFTP server is important in a VMware environment for secure and reliable file-based backups. Components like vCenter server, NSX manager, and SDDC manager use SFTP for file-based backups. SFTP also allows for centralized backup management and remote storage, enhancing disaster recovery capabilities by safeguarding data off-site and enabling quick restoration.

In this blog post, I’ll explain step-by-step how to setup SFTP service on an Ubuntu server.

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NSX SSL Certificate Replacement – Part 2

Shahrouz

In Part 1 of NSX SSL Certificate Replacement, the process of certificate template preparation and request has been explained. This blog post will teach you how to import and replace the generated certificate into NSX Manager. It is essential to verify the imported certificate before replacing it. I want to point out that if you are using a Virtual IP for your NSX management cluster, you should have generated the SSL certificate for the management cluster’s Virtual IP address.

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NSX SSL Certificate Replacement – Part 1

Shahrouz

NSX 4 installation comes with an out-of-the-box self-signed SSL certificate. For security and compliance reasons, most customers want to replace the default self-signed certificates with CA-signed certificates. In this two-part blog post, I’ll explain how to prepare your certificate infrastructure, request the certificate, and finally replace the SSL certificate. There are some very useful guides, like this one from VMware, but I will explain the whole certificate replacement process in the following blog posts.

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What’s New in vSAN 8U2

Sadaf

We have observed innovation, easy management, and supporting numerous features in every vSAN update. VMware announced vSAN 8U2, which contains new topology, features, and enhancements.

In this blog post, I will highlight the most crucial feature updates for Original Storage Architecture (OSA) and vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) that come into three different categories:

  • Flexible Topologies – vSAN MAX Storage Cluster
  • Core Platform Advances – Support of vSAN File Services in ESA
  • Enhanced Management – ESA Prescriptive Disk Claim, Auto Policy Remediation

So let’s start with introducing vSAN’s new Disaggregated HCI offering known as vSAN MAX, which provides high performance, efficiency, and resiliency. This solution is based on vSAN ESA, and it is very easy to scale in an incremental fashion. So instead of adding compute and storage together, you can add more storage and provide multiple petabytes of capacity for a vSphere cluster. vSAN Max supports up to 360TB capacity per host, which means with a maximum of 24 nodes per cluster in vSAN MAX, you can provide 8.5-petabyte storage for vSphere clusters.

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GRUB Root Password – NSX Installation

Shahrouz

Since the release of NSX-T 3.2, I have had questions about an option in the installation wizard of the NSX Manager OVA appliance regarding the GRUB root password, and in this post, I want to address it. If you wanted to recover a lost or forgotten password for the root account of the NSX Manager appliance, you had to reboot the appliance and force the boot process to enter the GRUB menu.

But to be able to do that, when everything was under control and you had the root’s password, you needed to log in to NSX managers with root and configure the GRUB Hidden Timeout. There was also a default password configured which we could use or change together with the hidden timeout configuration.

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What’s New vSphere 8 Update 1

Sadaf

In September 2022, an announcement was made about the release of vSphere 8 with new features and capabilities. Building on this momentum, the subsequent release of vSphere 8U1 brings new enhancements and improvements into three different categories of operating efficiency, elevated security, and supercharged workloads. So, by these pillars, customers can operate their infrastructure more efficiently, securely, and agile. So let’s start with the new enhancements in vSphere 8U1.

Operating efficiency

In vSphere 8, vSphere Configuration Profiles were introduced as a tech preview with some limitations of not supporting vSphere Distributed Switch and NSX. If you have not checked this functionality, read my blog post on what’s new in vSphere 8, which explains this functionality in more detail. But In vSphere 8U1, vSphere Configuration Profile is now fully supported and allows administrators to apply the homogenous configuration at the cluster level.

So you can set the desired configuration at the cluster level in JSON format and check the compliance of the hosts in the cluster; if they are not compliant, you can remediate the hosts to become compliant. But one point to remember, If the cluster has a Host profile attached to it, you will get a warning to remove the Host profile when you want to move to vSphere Configuration Profile. When you transition, you can no longer attach host profiles to the hosts within the cluster. vSphere Configuration Profiles now supports vDS configuration, and it can be activated when you create a new cluster, but environments with NSX still can’t use this technology.

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What’s New in vSAN 8 Update 1

Sadaf

On August 30, 2022, VMware announced vSAN 8 with a different architecture called vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). You may have already heard about the significant performance improvement, increased network throughput, and enhanced scalability that ESA offers. However, VMware has continued to innovate. With vSAN 8 U1, additional features and capabilities have been added to both the original vSAN architecture (OSA) and ESA, providing even greater flexibility and efficiency. In this article, we will focus on the new features of vSAN 8 Update 1.

The new capabilities in vSAN 8U1 are categorized into four pillars: Disaggregation, Performance Enhancement, Ease of Use, and Cloud-Native Storage.

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vSphere 8 – What’s New

Sadaf

I know many customers were waiting for the next release of VMware vSphere to realize the new capabilities and features. So there you go, Let’s check what’s new in vSphere 8!

VMware vSphere is the base solution on which most private cloud datacenters are running on. As VMware defines, vSphere 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of the cloud to on-premises workloads, supercharges performance through DPUs and GPUs, and accelerates innovation with an enterprise-ready integrated Kubernetes runtime.

In this post, I want to introduce the new and unique features that I found useful and interesting in vSphere 8.0!

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