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Spectre Vulnerability – How to Patch VMware ESXi

Spectre Vulnerability – How to Patch VMware ESXi

Yesterday, news broke about vulnerabilities affecting AMD, Intel, and ARM CPU’s. These vulnerabilities, termed Meltdown and Spectre, have the potential to expose information that the machine(s) process. Check out this post for an in-depth look. At this point, it appears that VMware ESXi is not vulnerable to Meltdown; however, they have released patches for Spectre. It has been speculated that patching the flaws will cause performance hits. To what degree varies by reporting source. As always, test patches before deployment and…

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Zerto Replication – VRA Install and Pairing Sites

Zerto Replication – VRA Install and Pairing Sites

For the second part of our Zerto Replication install series, we are going install the Virtual Replication Appliances (VRAs) as well as pair our protected site to a recovery site. First, let’s look at the Virtual Replication Appliance(s). VRAs are lightweight, Linux-based virtual machines that handle replication between sites. These VRAs are installed on each host that houses either a protected or a recovery virtual machine. As part of replication, the VRAs compress the data before traversing between sites. VRA…

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Zerto Replication – Install ZVM

Zerto Replication – Install ZVM

One of my favorite aspects regarding Zerto Replication is the ease of deployment. In this series, we will run through the installation and configuration of Zerto 5.5 for VMware environments. The series will consist of three parts to get Zerto Replication up and running. Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) Install Virtual Replication Appliance (VRA) Deployment/Site Pairing Virtual Protection Group (VPG) Setup for Virtual Machines The focus of today’s post is the Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) installation. If you are unfamiliar with…

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Downgrade VMware VM Hardware Version

Downgrade VMware VM Hardware Version

A few weeks back, we discussed how to downgrade ESXi versions. These downgrades or rollbacks will often time bring compatibility issues into play. One such issue is the compatibility between the ESXi version and virtual machine hardware version. If a virtual machine with a higher version of hardware resides on an unsupported (lower) ESXi version, you will receive an error and not be able to start the machine. The error will state – This virtual machine uses hardware version x,…

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How to Downgrade/Roll Back ESXi 6.5

How to Downgrade/Roll Back ESXi 6.5

Occasionally, an issue or bug will require admins to revert to a previous build or version of ESXi. In the event you patch your hosts (as opposed to fresh installs), it is possible to rollback to a prior installed version via the GUI. Rollbacks should not be taken lightly. If you are reverting in a production environment, discuss options with support first. A few housekeeping items before we jump into the rollback process. Compatibility – If you are leveraging new…

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