Tag Archives: NSX

vSphere upgrade blog post header

Upgrading VMware vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5 (VMUG Presentation)

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Blog post born from a VMUG Presentation

Mid Feb, one of the London VMUG leaders posted on twitter, looking for someone to present on the subject of “upgrading from vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5”.

So I jumped at the chance, kind of, and offered to present. This blog post covers the content from that presentation.

  • vSphere 5.5 – End of Support
  • vSphere 6.5 – New features
  • OK, so let’s just upgrade then?
  • The plugin’s
  • SSO is gone!
  • Understand your topologies
  • Pre-Upgrade Tasks
  • The Upgrade, the big event
  • Gotcha’s
  • VSAN Considerations
  • vShield Manager is no more! Upgrade to NSX Manager
  • Resources

The presentation is available to download here – http://vexpert.me/London-vmug-dean (case sensitive link)

Dean Lewis London VMUG

Or I’ve figured out how to embed it from Slideshare.net below (But animations don’t seem to work);

vSphere 5.5 – End of Support
  • End of General Support for vSphere 5.5 is September 19, 2018
    • Includes vCenter 5.5, ESXi 5.5, VSAN 5.5
    • KB 51491
  • In the event you are unable to upgrade before the End of General Support (EOGS) and are active on Support and Subscription, you have the option to purchase extended support in one year increments for up to two years beyond the EOGS date.
    • Expect this to be more costly than general support.
    • SLA’s are more akin to that of basic support rather than production support
    • Annual security patch. Includes catastrophic/critical security fixes only
    • Ability to create hot patches for Severity 1 issues only
  • Technical Guidance for vSphere 5.5 is available until September 19, 2020 primarily through the self-help portal.
  • During the Technical Guidance phase, VMware does not offer new hardware support, server/client/guest OS updates, new security patches or bug fixes unless otherwise noted.
    • For example, there was no SPECTRE/Meltdown security patches released for vSphere 5.1

It’s not only the core vSphere 5.5 products that are affected, as we can see from the End-of-Support tracking page provided by virten.net. There are other VMware solutions that you have deployed that may also need upgrading.

vSphere 5.5 products end of support Continue reading Upgrading VMware vSphere 5.5 to vSphere 6.5 (VMUG Presentation) →

TrendMicroDeepSecurity9

Trend Deep Security – Agentless Deployment with NSX – Issues with Web Reputation Service

Uncategorized, VMware, , , , , ,

So I’ve just had the pleasure of deploying Trend Deep Security via the Agent-less method, utilizing the NSX free license which allows guest introspection, but no other features.

Starting in NSX 6.2.3, the default license upon install will be NSX for vShield Endpoint. This license enables use of NSX for deploying and managing vShield Endpoint for anti-virus offload capability only, and has hard enforcement to restrict usage of VXLAN, firewall, and Edge services, by blocking host preparation and creation of NSX Edges.

The Issue

With the basic Deep Security License you get the following coverage;

  • Anti-Malware
  • Web Reputation Service

However upon deploying Trend and jumping through the various hoops. (flakey support for NSX free license). You will find that you have multiple errors showing against your VM’s.

Trend-Agentless-Issue-1

The Cause

After speaking with Trend, I received the following response, which seems kind of obvious; Continue reading Trend Deep Security – Agentless Deployment with NSX – Issues with Web Reputation Service →

networkvirt

Revision notes from VMware Network Virtualization Fundamentals Course

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VMware released a free course around Network Virtualization Fundamentals, which maps to the first steps on the ladder for all things NSX. It is also recommended by VMware to take the course before taking on the VCA-NV.

I urge anyone looking into NSX to take this course, you can’t argue with the price after all!!! Secondly, although there are many NSX posts online name, Brad Hedlund has some of the best posts in my opinion.

Check the NSX-Link-O-Rama aswell.

And finally, the NSX Compendium over at Network Inferno

Below are my notes I took whilst going through the course.

The Basics
Virtual switch
  • Ports organised into port groups
  • Uplinks connect virtual switch to physical network
  • Connections to support virtual infrastructure

Virtual standard switches – configuration per host, therefore needs to be replicated exactly to all hosts

  • Port groups
  • VMkernel Ports
  • Uplink Ports
  • Policies at virtual switch level can be over-ridden  at port group level
  • VLAN’s set at port group level and VMKernal Port level only
  • No support for things like STP, as virtual switches cannot be connected to one another, nor do they learn MAC addresses.

vsphere-network-standard-switch

Continue reading Revision notes from VMware Network Virtualization Fundamentals Course →

vmware

VMware NSX – Just an introduction

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With my background in Networking and Virtualisation, VMware’s NSX is something which interests me deeply, as such I’ve attended a handful of sessions online, and also at the UK VMUG where Chris Whal presented on the subject.

Here’s my own interpretation of this new technology.

What is NSX?

Its software-defined networking, you don’t need to buy any hardware to implement it, although you do need a running VMware environment.

2014-11-30_22-00-16

Continue reading VMware NSX – Just an introduction →

VMworld #VMworld – Day 2 – Keynote, Sessions on NSX, EUC and performance

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So today was the first day of proper sessions and the keynote.

This is my first year at VMworld, but you can tell there is something missing slightly, and probably that is a big announcement, we already know about NSX, and most people are waiting for vSphere 6. However with the release of the delta exam on 5.5 it’s obvious that vSphere 6 will be here at some point in 2015.
Continue reading VMworld #VMworld – Day 2 – Keynote, Sessions on NSX, EUC and performance →