Tag: vCenter

How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7

How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7 – Stage 2

Constantin Ghioc 3 Comments

In a previous article (How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7 – Stage 1) I walked through the first phase of the upgrade process for vCSA 6.7 (embedded deployment) – Deploy the OVA File of the new vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded Platform Services Controller. In this article I will cover phase 2 of the vCenter upgrade – transfer the data and setup the newly deployed vCenter Server Appliance.

Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7 – Stage 2

In the last step of the phase 1, I was presented with the following screen:

Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7 - Deploy VCSA Completed

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How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7

How to Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5 to 6.7 – Stage 1

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

In this article I will show you how to upgrade vCenter Server Appliance running 6.5 to the target version of 6.7. I will upgrade an embedded deployment (as per vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller Deployment Types: all services bundled with the Platform Services Controller are deployed together with the vCenter Server services on the same virtual machine or physical server).

The upgrade procedure consists in two steps:

  1. Stage 1 – Deploy the OVA File of the new vCenter Server Appliance with an embedded Platform Services Controller
  2. Stage 2 – transfer the data and setup the newly deployed vCenter Server Appliance

In this article I will cover Stage 1 (deployment of a new vCSA 6.7). In a later article I will cover Stage 2 (data migration from the old 6.5 vCSA to the new 6.7 vCSA).

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New Security Patch – vCenter Server 6.5 U1g

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VMware released today a new security patch, vCenter Server 6.5 U1g, build number 8024368. This release contains few VMware software fixes, security fixes, and third-party product fixes. The new patch can already be downloaded from My VMware portal (VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-8024368.iso, 3.36 GB). Patch is also available through standard online repository.

Updated packages in vCSA (Photon OS):

vCenter Server 6.5 U1g provides part of the hypervisor-assisted guest mitigation of CVE-2017-5715 for guest operating systems (Spectre-2 vulnerability). For more details on this mitigation, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2018-0004.3.

The patch also fixes an issue where in some cases the inclusion of an ESXi host into an empty Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) cluster would fail even though the host met the requirements.

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New Security Patch – vCenter Server 6.5 U1f

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

VMware released today a new security patch, vCenter Server 6.5 U1f, build number 7801515. This release patches the vCSA operating system (Photon OS) mainly against two vulnerabilities: bounds-check bypass (Spectre-1, CVE-2017-5753) and rogue data cache load issues (Meltdown, CVE-2017-5754). As of now, there is still no patch for branch target injection vulnerability (Spectre-2, CVE-2017-5715).

The new patch can already be downloaded from My VMware portal (VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7801515.iso, 3607.6 MB), but it’s not yet available on the online repository for update using management GUI or CLI. Update 16 February 2018: the patch is available on the online repository, see below for details.

Updated packages:

  • linux 4.4.110-2
  • libgcrypt 1.7.6-3
  • c-ares 1.12.0-2
  • ncurses 6.0-8
  • libtasn1 4.12-1
  • wget 1.18-3
  • procmail 3.22-4
  • rsync 3.1.2-4
  • apr 1.5.2-7

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.33

New Release – vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.33

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

What a release schedule! The team behind vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling is doing a beautiful job here, one release every other week. I previously blogged about v3.32 of the plugin and the vApp goodies it brought. Here we are in front of a new release, v3.33, with another great set of vApp and VM improvements.

If you don’t use yet the vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling, you can find here the installation details.

The update process is as easy as described in the How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling article. You just hit “Update vSphere Client” button in the management console and the update starts right away:

vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling - Update
vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling – Update

After the process is completed and you re-login to the web client, you will see the new version confirmation:

vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling - Version v3.33
vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling – Version v3.33

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vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32

New Release – vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

You may already know I’m a big fan of vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling, so you should be not surprised that I follow closely the development of this fling. Last few days like everybody else in the tech world I was busy with Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, but I still managed to notice that the development team released a new version: vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling v3.32.

If you still don’t use the fling (why wouldn’t you?), see the article How to Install vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling. If you just need to update it, see How to Update vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling.

Update 22 January 2018: Development Team does a great job on updating the fling, so here it is the new v3.33 version of vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling.

So, let’s see, what’s new in vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling?

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New Release – VMware vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1d

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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-2017-0017

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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Update vCenter Server Appliance

How to Update vCenter Server Appliance to 6.5 Update 1b

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

On 26 October 2017, VMware released VMware vCenter Server 6.5 Update 1b. In this article I will show you how to easily update vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) from version 6.5.x to the latest 6.5 Update 1b using vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface (VAMI). This version is also identified by version number 6.5.01100  and build number 6816762 (you can check KB2143838 for all vCenter build and version numbers – unfortunately VMware is a little behind to update this KB article).

Note: If you look for VCSA installation instructions, check this article: How to Install VCSA 6.5 (VMware vCenter Server Appliance).

In my case, I will update vCenter Server Appliance from 6.5.0.5500 build 5318154 to the latest 6.5.0.11000 build 6816762. I will start by accessing VAMI, on port 5480 of the vCenter Server (https://vcenter.lab.local:5480/ for my lab). I will authenticate with root user and corresponding password.

Update vCenter Server Appliance - VAMI Login

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How to Trust vCenter SSL Certificate

Constantin Ghioc Leave a comment

These days it’s easy to find small environments where VMware vCenter SSL certificate is not signed by a proper certification authority. For example, you just installed vCenter Server in your lab as described in How to Install VCSA 6.5 (VMware vCenter Server Appliance).

Below picture is something you see often in these environments. In this article I will show how to trust all vCenter issued certificates on a single Windows computer. This will take care of vCenter SSL certificate and also the ESXi servers certificates (only for the ESXi servers under vCenter management, of course) in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

vCenter SSL Certificate - Internet Explorer Error

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