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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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Install Nested ESXi 6.5 on Ravello

Install Nested ESXi 6.5 on Ravello

Recently, I had the opportunity to test a nested lab deployment on Oracle’s Ravello Cloud Service. If you are unfamiliar with Oracle’s Ravello offering, it enables you to deploy your VMware or KVM workloads on Oracle Public Cloud, AWS, or Google Cloud. Ravello seamlessly runs your environment on top of their own nested hypervisor, HVX. HVX, in turn, is run on resources provisioned by Oracle, AWS, or Google Cloud. Utilizing Ravello’s HVX hypervisor allows the underlying cloud infrastructure to behave like your traditional datacenter; thus, enabling…

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Reset vCenter SSO Administrator Password vSphere 6.5

Reset vCenter SSO Administrator Password vSphere 6.5

By default, the vCenter Single Sign-On password expires every 90 days. To prevent unexpected expiration, the vSphere Client issues a warning when the password is about to expire; however, if you find yourself in a situation where you cannot recall the password or the password has expired, it can be reset. The reset process is performed from an SSH session to vCenter. Reset SSO Administrator Password To begin, SSH to the vCenter Server Appliance and log in with the root account.

Manually Configure ESXi Syslog Location

Manually Configure ESXi Syslog Location

All VMware hosts run a service for logging system information. This service, vmsyslogd, logs messages from the VMkernel and other system components for auditing and diagnostic purposes. By default, the logs are directed to a local scratch location or ramdisk. The scratch space is created automatically during ESXi installation in the form of a 4 GB Fat16 local scratch partition. If storage space is unavailable, the host will store data on a ramdisk, which is not persistent across reboots. That…

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Identify NIC Driver and Firmware Versions with ESXCLI

Identify NIC Driver and Firmware Versions with ESXCLI

Quick byte today – Last week, we discussed an HPE advisory affecting certain network adapters on VMware hosts.  The advisory pertained to specific firmware and driver versions. If you need to identify or verify such network card information, it is possible to pull that data via ESXCLI commands. In this post, we will get a list of installed NICs as well as individual driver and firmware versions. First, let’s get a list of the installed NICs. To do so, SSH…

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