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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘VMware’ Category

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Some VMware ESXi 7 download filenames and checksums

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/15

The free ESXi 7 download page only get these downloads:

VMware vSphere Hypervisor – Binaries

VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image

2020-06-23 | 7.0b | 351.9 MB | iso

Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools.

MD5SUM(¹): 6b74910d911cabcd346028071eb83682
SHA1SUM(¹): 9eeff60e4257d763f49d9b39e1dbaee4fe22acbd
SHA256SUM(¹): 7bebfc1bc0794b0964b9ee731860785794fb678d49a1f06d5e62524b805f2b72

VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) Offline Bundle

2020-06-23 | 7.0b | 346 MB | zip

Contains VIB packages and image profiles for ESXi including VMware Tools. Use the image profiles and the VIB packages with VMware Image Builder and VMware Auto Deploy to create custom image/ISO generation for ESXi deployments.

MD5SUM(¹): d40887d357dd7042d75d1460d70396ca
SHA1SUM(¹): 620bc355af3d23436eedc1ef49a62225a18f862f
SHA256SUM(¹): d26ce8c036cc2a6c1a49a15c2ecfd471f17df80b4b88e9ed4093671be6b0dec5

There have been many more ESXi versions, that some of the time you want for regression, and some of the time because they are better.

Some of the times (like right now) you do also do NOT want a version, like the current ESXi 7.0 update 2 which got retracted on March 13th, but is still available on the free vSphere 7 evaluation.

I started to notice yesterday that a few folks in the community were running into the following error after upgrading their ESXi hosts to latest 7.0 Update 2 release: Failed to load crypto64.efi Fa…

UPDATE (03/13/2021) – It looks like VMware has just pulled the ESXi online/offline depot and has updated KB 83063  to NOT recommend customers upgrade to ESXi 7.0 Update 2. A new patch is actively being developed and customers should hold off upgrading until that is made available.

UPDATE (03/10/2021) – VMware has just published KB 83063 which includes official guidance relating to the issue mentioned in this blog post.

Warning! – Mar 13 2021 Update – Don’t upgrade to 7.0 Update 2 yet.
If you try to upgrade now anyway, you may experience one of these two errors:

1) Using vLCM (Lifecycle Manager)

to update your ESXi host, you see this error:

  Loading /boot.cfg
  Failed to load crypto64.efi
  Fatal error: 15 (Not found)

2) Using ESXCLI

to update your ESXi host, you see this error:

  [root@xd-1541-5028d:~] esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-7.0.2-17630552-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
  [NoMatchError]
  No image profile found with name 'ESXi-7.0.2-17630552-standard'
        id = ESXi-7.0.2-17630552-standard
  Please refer to the log file for more details.
  [root@xd-1541-5028d:~]

you’ll want to see this excerpt from VMware KB 83063 published on Mar 12 2021

The vSphere 7 evaluation page is always the one where to get the latest version: [Wayback/Archive.is] How do I download the latest ESXi 7.x .iso? VMWare’s site only lists 7.0.0 : vmware.

Do not get ESXi 7.0 update 2 yet [Wayback] my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/evalcenter?p=vsphere-eval-7:

The hypervisor should be directly installed on any supported physical server targeted for hosting virtual machines.

VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image

2021-03-09 | 7.0U2 | 390.53 MB | iso

Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools.

MD5SUM(¹): a085686c3fc8a438a40382118448a846
SHA1SUM(¹): 1ceed7c40b1cd6f97f12eacc027037e202fcb6e9
SHA256SUM(¹): ff20603e4a3e75ab20c7752ca4e3e28d55d28730d6947c849a4cc5beacf9878d

There are many sites outside of VMware where you can get these versions, which you can validate by verifying their checksums.

Luckily, VMware has pages with checksums of the Offline Bundle files, so I have listed them below.

  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 2 Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U2-17630552-depot.zip
    Build: 17630552
    Download Size: 390.9 MB
    md5sum: 4eae7823678cc7c57785e4539fe89d81
    sha1checksum: 7c6b70a0190bd78bcf118f856cf9c60b4ad7d4b5
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1d Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U1d-17551050-depot.zip
    Build: 17551050
    Download Size: 363.0 MB
    md5sum: 2ff3ce7fb83ac1659a9142ad4510bdfe
    sha1checksum: a84b2bcdae56a95609844f3f8dcc46d28e736b39
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1c Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U1c-17325551-depot.zip
    Build: 17325551
    Download Size: 523.2 MB
    md5sum: d1410e6c741ada23c3570e07b94bd8c7
    sha1checksum: a70defe8353b39f74339b158697ed1a12df6c55d
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1b Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U1b-17168206-depot.zip
    Build: 17168206
    Download Size: 360.6 MB
    md5sum: f6651dba2cf3e28f639b45068760f286
    sha1checksum: 1fa79325cefa5730f1fa6f6e8a958b499051d81a
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1a Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U1a-17119627-depot.zip
    Build: 17119627
    Download Size: 360.6 MB
    md5sum: 37209643e5d483f70d82c39d3a0e02c8
    sha1checksum: 19efc144e0bccef65e3e27f815502bfb73a05782
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 1 Release Notes
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0U1-16850804-depot.zip
    Build: 16850804
    Download Size: 360.6 MB
    md5sum: 3c12872658250d3bd12ed91de0d83109
    sha1checksum: 7cc4e669e3dddd0834487ebc7f90031ae265746c
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes
  • [Wayback] VMware ESXi 7.0, Patch Release ESXi 7.0b
    Download Filename: VMware-ESXi-7.0b-16324942-depot.zip
    Build: 16324942
    Download Size: 508.5 MB
    md5sum: 18a8c2243a0bd15286c331092ab028fc
    sha1checksum: d0a02bbf0716364fb3e799501357944c88e17401
    Host Reboot Required: Yes
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

When registering for ESXi 7: “Content Not Available Dear user, the web content you have requested is not available.”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/15

VMware ESXi 7 registration fails on Chrome

VMware ESXi 7 registration fails on Chrome

The “free-esxi#” pages are the only place where you can register for and view your ESXi licenses, as they are not part of my.vmware.com/group/vmware/my-licenses (that would make it easy, but that’s not how VMware is a corporate).

It really is the only place, and the documentation is buried deep in the KB pages: [Archive.is] Downloading and licensing vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 6.x & 7.x) (2107518).

If you get “content not avaiable” while registering for ESXi 7 [Wayback] maintenance.vmware.com/info4.html?source=dwnp&p=free-esxi7 by clicking on the “Register” button on [Wayback] my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi7 …

The dreaded register button.

The dreaded register button.

 

Content Not Available

Dear user, the web content you have requested is not available.

… then remember that VMware has been as corporate as banks for years, which means that their web-sites only work properly in a limited set of browsers. Chrome is not one of them any more, but Firefox seems to for for me.

I am not alone bumping into this, many have and the site has been working/failing for years, for instance back in 2019: [Wayback] Is there still a free version of ESXI that is not … – VMware Technology Network VMTN

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Need to do some reading on local domains on the internal network

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/09

A long time I wondered why I saw ESXi systems on my local network have two entries in their /etc/hosts file:

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.71.91   ESXi-X10SRH-CF ESXi-X10SRH-CF

Then I bumped into someone who had a different setup:

[root@ESXi-X10SRH-CF:~] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.23    esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi

So now I knew that the first entry can have a domain resolving it (it still makes be wonder why ziggo is using a top-level domain to resolve local stuff; but searching for  dynamic.ziggo.nl did not get me further on that).

So I installed a quick ESXi machine on that local network, and got the same.

When back home the machine still thought it was esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl, though clearly I was outside a Ziggo network

I wanted to get rid of it, but that was hard.

Since I forgot to take screenshots beforehand, I can only provide the ones without a search domain bellow.

Reminder to self: visit someone within the Ziggo network, then retry.

Normally you can edit things like these in the default TCP/IP stack. There are two places to change this:

Neither of these allowed me to change it to a situation like this, but luckily the console did.

In the below files, I had to remove the bold parts, then restart the management network (I did keep a text dump, lucky me):

[root@esxi:/etc] grep -inr ziggo .
./vmware/esx.conf:116:/adv/Misc/HostName = "esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl"
./resolv.conf:2:search dynamic.ziggo.nl 
./hosts:5:192.168.71.194    esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi
[root@esxi:/etc] cat /etc/resolv.conf 
nameserver 192.168.71.3
search dynamic.ziggo.nl 
[root@esxi:/etc] cat /etc/hosts
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost
::1     localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.71.194  esxi.dynamic.ziggo.nl esxi

Future steps

  1. Read more on local domains, search domains and related topics
  2. Configure a local domain on my local network, so DHCP hands it out, and DHCP handed out host names are put in the local DNS
  3. Test if all services on all machines still work properly

Reading list

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in DNS, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, Internet, Mainboards, Network-and-equipment, Power User, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, X10SRH-CF, X9SRi-3F | Leave a Comment »

Supermicro Single CPU Board for ESXi Home lab – Upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F | ESX Virtualization

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/09

This LSI 3008 HBA update to TI firmware is still on my wish list, but I could not find it when I bought the board in 2018.

[WayBack] Supermicro Single CPU Board for ESXi Home lab – Upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F | ESX Virtualization:

As you know my lab got an addition this year with Supermicro’s Single CPU board, the X10SRH-CLN4F. In this post we will be upgrading LSI 3008 HBA on the X10SRH-CLN4F.

…

I have learned a new way to patch via UEFI. In fact, it’s same (or easier) than through DOS-based bootable USB. The IT firmware can be reverted back to IR firmware as in the ZIP package there are both versions there. So in case you need a server with hardware RAID, you can use the IR version. I was actually wondering what it means the IT and IR and here is what I have found at LSI (Avago) website:

“IT” firmware maximizes the connectivity and performance aspects of the HBA. “IR” firmware offers RAID functionality via RAID 0, 1, and 10 capabilities.

Via:

SR-IOV?

The step afterwards is to enable SR-IOV for this LSI 3008 HBA.

These links should help with that:

 

 

–jeroen

Posted in ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, Mainboards, Power User, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, X10SRH-CF | Leave a Comment »

The tale of [SSH into ESXi 6.7 box resulting in “debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEXDH_REPLY”, delay and after entering password “Permission denied, please try again.”]

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/02

A similar ESXi 6.5 box worked well to ssh into, but on ESXi 6.7 it failed:

SSH into ESXi 6.7 box resulting in “debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEXDH_REPLY“, delay and after entering password “Permission denied, please try again.“

I had a hard time figuring out why: Login with the same user+password on the web user interface, DCUI and console shell work fine (see [WayBack] Enable SSH on VMware ESXi 6.x – VirtuBytes).

Searches that led me to EBCAK:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Hardware, IPMI, Mainboards, Power User, PowerCLI, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Disable ESXi Password Complexity – Perfect Cloud

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/29

Sometimes you have a long enough password, that matches with the confirmation, but pressing “Enter” to continue gives “Password does not have enough character types”:

From [WayBack] Disable ESXi Password Complexity – Perfect Cloud:

A part of my job as a VMware Certified Instructor is to update our lab systems whenever new vSphere versions come out.   After upgrading from 5.5 to 6.0 I decided we should change passwords, h…

This is the workflow:

  1. Make a backup of /etc/pam.d/passwd.
  2. Use vi to edit /etc/pam.d/passwd, and:
    1. Put a # in front of the lines starting with password requisite
    2. Remove the use_authtok bit of the line starting with password sufficient
    3. Put a # in front of the line starting with password required
    4. Quit vi while saving (press Esc, then enter :wq on the prompt)
  3. Change the password to a less secure one
  4. Restore the original /etc/pam.d/passwd.

Via: esxi 6 force short password – Google Search

Working around this on during ESXi installation fails

I tried this:

  1. Press Alt-F1 to go from the installation screen to the console screen
  2. Logon as root, with no password at all to get to the command-prompt:

  3. Perform the /etc/pam.d/passwd editing steps above
  4. Press Alt-F2 to go back to the install screen
  5. Enter root password

The password requirements stayed.

(more screenshots at [WayBack] ESXi 6.7 installation Guide – Let We-i Go)

Related

On my ESXI 6.5 system where the italic bit is removed, besides the two lines being commented out:

  1. original /etc/pam.d/passwd:
    #%PAM-1.0

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordQualityControl".
password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,7,7
password   sufficient   /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so use_authtok nullok shadow sha512
password   required     /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so
  2. modified /etc/pam.d/passwd:
    #%PAM-1.0

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordQualityControl".
#password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,7,7
password   sufficient   /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok shadow sha512
#password   required     /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so

On my ESXI 6.7 system (which adds the bold lines below):

  1. original /etc/pam.d/passwd:
    #%PAM-1.0

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordQualityControl".
password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,7,7

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordHistory"
password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok enforce_for_root retry=2 remember=0

password   sufficient   /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so use_authtok nullok shadow sha512
password   required     /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so
  2. modified /etc/pam.d/passwd:
    #%PAM-1.0

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordQualityControl".
#password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_passwdqc.so retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,7,7

# Change only through host advanced option "Security.PasswordHistory"
#password   requisite    /lib/security/$ISA/pam_pwhistory.so use_authtok enforce_for_root retry=2 remember=0

password   sufficient   /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok shadow sha512
#password   required     /lib/security/$ISA/pam_deny.so

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9SRi-3F

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/12

I still like this board: Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9SRi-3F.

It has been in a storage solution for a while, uses OK power, has not many SATA ports, but enough slots for expansion cards, and comes with two network connections and 8 slots which I fitted with a total of 256 gibibyte of memory.

Some links, as SuperMicro tends to hide them behind POST requests:

Note that IPMI over je Java Web Start.app runs into certificate signing issues, so better use Supermicro IPMIViewer for this:

IPMIView links via:

The errors when running the KVM Console from your web browser are waved away by SuperMicro, but more and more people bump into them:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Hardware, Mainboards, Power User, Software Development, SuperMicro, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, X9SRi-3F | Leave a Comment »

A choco install list

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/03

Sometimes I forget the choco install mnemonics for various tools, so here is a small list below.

Of course you have to start with an administrative command prompt, and have a basic Chocolatey Installation in place.

If you want to clean cruft:

choco install --yes choco-cleaner

Basic install:

choco install --yes 7zip
choco install --yes everything
choco install --yes notepadplusplus
choco install --yes beyondcompare
choco install --yes git.install --params "/GitAndUnixToolsOnPath /NoGitLfs /SChannel /NoAutoCrlf /WindowsTerminal"
choco install --yes hg
choco install --yes sourcetree
choco install --yes sysinternals

For VMs (pic one):

choco install --yes vmware-tools
choco install --yes virtio-drivers

For browsing (not sure yet about Chrome as that one has a non-admin installer as well):

choco install --yes firefox

For file transfer (though be aware that some versions of Filezilla contained adware):

choco install --yes filezilla
choco install --yes winscp

For coding:

choco install --yes vscode
choco install --yes atom

For SQL server:

choco install --yes sql-server-management-studio

For web development / power user:

choco install --yes fiddler

For SOAP and REST:

choco install --yes soapui

If you don’t like manually downloading SequoiaView at gist.github.com/jpluimers/b0df9c2dba49010454ca6df406bc5f3d (e8efd031d667de8a1808d6ea73548d77949e7864.zip):

choco install --yes windirstat

For drawing, image manipulation (paint.net last, as it needs a UI action):

choco install --yes gimp
choco install --yes imagemagick
choco install --yes paint.net

For ISO image mounting in pre Windows 10:

choco install --yes wincdemu

For hard disk management:

choco install --yes hdtune
choco install --yes seatools
choco install --yes speedfan

For Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners (not sure yet this includes PDF support):

choco install --yes scansnapmanager

–jeroen

Posted in 7zip, atom editor, Beyond Compare, Chocolatey, Compression, Database Development, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Everything by VoidTools, Fiddler, Firefox, Fujitsu ScanSnap, git, Hardware, Mercurial/Hg, Power User, Scanners, SOAP/WebServices, Software Development, Source Code Management, SQL Server, SSMS SQL Server Management Studio, SysInternals, Text Editors, Versioning, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, vscode Visual Studio Code, Web Browsers, Web Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

OSX 10.13 with vSphere 6.7 – Virtual Odyssey

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/16

Interesting: I never realised that getting MacOS installed on ESXi was relatively easy!

[WayBack] OSX 10.13 with vSphere 6.7 – Virtual Odyssey:

vCenter 6.7a/ESXi 6.7a Installing OSX 10.13 seemed pretty straight forward on 6.7. Essentially, you mount the ISO as per usual, and the only thing I had to do before starting the installation was to format the disk via terminal. Once…

So no need for all this:

–jeroen

 

Posted in ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

Converting a virtual IDE disk to a virtual SCSI disk (1016192)

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/11

Just in case I have a VM with only IDE disks of which one ore more need to become SCSI disks: [WayBack] Converting a virtual IDE disk to a virtual SCSI disk (1016192)

TL;DR

  1. Add one SCSI disk
  2. Install drivers for it and get it recognised
  3. When the VM is shutdown:
    1. Modify the disk description of the IDE disk to SCSI (hack) or
    2. (often easier) remove the disk, then attach it to the SCSI controller

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »

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