Christoph Hochsticher

Spectre NG (CVE-2018-3639 and CVE-2018-3640)

August 3, 2018 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 1 comment

A short wrapup to the latest Intel security leaks for VMware Administrators: CVE-2018-3639 aka Speculative Store Bypass (SSB), Variant 4 CVE-2018-3640 aka Rogue System Register Read (RSRE), Variant 3a. Once again we have to patch the whole stack: Update vCenter CPU Microcode (BIOS Update) VMware ESXi Hypervisor Patch Check if the new CPU flags are mapped to a new VM All VMs – Shutdown and start (reboot is not enough!) Update Guest OS Get some hints about EVC-Mode and how…

Configure Huawei Ultrapath with PowerCli

January 24, 2018 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

The last days we got two new All-Flash Storage Systems. These systems can present LUNs in a Metro-Cluster fashion. So I got the challenge to configure the Storage Plugin UltraPath from Huawei. In the manual from Huawei is explained how to configure the settings with esxcli on the ESXi-Host. That’s fine, but not enough 😉 We want to configure this with PowerCli to easily manage more than one Host.

#get esxcli
$esxcli2 = Get-ESXCLI -VMHost (Get-VMhost MyHost-001) -V2

#show known diskarrays 
#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm show diskarray"
$esxcli2.upadm.show.diskarray.Invoke()

#show ulrapath configuration 
#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm show upconfig" 
$esxcli2.upadm.show.upconfig.Invoke()


#create arguments 
#set working mode to priority 
#and 
#set primary array to 0 or 1 
#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm set hypermetro workingmode -m priority -p 0" 
$arguments = $esxcli2.upadm.set.hypermetro.workingmode.CreateArgs() 
$arguments.mode = "priority" 
$arguments.primaryarrayid ="0" 
$esxcli2.upadm.set.hypermetro.workingmode.Invoke($arguments)

#get esxcli

$esxcli2 = Get-ESXCLI -VMHost (Get-VMhost MyHost-001) -V2

#show known diskarrays

#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm show diskarray"

$esxcli2.upadm.show.diskarray.Invoke()

#show ulrapath configuration

#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm show upconfig"

$esxcli2.upadm.show.upconfig.Invoke()

#create arguments

#set working mode to priority

#and

#set primary array to 0 or 1

#the corresponding esxcli command is = "esxcli upadm set hypermetro workingmode -m priority -p 0"

$arguments = $esxcli2.upadm.set.hypermetro.workingmode.CreateArgs()

$arguments.mode = "priority"

$arguments.primaryarrayid ="0"

$esxcli2.upadm.set.hypermetro.workingmode.Invoke($arguments)

UCS Upgrade failed

November 3, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

The last days I tried to upgrade my UCS Domain from 2.2.7(c) to 2.2.8(g). I have two UCS Domains. One of them went through the upgrade fine, the other one not :/ See what happend and how we fixed it …

How to: UCS to MDS Port Channel

October 2, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

The last Days I want to create a Port Channel between my UCS Chassis and my MDS Switch. See how to configure and get some hints.

vblog.hochsticher.de is now SSL secured

September 4, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

https://vblog.hochsticher.de is now SSL secured🔒 Please let me know if you experience any issue when displaying or link this site!

vapi endpoint service yellow – How to fix?

September 4, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

The last days I had an issue with the vapi endpoint service. This was caused when I recreated the VMCA Solution Certificates with the Certificate Manager. BTW: VMware Support advised me to do so :/ The complete Message was:

"Failed to connect to d30d9c10-e830-4a2e-b2dd-12de77fc11a3\com.vmware.cis.cls.vapi vAPI provider."

1	"Failed to connect to d30d9c10-e830-4a2e-b2dd-12de77fc11a3\com.vmware.cis.cls.vapi vAPI provider."

Look what other services are affected by this issue and how to fix it.

How much Storage do I need for Veeam?

August 20, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

When designing a new Veeam Backup Server, it’s essential to right size the Storage. To find out how much space is needed, check out the “The Restore Point Simulator” http://rps.dewin.me/

Got a PSOD? Check which VMs restarted by HA!

August 16, 2017 Christoph Hochsticher Comments 0 Comment

We design highly redundant Datacenters, Clusters, Storage Systems and even Networks, but in the end we still have some unplaned outages :/ This week we had a defect Memory DIMM that caused a PSOD on one ESXi Host. HA restarted the VMs fine, but we want to know quickly which VMs restarted. Check out a PowerCLI one liner to find the restarted VMs!