Vmware

Whilst troubleshooting at a client today, I needed to perform a packet capture on one of the Edge Services Gateways in the environment. Performing a packet capture is often very helpful in diagnosing a range of different issues. To kick off a packet capture you can jump on the console of the ESG or like I am doing in this example, open up an SSH session to the ESG. You will need to know what interface to run the capture on, so run the following command to list out all the interfaces (for ease of reading I have removed all the interfaces that were showing down/down from the output) ...

NSX-v allows the creation of Security Groups to group objects to be used in DFW rules and security policies. Each security group can have a mix of static and dynamic membership (If you want to get picky, you can also statically exclude objects). One of the possible ways to dynamically include members into the security group is to match on a security tag. This allows a VM to have security tags assigned to them, and based on the security tag, a VM can be dynamically added as a security group member. ...

When faced with migrating from a Checkpoint installation to a VMware NSX-v installation, at some point someone is going to need to get all the objects across to the new firewall platform. I was recently asked to help add some functionality to a script to take some data from an odumper csv output and pump it into NSX-v. The following script is a bit of a hack I put together. The script is based off one written by Brett Drayton (www.brettdrayton.com) in this post. ...

When using the NSX-v distributed firewall (DFW) have you ever need to find out if a service has already been configured in the system for a particular port number? Recently I was given a sample ruleset from a client to re-create in the DFW, and one thing that stood out was that when creating NSX firewall rules and faced with a random port number that needed to be configured for a rule, there is no easy way to find out if a service has already been configured using that port. ...

Over my years as a network engineer there has always been some element of scripting required. Whether it was formally required by a project, a particular situation or whether it was because i was sick of doing the same thing over and over again and wanted to make my life easier. As part of my new role at VMware, I get to play with NSX for vSphere or NSX-v, and one thing that becomes apparent, is that if you don’t learn how to use the REST API, there will be certain situations where you will not be able to achieve your desired outcome. The NSX REST API, can be used to configure items which are not exposed in the UI, or you can use your favourite scripting language and script repetitive tasks. ...

Whilst deploying a NSX 6.1 and vRA 6.1 lab for some testing, I came across a peculiar error in regards to deploying a 1-arm load balancer. Essentially it wouldn’t work! When vRA was trying to execute the multi-machine blueprint, it would provision all the VMs correctly and then destroy them shortly afterwards. The logs would show the following error. [Timezone] [Error]: VcoWorkflow 'Create Edge': Failed after 00:00:10.4947127, java.lang.RuntimeException: com.vmware.o11n.plugins.nsx.error.VsmException: VSM response error (10166): Invalid Configuration. To deploy NSX Edge appliances, at-least one Vnic must be configured and must be connected to a valid portgroup. (Workflow:Create edge / Scriptable task (item1)#57) So after a bit of research, it turned out that you need to apply a hotfix for vRA 6.1 when integrated with NSX. ...

Today I finally passed my VCP-NV exam, and truth be told, it was only on my second attempt at the exam that I actually passed. When I booked my first attempt at the exam, I had a complete 4 week study plan worked out, however even the best laid plans always come unstuck, and mine came unstuck as I was sent interstate for work several times in the weeks leading up to my first attempt. Due to travelling for work I had completely forgotten that I had booked the exam, and it wasn’t until the night before the exam that I realised that it was booked for 8am the next morning. This meant that there was less than 10 hours until I had to start the exam. I had a choice… get some sleep or try and cram. I compromised and read the NSX design guide and called it a night. ...

So if you’ve landed on this post, it because you’ve searched for something to do with VMware vCenter Operations Manager. Whilst I am in not a guru when it comes to this product… yet, and with a bit of reading its possible to find out most of what you need, however, there was a fundamental piece of information that I couldn’t find recently and it was doing my head in. ...