Category: VMware

New Release – VMware vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware released vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d (Build 7312210) to update few third party packages and to fix plenty of bugs. This release also brings a new icon for vSAN witness appliances.

You can already download the update from my.vmware.com site (login is required).

vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d

Note: If you look for VCSA installation instructions, check this article: How to Install VCSA 6.5 (VMware vCenter Server Appliance). If you need update instructions check these articles: Update vCSA using VAMI and Update vCSA using Appliance Shell.

Issues resolved in vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d

In vCenter 6.5 Update 1d, VMware updated multiple packages:

  • Oracle (Sun) JRE 1.8.0_141
  • Spring Framework 4.3.9
  • OpenSSL 1.0.2l
  • Tomcat 8.5.15
  • Apache Struts 2.5.13
  • Eclipse Jetty 9.2.22

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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0021

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VMware has released a new security advisory: “VMSA-2017-0021 – VMware ESXi, vCenter Server Appliance, Workstation and Fusion updates address multiple security vulnerabilities”.

Among affected products, we find vCenter Server Appliance 6.5, ESXi (5.5, 6.0, and 6.5), Workstation 12.x, and Fusion 8.x.

VMSA-2017-0021 – ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion stack overflow via authenticated VNC session

CVE-2017-4941 – VMware ESXi, Workstation, and Fusion contain a vulnerability that could allow an authenticated VNC session to cause a stack overflow via a specific set of VNC packets. A successful exploitation will result in remote code execution in a virtual machine via the authenticated VNC session. As prerequisites for a successful exploit, VNC must be manually enabled in a virtual machine’s .vmx configuration file and ESXi must be configured to allow VNC traffic through the firewall.

Affected products and versions:

  • ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 (install patches ESXi550-201709101-SG or ESXi600-201711101-SG)
  • Workstation 12.x (upgrade to version 12.5.8)
  • Fusion 8.x (upgrade to version 8.5.9)

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vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2

New Release – VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2

Constantin Ghioc 2 Comments

vCenter Converter Standalone is a handy tool used to convert Windows or Linux computers to different types of VMware virtual machines. You can convert physical or virtual machines, and even AWS or Azure instances. VMware released few days ago vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2, a version which supports VMware vSphere 6.5 Update 1.

vCenter Converter Standalone New Features

  • Support for vSphere 6.5 Update 1 endpoints.
  • Support for new guest operating systems: Windows Server 2016 and Ubuntu 16.
  • New configuration option for Linux migrations. You can provide a path for the temporary files of vmware-sysinfo to be extracted and executed.
  • New configuration option to change the default destination provisioning disk type from thick to thin.

You can opt to install the Convertor on a variety of operating systems, ranging from Windows Vista SP2 to Windows 10 and from Windows Server 2008 SP2 to the latest Windows Server 2016.

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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0020

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: “VMSA-2017-0020 – VMware AirWatch Console updates address Broken Access Control vulnerability”.

VMware AirWatch Console has a Broken Access Control vulnerability. Successful exploitation of this issue could result in end-user device details being disclosed to an unauthorized administrator.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project has assigned the identifier CVE-2017-4942 to this issue.

The vulnerability consists of two distinct issues which, together, could allow a tenant to accidentally come into contact with another tenant’s device details. The first issue occurs as the result of a UI issue present under certain conditions, which may lead to the display of an incorrect device’s details. The second issue occurs when the device details are incorrectly displayed to the unauthorized administrator, which results from a missing access control check performed on the request.

AirWatch Console 9.2.2 (released on 5th December) resolved the issue. For more details on this version you can check KB115015625647 (please note you need to login) and the release notes.

For shared SaaS environments, no action is required as all shared SaaS environments have been patched for this vulnerability. For dedicated SaaS and On-Premises, patches have been made available for all AirWatch Console versions 9.0.1 and up.

VMware has also released a workaround for customers who are unable to immediately apply the patch. You can check it in KB115015676547.

You can check reports on other VMware vulnerabilities in my page dedicated to Security Advisories.

How to Update ESXi 6.5 with Command Line

Constantin Ghioc 1 Comment

In a previous post I wrote about how to easily update ESXi 6.5 using Update Manager. This time I will show another method of updating ESXi, more specific I will update ESXi 6.5 with the command line tool (esxcli). This method works either the ESXi server is standalone or added to a vCenter Server (I will use no component of vCenter Server).

When is this method better than using the Update Manager? The simplest use case is when you have no vCenter Server (because Update Manager is a component of vCenter Server). In other cases, you may be more familiar running scripts than clicking into a user interface 🙂

As a prerequisite, I placed the ESXi server in maintenance mode. Let’s start!

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Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling - Dashboard

How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

In an earlier post I showed how to install vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling. The biggest difference between fling version and the vCenter 6.5 supported version is that the fling gets updated more often. In this post I will show how easy it is to update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling.

I will start from the base version 3.27.0 build 7055108. My target is to update the fling to version 3.29.0 build 7157335. Even if only 2 weeks passed since 3.27.0 release, there are few new features available:

  • Configure advanced CPU Identification Mask
  • Select PVRDMA adapter type for a VM network
  • Configure traffic filtering and marking rules on distributed port groups
  • Export and import distributed switches and distributed port groups

See the full change log in the official fling repository.

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PowerCLI 6.5.4

New Release – VMware PowerCLI 6.5.4

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

Although VMware released PowerCLI 6.5.3 a little over a month ago, here comes a pleasant surprise: few days ago VMware made available the shiny new version PowerCLI 6.5.4! The new version brings us improvements in two areas:

  • new module for VMware Cloud on AWS
  • new cmdlets for storage module

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VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisories VMSA-2017-0018.1 and VMSA-2017-0019

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released information on few vulnerabilities covering Workstation, Player, Fusion, Horizon View Client and NSX: “VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0018.1 – VMware Workstation, Fusion and Horizon View Client updates resolve multiple security vulnerabilities” and “VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0019 – NSX for vSphere update addresses NSX Edge Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) issue”.

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Veeam Vanguard Nominations 2018

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Veeam Vanguard
Veeam Vanguard

Back in 2015, Veeam launched a global influencer program” called Veeam Vanguard. Program was organized by Rick Vanover (MVP, vExpert, Cisco Champion) together with a team of other vExperts and MVPs (Doug Hazelman, Luca Dell’Oca, Clint Wyckoff).

“The Veeam Vanguard Program is a hand-selected list of people of all backgrounds who Veeam feels embraces our brand best in their communities. Some Vanguards are bloggers, some are active on our Veeam Forums, some are active on Spiceworks sharing a lot of Veeam-specific information and the list goes on for all of the ways Vanguards have engaged.” – Rick Vanover

Fast forward to 2017, and for the third edition of the program we have 61 Veeam Vanguards from 26 countries. Among them I noticed people well-known from VMware community, like Andrea Mauro, Christian Mohn, John Nicholson, Liselotte Foverskov, Mike Preston, Vladan Seget, Paul Braren, Andreas Lesslhumer, David Hill, Pete Flecha, or Melissa Palmer. For a full list of Vanguards, you can check the official list.

We’ll move now to current days, with exciting news: nominations for Veeam Vanguard 2018 edition are open! Veeam plans to expand the program this year. Vanguards have privileged access to Product Strategy Team, product betas and briefings. You can nominate yourself or someone you know it fits the profile. Nominations will be accepted until 29 December 2017.

Go now and fill your nomination to Veeam Vanguard 2018!

VMware Security Advisory

VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2017-0017

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware has released a new security advisory: “VMSA-2017-0017 – VMware vCenter Server update resolves LDAP DoS, SSRF and CLRF injection issues“.

VMSA-2017-0017 advisory covers two issues affecting VMware vCenter Server:

  • CVE-2017-4927 – VMware vCenter Server doesn’t correctly handle specially crafted LDAP network packets which may allow for remote DoS. This issue affects vCenter Server 6.5 and 6.0. vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1 and 6.0 Update 3c fix this issue.
  • CVE-2017-4928 – SSRF and CRLF injection issues in vSphere web client. An attacker may exploit the Flash-based vSphere Web Client by sending a POST request with modified headers towards internal services leading to information disclosure. This issue affects vCenter Server 6.0 and 5.5. vCenter Server 6.0 Update 3c and 5.5 Update 3f fix this issue.

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