Clearpath’s Blog on IT Infrastructure, Hybrid Clouds and IT Security

We recently implemented NSX in an existing vCenter/vSphere environment and ran across an interesting issue when attempting to prepare the hosts. SQL Server Reporting Services was co-installed with vCenter, so to prevent a conflict on TCP/80 the customer specified a custom HTTP port during vCenter installation. At this point we should have been conflict free on TCP/80 but as we soon found out, that was not the case.

Topics: VMware, vCenter, EAM, VMware NSX, ESXi

After months of running the vSphere 5.1 appliance in my lab, I decided to install the 5.5 appliance to see just how far this little gem has come.  So, I downloaded and deployed the OVA, and moved onto initial configuration.  After the initial configuration was completed, I decided to tweak some values in the interface.  First and foremost - the DHCP configuration had to go.  Followed by setting the host FQDN, which was strangely omitted from the initial configuration.  This made running AD authentication a little difficult since AD integration requires that the appliance have an FQDN before it will accept the configuration.

Topics: vSphere, vCenter

Topics: VMware, Virtualization, vCenter

Migrating a vCenter Server instance from physical to virtual can be done in a couple of different ways:

Topics: VMware, vCenter

For the most part, the same group of admins will end up with a need for administrative access to both vCenter Server and ESXi hosts. To facilitate ease of administration, as well as to provide a clear audit trail, ESXi and vCenter Server should authenticate user access through the same identity source. This article will outline how to make ESXi 5.1 and vCenter Server 5.1 (with a little help from Single Sign-On) authenticate against the same identity source, as well as give a group of admins access to both.

Topics: VMware, vSphere, vCenter