vSphere

VCF Upgrade Precheck Error “vSphere SHA-1 validation failed”

Shahrouz

Before upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to a newer release, you should first run an upgrade pre-check to ensure there are no issues that could arise during the upgrade. Recently, I helped one of our customers plan and execute the VCF upgrade from VCF 5.2.2 to 9.0.2, and we completed the Upgrade Precheck to ensure everything was in order! There are some expected errors, such as updating the vSAN HCL and the VCF LCM Manifest file, which are straightforward to resolve.

Besides the usual errors, we also faced “ERROR vSphere SHA-1 validation failed” and without addressing this issue, we shouldn’t continue the upgrade. This issue came up because the SHA-1 hashing algorithm was used to sign vCenter Server SSL certificates. VCF requires stronger algorithms, like SHA-256, for certificate signing.

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Prepare Certificate Authority for VCF Certificate Replacement

Shahrouz

In the previous blog post, we discussed the installation and initial configuration of Microsoft Certificate Service on a Windows Server and enabled Certificate Web Enrollment on that server. The second step to replacing the default self-signed certificate in VCF is to prepare the Certificate Authority with a new certificate template and assign a service account so that an alternative user can request the certificates instead of the default administrative accounts. With that said, let’s move forward with creating the customized certificate template.

When you request a certificate from a Certificate Authority(CA), the CA lets you choose from its templates store. We must create a template and publish it in the certificate store to create a customized certificate. Open the Certificate Authority snap-in from the CA server’s Administrative Tools to create the customized certificate. If you click Certificate Templates under your CA, you’ll see all the valid certificates in the certificate store.

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Setup SFTP on Ubuntu Server

Shahrouz

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a secure method for transferring files over a network. Unlike traditional FTP, which sends data in plain text, SFTP utilizes the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol to encrypt both the authentication information and the data being transferred. This encryption ensures that sensitive data remains protected during transit, making SFTP a preferred choice for secure file transfers in various environments.

Having an SFTP server is important in a VMware environment for secure and reliable file-based backups. Components like vCenter server, NSX manager, and SDDC manager use SFTP for file-based backups. SFTP also enables centralized backup management and remote storage, enhancing disaster recovery by safeguarding data off-site and enabling quick restoration.

In this blog post, I’ll explain step-by-step how to setup SFTP service on an Ubuntu server.

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What’s New vSphere 8 Update 1

Sadaf

In September 2022, an announcement was made about the release of vSphere 8 with new features and capabilities. Building on this momentum, the subsequent release of vSphere 8U1 brings new enhancements and improvements into three different categories of operating efficiency, elevated security, and supercharged workloads. So, by these pillars, customers can operate their infrastructure more efficiently, securely, and agile. So let’s start with the new enhancements in vSphere 8U1.

Operating efficiency

In vSphere 8, vSphere Configuration Profiles were introduced as a tech preview with some limitations of not supporting vSphere Distributed Switch and NSX. If you have not checked this functionality, read my blog post on what’s new in vSphere 8, which explains this functionality in more detail. But In vSphere 8U1, vSphere Configuration Profile is now fully supported and allows administrators to apply the homogenous configuration at the cluster level.

So you can set the desired configuration at the cluster level in JSON format and check the compliance of the hosts in the cluster; if they are not compliant, you can remediate the hosts to become compliant. But one point to remember, If the cluster has a Host profile attached to it, you will get a warning to remove the Host profile when you want to move to vSphere Configuration Profile. When you transition, you can no longer attach host profiles to the hosts within the cluster. vSphere Configuration Profiles now supports vDS configuration, and it can be activated when you create a new cluster, but environments with NSX still can’t use this technology.

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What’s New in vSAN 8 Update 1

Sadaf

On August 30, 2022, VMware announced vSAN 8 with a different architecture called vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). You may have already heard about the significant performance improvement, increased network throughput, and enhanced scalability that ESA offers. However, VMware has continued to innovate. With vSAN 8 U1, additional features and capabilities have been added to both the original vSAN architecture (OSA) and ESA, providing even greater flexibility and efficiency. In this article, we will focus on the new features of vSAN 8 Update 1.

The new capabilities in vSAN 8U1 are categorized into four pillars: Disaggregation, Performance Enhancement, Ease of Use, and Cloud-Native Storage.

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vSphere 8 – What’s New

Sadaf

I know many customers were waiting for the next release of VMware vSphere to realize the new capabilities and features. So there you go, Let’s check what’s new in vSphere 8!

VMware vSphere is the base solution on which most private cloud datacenters are running on. As VMware defines, vSphere 8 is the enterprise workload platform that brings the benefits of the cloud to on-premises workloads, supercharges performance through DPUs and GPUs, and accelerates innovation with an enterprise-ready integrated Kubernetes runtime.

In this post, I want to introduce the new and unique features that I found useful and interesting in vSphere 8.0!

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My IT Journey!

Sadaf

I am thrilled to announce that I am starting a new position as a Senior Solution Engineer at VMware!

My name is Sadaf, I am originally Iranian, but I live in Sweden! I am a double VCIX, vExpert, and vSAN specialist with more than ten years of experience in Information Technology!

In this post, I want to share my journey with you, especially for women who want to start their career in IT but are hesitant because they are afraid of not being accepted or judged in this man-dominant field! I just forgot! Heh! I am also an expert at being judged and bullied but never get surrendered, thanks to my non-relevant bachelor’s! But you know what? I could do it, so can you!

I have studied Business Administration, but my path crossed with IT when I was on an internship about 12 years ago!

I was part of the sales engineering team responsible for helping customers get certified in the Information Security Management System(ISMS)/ISO 27001.

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Top 25 Virtualization Blogs!

Shahrouz

We are super excited to announce that vElements.net has been selected among the top 25 Virtualization blogs by Feedspot. During the past three years, we have been working hard to publish technical articles to assist the community.

This selection at Feedspot is based on the following criteria:

  • Google reputation and Google search ranking
  • Influence and popularity on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites
  • Quality and consistency of posts
  • Feedspot’s editorial team and expert review

We really appreciate the support we get from the community and it gives us the energy to continue this journey!

Configure vSAN Stretched Cluster

Sadaf

vSAN Stretched cluster introduced in vSAN 6.1 and it brings high availability in an active-active fashion. In this architecture, ESXi hosts would be placed in two different physical locations and join together with high bandwidth low latency networking. But from a management perspective despite hosts being in two different sites they belong to one single vSAN Cluster and share their resources. So this solution can be used in environments where disaster avoidance is a critical matter. Because it gives you the ability to avoid disaster, or recover from a disaster by having two different physical sites that host your applications. So you need to group the hosts based on their physical locations and put them in two different fault domains.

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