VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.4 Upgrade Invalid certificate when reconnecting to vCenter

I was upgrading our VMware SRM appliance from version 8.2 to 8.4 recently. The upgrade completed successfully but when logged on to the SRM management console and I tried to reconfigure the appliance to connect back to vCenter I started to get a error.

To get the fixes for some of the errors I had to log a case with VMware support who where very helpfully in getting the issue resolved. So decided to do a post on this in case anyone else runs in to the same issue.

Below is the initial error I got when trying to reconnect to vCenter.

The error was about an invalid cert and failed soap response to vCenter

Exit code: 61

[backtrace begin] product: VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, version: 8.4.0, build: build-18048862, tag: drconfig, cpu: x86_64, os: linux, buildType: release
backtrace[03] libvmacore.so[0x001BC4BD]
backtrace[04] dr-configurator[0x00151AB4]
backtrace[05] dr-configurator[0x000663BA]
backtrace[06] dr-configurator[0x000EDCB4]
backtrace[07] dr-configurator[0x000F66FC]
backtrace[08] dr-configurator[0x000F79AF]
backtrace[09] dr-configurator[0x000F1788]
backtrace[10] dr-configurator[0x000BB3DD]
backtrace[11] libvmacore.so[0x002EFFED]
backtrace[12] libvmacore.so[0x002F1C32]
backtrace[13] libvmacore.so[0x0040327E]
backtrace[14] libpthread.so.0[0x00007F87]
backtrace[15] libc.so.6[0x000F35BF]
[backtrace end]
Caused by:
(vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument) {
faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
faultMessage = ,
invalidProperty = “Invalid certificate”
msg = “Received SOAP response fault from []: create
“
}

I checked the existing PSC cert in the summary page of the SRM management web client but this was fine and showing as valid, I checked the vCenter cert that was also valid so I was a bit confused as to what cert the error was actually referring to as it just said invalid certificate which isn’t all that helpful.

I decided to to check the appliance certificate and that had expired about 4 months ago.

To re-issue the cert we should just need to go to change and select change to reissue the cert, but my issue was that the appliance had previously been set with just a host name and not FQDN so when I tried to generate the cert I got an error for no FQDN.

It looks like the older version of SRM allows cert to be generated without FQDN’s but not version 8.4.

This was going to cause an issue with the site paring as the names had already been configure so most likely once the new cert was generated with the FQDN and connected to vCenter I would probable need to reconfigure the site paring.

First I had to change the host name under networking to use a FQDN.

Once that was changed I tried to re-issued the self singed cert using the new FQDN name but this failed with the below error. (This is where I got stuck and had to open a service request 🙂 )

The certificate’s Subject Alternative Name does not contain one of the folowing: – an IP address that matches the SRM host IP – a DNS name that matches the SRM host name – a common Name field that matches the SRM host name.

VMware support thought the issue was due to the plugin caching the old host name, so I had to then go to reconfigure on the summary page and on name and extension had to change the local host to use the new FQDN to update the plugin settings as it was set to custom and using the old host name.

The reconfigure will most likely fail due to the cert but it will update the plugin hostname which then allow the cert to be generated.

After this I was able to generate the new cert, the web console took a few minutes to come back while the cert was updated.

Once both of the above where completed SRM successfully connect back to vCenter.

After the connection was made to vCenter I had to reconnect in the SRM site pairing to update the SRM URL and certificate from the SRM UI console.

I had to complete the exact same steps on the second appliance.

This was a bit of annoying issue to get around as the errors where pretty vague and the logs didn’t really give much information.

Hopefully the rest of my upgrade goes a bit smother than the SRM upgrade.

Migrate from Active Directory Integrated Windows Authentication VMware vSphere 7.0

VMware is depreciating Integrated Windows Authentication in vSphere 7.0. The feature will be removed in a later release. Below is from the VMware KB.

Support for IWA continues to be available in vSphere 7.0 and will be phased out in a future release. Although IWA can still be configured, we highly recommend using AD over LDAP or Federated Identity (AD FS).

Deprecation of Integrated Windows Authentication (78506) (vmware.com)

In this post we will be going through changing over to using Active Directory over LDAP. We will also be using LDAPS as this is secured with certificates and is much better from a security side and Microsoft are requiring this on applications that use LDAP.

2020 LDAP channel binding and LDAP signing requirements for Windows (microsoft.com)

If you haven’t configured a certificate on your domain controller yet to allow LDAPS I would configure this first before proceeding with the swap over to Active directory over LDAP identity provider.

If we check the existing AD IWA we can see the warning that the feature is depreciated.

I usually create a new account for each applications LDAP connections just so I keep track of what account is used where.

For LDAP authentication in a Windows domain a standard account with just domain users right should have enough permission as it best to use least privilege for service accounts.

To confirm in an Windows AD domain is setup to use LDAPS we can use the ldp on a devices that has the active directory tools enabled to confirm LDAPS connection.

Open and click connect and add in the server name, set port to 636 and tick SSL.

If the configuration is retuned then LDAPS is working.

Once we have the account created and confirmed that LDAPS is working we can start setting up AD over LDAP in vCenter.

Since we will be using the same domain name as the IWA source we need to remove this first or it will cause error when trying add the LDAPS source.

Logon to vCenter web client > Menu > Administration > single sign on > configuration.

Under Identity sources select the IWA and click remove.

Click ok to confirm removal.

Once the IWA is removed we can now add the AD LDAP connection.

Click Add in the Identity source page and select Active Directory over LDAP

Add in the required details.

Name: Friendly name for the identity source.

Base DN: Is the level at which search in AD will start for user or groups to search all AD just use the top level or select sub OU to limit the searches.

Domain name: FQDN of the domain

Domain alias: this is the NetBIOS / pre windows 2000 domain name

When I select any domain controller I was getting the below.

Cannot configure identity source due to Failed to probe provider connectivity [URI: ldaps://domainl ]; tenantName [vsphere.local], userName [User] Caused by: Can’t contact LDAP server.

To work around this I had to specific my DC manually.

As I have a certificate issue from an internal certificate authority I will be selecting the CA cert for LDAPS as this should trust any cert issued by the CA on my domain controllers.

Click Add to complete the AD over LDAP identity source.

If we check the websso.log under /var/log/vmware/sso on the vCenter appliance, we can see the certificate being verified when we logon with a domain account.

We have now move from IWA to AD over LDAP all existing groups and roles should still work.

Filtering VMware vCenter Server Events Using PowerCLI

Recently we needed to review some changes and remote console events to check what user was accessing a particular VM and what changes where made.

I find searching event in the vCenter web client is a bit slow, I prefer to use Get-VIEvent as it has multiple parameters that can be used to search and can also use regular expression to filter by patterns.

I decided to do a blog post on how to filter events to show the different options that I use regularly to filter events.

First we need to connect to vCenter sever using a computer that has PowerCLI installed

Connect-VIServer vCenterServer

Once connected we can start to use Get-VIEvent, to return event for a specific object we can use -entity parameter and the object name.

In the below example I am getting the last event for my LAB-Win10 VM

Get-VIEvent -Entity ObjectName -Maxsamples 1

We can also filter by entity and user name is we know the user is tied to the event.

Get-VIEvent -Entity VM -Username User

We can filter the events by time range.

Get-VIEvent -Start "11/07/2021 20:48" -Finish "11/07/2021 21:00" | Select-Object EventTypeId,CreatedTime

Another option for filtering is to use where-object and search for a specific event message.

Get-VIEvent -Entity VM | Where-Object {$_.FullFormattedMessage -Like "VM started"}

There are addtional properties like host, ComputeResource, datacenter…. that are not return as readable values unless you format the results.

To format the result we can use select-object and create an array to give a name to the property and select the property value. Below will show the datacenter, cluster and host the event was create on.

Get-VIEvent -Entity object -Username User | Select-Object Message,CreatedTime,UserName,@{N="DataCenter";E={$_.DataCenter.Name}},@{N="Compute";E={$_.ComputeResource.Name}},@{N="Host";E={$_.Host.Name}}

Below is an example showing what the event looks like before and after using the array’s to return the readable values.

Once we the events we want we can either review them in the PowerShell console or use Export-csv to export the results.

Audit VMware vCenter Server Permission Using PowerCLI

As part of our VMware 6.7 to 7.0 Upgrade we wanted to audit the existing vCenter server permission. We have a lot of contractors who come in to do work and users who have had permission assigned but these permission are not always removed.

We wanted to get a report that export each of the permission assigned in vCenter.

I could do this manually but this would take a while and is not that easily repeatable so I decided to create a quick script that will export the required information.

The script will be calling two command (Get-VIPermission to export permission and Get-VIRole to export the assigned privileges) and then formation the results.

The script also has some mandatory variables (one for the vCenter server and one for the export path) and there is some error handling incase there is no connection to vCenter server or the export folder doesn’t exist.

There are three type of object in VMware permissions.

Privilege: Allow specific actions (create, delete, manage.. ) or rights to view specific properties
Role : A set of privileges assigned to an object to allow assignment
Permission: Is either a set of a users or groups that have been assigned to a role

If we run Get-ViPermission on we will see all permission returned.

We can select one specific permission by using -principal and expand using format-list. This gives a bit more information but we are missing the assigned privilege’s.

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This is where we use Get-VIRole as this has a property that shows privileges that have been assigned to the role.

Below is an example of the script running.

.\VMware_Permissions_Audit.ps1 -VCServer lab-vc.thesleepyadmin.local -ReportExport .\

Once completed the csv file should be exported with the vCenter server name.

Below is what the csv export should look like.

Below is an example of the error handling when connection to vCenter.

The full script can be downloaded from the below link to my GitHub.

Scripts/VMware/Permissions_Audit at master · TheSleepyAdmin/Scripts (github.com)

Updating VMware tools on ESXi 7.0 host using VMware Lifecycle Manager

There was a recent VMware local privilege escalation vulnerability in VMware tools version 11.2.6 and below. See VMware advisors VMSA-2021-0013 (vmware.com).

The vunerablity has been fixed in VMware tools version 11.3

VMware Tools 11.3.0 Release Notes

We needed to update the version of VMware tools running manually as the tools are not currently included in any of our standard baselines we apply to our ESXi hosts.

I decided to do a post on how to update the version of VMware tools using VMware Lifecycle manager baseline as it’s a little bit different than VMware Update Manager.

First we need to go to Lifecycle Manager, open the vSphere web console > Menu > Lifecycle Manager

In Lifecycle manager the tools should be synced as previously in VMware Update Manager the tools need to be manually uploaded.

The quickest way I find to check the latest tools that have been synced is by click on image depot and select components.

We could also check under updates and turn off show only rollup updates. (If the tools required a reboot it would show under impact)

Next we will create a baseline to apply the latest tools.

Go to baselines and select new baseline.

Give the baseline a name and select patch

Untick Automatically update this baseline

Untick show only rollup updates and filter for VMware tools, there will probable be a different VMware tools for 6.x and 7.x so check before adding to the baseline.

Click next and complete the baseline creation.

We can check the current tools status by going to the esxi host > Updates > VMware tools and check status.

We can now apply the baseline and run the check again and it should show as out of date.

The baseline can be applied either directly to the ESXi host or to the cluster we will be applying to the cluster as it saves time having to apply to each host individually .

Go to the cluster > Updates > attach and select attached baseline.

Select the VMware tools baseline and attach.

Next run a compliance check on the ESXi host.

Check the baseline status.

Next we will remediate the baseline to apply the latest tools.

If there are no issue with the pre-check click remediate.

Once the remediation is done the tools should show as compliant.

Once applied the VM should now pickup that there is a new tools version available.

The tools can now be applied to the VM either using a script, updated on reboot or manually.

VMware Daily Health Check HTML Report PowerShell

I have been working on a daily check report for our VMware environment so that we don’t have to manually check each morning.

The report uses PowerCli to generate information and then output the results to a HTML file.

The report requires a few that either the old PowerCLI snapin is available or preferably the PowerCLi PowerShell module.

The script can either be run directly by a users with rights to query vCenter or by setting up a scheduled task.

The following prerequisite will be needed for the script to run.

PowerShell V4 or V 5
PowerCLI 6.0 or later version
vCenter 6.0 or later version

There will also need to be a mail server or relay server available for the report to be emailed.

This has been tested on PowerCLI version 6.0 and above. The version on the server I will be running from is 12.3.0 which is the latest release at this time.

The report checks

vCenter connection
VMware tools check
Snapshot older than the specified snapshots days
Host Alarms
VM Alarms
vCenter Alerts over the last 12 hours
Datastore under specified % free space

There are mandatory parameter that are required for the script to run and send the report.

VCServer = vCenter Server address
SMTPServer = Mail server address
Toaddress = destination email
Fromaddress = sending address
Report Export = folder report will be exported to

There are some variables at the start of the script that can be set to customize the report to only show the required snapshots days and datastore % free. In my case I wanted 3 days and below 20% free on datastores.

I have embedded the html CSS format in the script so it can be update to change the color, font size or font type.

Example of how to run the script is below



.\VMwareDailReportv1.ps1 -VCServer vcenter.domain.local  -SMTPServer mail.doamin.local -FromAddress VMwareReport@domain.local -toAddress Administrator@domain.local -ReportExport D:\Scripts\VMware\Daily_Report

Once completed the report should be emailed to the specified to address.

Below is an example of the report export.

The full script can be downloaded from.

Scripts/VMwareDailyReport.ps1 at master · TheSleepyAdmin/Scripts (github.com)

To create a scheduled task to run the report each morning go to scheduled task on the server or client that has PowerCLI installed.

Create a new task

Set the schedule.

Next we need to set PowerShell as the program to start and set the argument to similar to the below, updating the parameters and script location

-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -NoProfile -File D:\Scripts\VMware\Daily_Report\VMwareDailReportv1.ps1 -VCServer vcenter.domain.local -SMTPServer mail.doamin.local -FromAddress VMwareReport@domain.local -toAddress Administrator@domain.local -ReportExport D:\Scripts\VMware\Daily_Report

I don’t change anything on conditions tab and only update that stop task if running longer than an hour in the settings tab.

Once completed run the task to confirm all is working.

I will probable added to the script but this is just the initial version and thought it might be helpful to anyone who want to try automate some of there manual checks.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 8 Configure Windows Server Monitoring

In the previous seven post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications, creating dashboards, upgrading the appliance to the latest version and requesting / configuring a custom SSL cert.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 5: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 6: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 6 Upgrading vROps – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 7: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 7 Configure Custom Certificate – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through installing the Windows agent and configuring the management pack to alert on Windows server OS level alerts like performance, services and application. This can be useful for monitoring physical servers running Windows.

Below is a link to the VMware document on vROps agent deployment I used for reference.

End Point Operations Management Agent Installation and Deployment (vmware.com)

Below is the list of support Operating system for vROps agent.

Operating System	Processor Architecture	JVM
RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.x, 6.x, 7.x	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
CentOS 5.x, 6.x, 7.x	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
SUSE Enterprise Linux (SLES) 11.x, 12.x	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Windows 2008 Server, 2008 Server R2	x86_64, x86_32	Oracle Java SE8
Windows 2012 Server, 2012 Server R2	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Windows Server 2016	x86_64	Oracle Java SE8
Solaris 10, 11	x86_64, SPARC	Oracle Java SE7
AIX 6.1, 7.1	Power PC	IBM Java SE7
VMware Photon Linux 1. 0	x86_64	Open JDK 1.8.0_72-BLFS
Oracle Linux versions 5, 6, 7	x86_64, x86_32	Open JDK Runtime Environment 1.7

First we need to enabled the management pack for Operating Systems / Remote Services Monitoring.

After the management pack is enabled we need to download the agent, the 8.2 version works for both 8.2 and 8.3 and is available to download on the same page as the vROps appliance.

Download vRealize Operations – My VMware

Once we have the agent, we can deploy to the servers that need to be monitored.

Copy the file to the server and run installer.

Add in the vROps server when prompted to

Next the installer will look for the thumbprint for the cert that is used for vROps. Logon to https://vrops/admin and click on the cert icon on the top right to view the current cert details.

Enter the user name and password that will be used to connect to vROps.

Set the install location the default is to install in c:\ep-agent this can be change if required.

The agent should now start to install.

We can run ep-agent.bat query from the install folder ep-agent\bin to confirm the agent has installed correctly.

Once completed we can check vROps to confirm the agent is reporting back, to view the agent in vROps logon to the web client > Administration > End Point Operations.

To view details for the server go to Environment > Operating Systems > Operating System World > Windows and select the server to view.

Once the server is added we can now monitor disk, CPU, memory and other metrics.

We can also monitor services.

To add a service to be monitored,

Go to server and click on action > monitor os object > monitor windows service

Give the monitor a name, select the object type and add in the service name (this needs to be the actual name and not the display name)

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Set the collection interval. Click ok to to create the monitor.

Click on Environment and we can view the service monitor we just added.

If we stop the service the next time the collection runs the service should show a critical alert.

We can add addtional metrics if needed. In this example we might want to see the logical disk space % free.

First we either need to modify the existing policy or create a new policy.

In this example we will be adding a new policy and inherting from the default policy.

Go to Policies and click add, give the policy a name and select where it will be inherit from. Then click create policy.

Go to the policies and click on the policy we just created and go to edit policy.

We will be adding a metric so we will select metrics and properties and enable the required metrics.

% free is under EP Ops Adapter > Windows >Fileserver Logical Disk > Utilization and % Free space (%).

Set the policy state to enabled.

Next we can apply the policy to either the object or if there are a lot of device it would be easier to create and apply to a custom group.

Now we can go to the server and confirm the policy is applied.

After a few minutes we can check the server object we can see the new metric and the data start to be shown.

Now that we have the metric showing next we can create an alert.

First we will need to create a symptom definition. Go to symptom definitions and click add.

Select the metric that will be used and give the symptom a name and set the threshold.

We can search to for the symptom to confirm it exist.

Next we need to create the alert. Go to alert definitions and click add.

Give the Alert a name and select Windows as the base object type.

Next we need to add the symptom we created.

Add a recommendation if any are applicable or create a recommendation (this is not required but can be usefully)

We need to add to a policy in this case it’s the Windows_Server_Agent and create a notification if this is required.

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We can search for the alert to confirm it has been created and to view the details.

Now when the server goes below 10% free disk space the server will alert.

Below is what the email notification will look like, we have configured email notification in a previous post so we wont go back over it here.

There are many metrics and alerts that can be configure this is just an example of one type. We can also create multiple alerts so that we get warning alerts at maybe 20% before getting a critical alert.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 7 Configure Custom Certificate

In the previous six post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications, creating dashboards and upgrading the appliance to the latest version.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 5: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 6: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 6 Upgrading vROps – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through requesting and applying a custom certificate. Configuring a custom cert is good practice from security standpoint and also will stop the security warning when access the vRealize web client.

Adding a certificate requires that there is a internal certificate authority that can be used to issue the certificate or we could use a public CA but there would be a cost to that, in this example we will be using a Windows Server CA.

I used the below VMware kb as reference when creating the cert.

Enabling TLS on Localhost Connections (vmware.com)

Configure a Custom Certificate (vmware.com)

First step is to connect to the vROps appliance using ssh connection and to generate the key file and cert request that will be used to generate the cert.

To enabled ssh go to the admin page and enable the ssh status.

If you have not updated the root password on the appliance already then this require to connect by ssh. To do this open a VM console for the appliance and go to login. The default root password is blank so just hit enter and it will prompt for a new password to be set.

Once the above has been completed, ssh to the vrops server I use putty but any ssh client will work.

After connecting I usually create a folder to keep the key file and cert request to they are simpler to find later if I need them again.

Next we need to generate a key file

openssl genrsa -out key_filename.key 2048

Next run the below command to create the certificate request

openssl req -new -key key_filename.key -out certificate_request.csr

Enter in the details for the cert. These can also be pre creating using a .config file but I just typed them in to the ssh console.

There should now be a key file and cert request in the folder.

Copy the .csr file as this will be used to generate the cert from the internal CA.

To generate the certificate logon on to the Microsoft CA web enrollment page.

Click submit and advanced certificate request.

Click submit a certificate request

Open the .csr file in a text editor and copy the content to certificate request box and select the certificate template to be used.

Click submit and the certificate should be generated. The cert needs to be downloaded as base 64.

Save the cert. The root CA cert also needs to be downloaded

Once all the cert files and key file are created, they now need to be combined to a .PEM format as that is the required format for vrops.

To combine the cert using Windows using the type command. The order the of the cert needs to be server cert, then key file, intermediate cert (if there are any in my case I only have the root cert) , root cert and then the PEM output.

type server_cert.cer key_filename.key cacerts.cer > vrops.pem

The .PEM file should now be created and is ready to be applied to vROps.

The last step is to apply the certificate, logon to the vROps admin page and go to the certificate icon in the top right.

Click Install new certificate.

Click browse and select the pem file we created. If there are no issue with verifying the pem file it should show as ready to install.

Click install to complete. The page should now reload and when we check the cert it should now be using the custom cert.

In the next post we will go through installing the Windows vROps agent and configuring the Windows management pack.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 6 Upgrading vROps

In the previous five post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source, create custom alerts and notifications and creating dashboards.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 5: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be going through upgrading the vROps appliance to the latest version 8.3. Keeping appliances up to date is good from a security standpoint and also allows for new features and fixes to be applied.

To confirm if the upgraded version of vROps is supported by the existing vCenter version use the VMware interoperability matrix site.

Product Interoperability Matrix (vmware.com)

Once this has been confirmed as supported we will need to download the .pak file that will be used to update the appliance.

To download go the following URL

https://my.vmware.com/en/group/vmware/downloads/info/slug/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vrealize_operations/8_3

Select the version and edition required in my case it Enterprise

Select upgrade type we will be upgrading from 8.2 so we will use 8.x, there is also a upgrade assessment tool that can be run to do a pre check.

Once the .pak files has been downloaded we are ready to start the upgrade. We will run the assessment first and view the report then process with the full upgrade.

To access the admin page use /admin at the end of the vROps URl. We can check the current version on the system status page.

https://vropsserver/admin

Go to software update and click install a software update.

Click browse and select the .pak file and click upload

Once the file is uploaded click next

Accept the end user agreement.

Next you can review the update info and the last screen is to install.

The installation should now start, it took about 10 minute to complete.

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Once the assessment is completed, we need to go to the support tab and select support bundles. Click on the download icon to download the zip file.

To view the report click the download and extract the zip file go to \apuat-data\report and click on the index.html.

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If there are no issue reported in the pre assessment we can go ahead with the upgrade.

It is recommend to take a backup of the appliance before upgrading in case there are any issue during the install.

First part of the upgrade is to take the cluster offline, go to the system status page

Once the cluster is offline we can uploaded and apply the .pak file similar to the assessment tool.

Go to software update > Install a software update, select the upgrade pak file and upload.

Follow the wizard to start the upgrade.

The upgrade took 30 minutes to complete and the cluster to come back online. Once fully back online we can confirm that the version is now upgraded to 8.3.

In the next post we will go thorough configuring a custom SSL cert to replace the self singed cert to give better security.

Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 5 Create a Dashboard

In the previous four post’s we went through installing and configuring the vROps virtual appliance, connecting to vCenter server, configuring Window Active directory as an identity source and create custom alerts and notifications.

Part 1: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 1 – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 2: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 2 Connect to vCenter – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 3: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 3 AD Authentication – TheSleepyAdmins

Part 4: Install and Configure vRealize Operations Manager 8.2 Part 4 Create Alerts and Notifications – TheSleepyAdmins

In this post we will be creating a custom dashboard. Dashboard can be used to visual your VMware infrastructure, view performance issue and capacity planning / right sizing. Dashboards are made up of views and widgets.

We can create custom dashboards or clone and existing dashboard and modify that to add addtional view or widgets.

To create a new dashboard logon to the vROps web client > Dashboards > Dashboards > Create Dashboard

Give the dashboard a name and we can toggle between view and widgets using the below button.

Start adding the required views / widgets for the dashboard in this dashboard we are looking for performance related.

First we will add a view list that we will use to create an relationship with the other widgets.

Give the view a name and select if the content should be refreshed or not. Since I want to specify the cluster I will be setting self provider to On. If this is not set to on input data object will be greyed out

Next we need to specify the object under the inventory tree. We will be using vSphere Host and Clusters and the object will be vSphere World.

Under output data we will use cluster utilization.

Click save and output should look like the below.

Once we have the view we can add the addtional widgets and start creating the interactions.

No data will be showing till the Interactions are in place.

After adding in the required widgets and click on show interactions.

Now we just connect the LAB_Cluster view to the other widgets we just added.

Now if we select the cluster view we will have alert volume, health data, scoreboard and object relationship information returned.

If we want to share the dashboard with other users we can select share icon

Click on groups and select the group to be included.

Now share icon should show beside the name of the dashboard.

If there are pre existing dashboard that we want to customize we can clone these by going to Dashboards >> Manage Dashboards, select the dashboard you want to clone, click on the three dots and select clone.

Give the dashboard a name and we can then start to modify.

In the next post we will go through scheduling reports and updating vROps appliance