Updating HPE Servers with SPP & iSUT

In my recent attempt to automate and get a better handle of some of the HPE servers in our fleet, I tried to use the HP SUM function of the SPP server remotely. If you're trying to patch a VMware host, especially a Gen10, you will need to make sure you download and configure the iSUT component on those servers from HP. I'll link to the two sites that I used to get a better handle of the steps necessary to proceed with the updates.

1. The Sleepy Admins - HPE Gen10 SUM iSUT
2. PLJDesigns - How to install iSUT on HPE Gen10 VMware Servers

From my research, it appears that the new VMware images from HPE already come with iSUT preloaded so if using a recent image, this might not be a requirements. If you're looking for the download links, you can find them for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7 here:

1. VMware vSphere 6.5 - HPE Download Link
2. VMware vSphere 6.7 - HPE Download Link

Nov 23, 2020 Edit - Found the github page from HPE for the iLO RESTful interface that contains a ton of good information. https://hewlettpackard.github.io/python-redfish-utility/

sut –set mode=AutoDeploy
 

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vSphere Update Manager: Status 401 OK

I recently upgraded our vCenter environment to version 6.7 Update 1 and started noticing that Update Manager related tasks and windows were not displaying and instead a red banner with 401 response error kept coming up. Unfortunately I was unable to find any resolution when the issue first came up, but more recently I found that it only manifests itself if you use Firefox as your browser of choice, which is in fact the scenario I've been facing.

VMware suggested workarounds:

1. clear your Firefox browser cache
2. use a different browser.

A fix should be upcoming, until then, those are your possible solutions. Source: VMware KB59696

OS Optimization Tool

I recently came across a tool to optimize your desktop OS as long as it is Windows 7 or newer. This tool does not support server OS, so take that into consideration. Also, this tool is built primarily to optimize virtual desktops, so double check any changes on a physical desktop if you decide to use it for that purpose.

Download Links:

VMware's OS Optimization Tool
VMware OS Optimization Tool Guide

Joining vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) to Active Directory

Joining Active Directory with vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has been simplified with every generation of VCSA, instructions to joining VCSA 6.7 to AD can be found at Elasticsky's site.

https://www.elasticsky.de/en/2018/10/joining-vcsa-to-active-directory/

Manually Updating VMware vSphere/ESXi (v5.5/6)

One of my recent projects consisted of updating all of our vSphere 5.5 clients, unfortunately, these hosts are not on an Internet accessible network, same with VMware Update Manager (VUM). The easy solution was to download the patches, import them into VUM and go at it. For the majority of hosts, this worked perfectly, for the ones that didn't, I really didn't feel like troubleshooting so I looked at updating them manually. The process is relatively simple, upload the same updates you placed onto VUM onto the local datastore and then run the CLI commands. Since someone already took the time to explain this with more detail, I'll go ahead and link them here:

http://www.vladan.fr/how-to-install-latest-esxi-vmware-patch/

Installing OpenFiler on HP ProLiant Server // VMware + NFS

For a current project at work, I've been stuck using local storage on a number of VMware 5.5 servers since we do not have any shared storage available. I decided to take things into my own hands and do the next best thing. Because we have an older HP ProLiant server available, I decided to load OpenFiler v2.99 onto it.  If you're wondering why I'm not using FreeNAS, the reason is simple, the HP server does not allow direct access to the drives, which is something that is needed to setup ZFS in FreeNAS.

The server has 8 total drives; I setup a RAID1 array with 2 drives housing the installation/configuration of OpenFiler and then a RAID5 array with the remaining 6 drives, which will be used to setup the NFS share available to the VMware hosts.

The first challenge came up when attempting to install OpenFiler from a USB drive. Using Rufus to transfer the installation ISO to a flash drive didn't work as intended, apparently you need to copy the ISO over to the flash drive as well. I am thankful for a couple of people that posted this info as it probably would have caused me to lose my sanity otherwise. For more information regarding how to properly create the bootable USB install drive, please see the SECASERVER blog. If you need additional visual representation of what the process looks like, some one was kind enough to post a YouTube video of that as well.

Thankfully after reading these instructions and watching the short video, the install went pretty smoothly. If you'd like to check out some instructions of how to setup OpenFiler NFS or iSCSI with a VMware host, Rob Bastiaansen posted a wonderful guide on the vmwarebits blog. If you'd like to use multiple NICs for redundancy and more bandwidth, you can setup link aggregation between the OpenFiler host and a switch. In my case, I'm using LACP on a Cisco switch. For more info, Conrad Jedynak has the following blog post showing a sample configuration.

Datastore Missing - Array/LUN detected

An article on how to fix this issue over at Ruger Lund's blog.

Setting up templates/cloning in VMware 3.5

To be able to use cloning, templates or be able to customize VMs, sysprep needs to be installed within the Virtual Center server. Instructions are available on VMware's website.