VSphere

vSphere/vCenter

vSphere is VMWare's virtualization platform and a central planning/management area to work on VMWare products. In vSphere, we use vCenter to connect all of our ESXi hosts together and manage them all from a single place. vSphere also adds other services such as vSphere Replication to the environment which allows us to take daily replications of our VMs. vSphere is located on a virtual machine on 10.21.25.2 called Yggdrasil. It can be accessed at https://10.21.25.5 with the login [email protected] and the highest level pintech password.

Installing vCenter

1. The location of the installer can be found \\10.21.25.13/Cisco Curriculum/vSphere Downloads/VMware-VCSA-all-7.0.3-18778458/vcsa-ui-installer/win32/installer
2. When you first open up the installer you're given four options: install, upgrade, migrate, and restore.
3. From here you just follow the steps to installation. You will need to have a ESXi machine running to be able to install vCenter.

Updating

1. I would recommend checking updates for this from time to time. Not as consistent as Windows updates but it's good to get a update in there and there. The following steps go over the update process:
   • To start the update process you want to go and head over to the vCenter management web interface at https://yggdrasil.mhs.24pin.tech:5480/#/login.
   • Go to the update section of the page and wait for the available updates to load.
   • I would choose the latest update available or if you are looking for a specific update you can mess with the update selection settings.
   • When you go to update it will do two things, it will ask you to make a backup, and it will check the database health. For the backups you can select backup now and check the box that says use the scheduled update settings. From there you will just need to put in the ITX password and continue. Now if you run into a issue with the database health you will have to refer to the article found in helpful links.
   • When it gives you the option to start the update it might take a while, this is fine since the vCenter should start back up and resume on it's own.
   • When updating, downtime is not required for the ESXi hosts that vCenter Server is managing, or for virtual machines that are running on the hosts.

VM Snapshots

VM Snapshots are short term restore options that can be created before you apply major updates or changes to a virtual machine. It allows you to create multiple restore points of your virtual machine as you go through the update process. Snapshots must be deleted to update the storage of any VM.

Creating a snapshot:

• Select the VM you want to create a snapshot of and navigate to the snapshot tab.
• Press take snapshot to create a snapshot (write why the snapshot is being taken in the description)
• Uncheck VM memory when taking snapshots of Yggdrasil or vSphereReplication

Reverting a snapshot:

• Select the VM you want to create a snapshot of and navigate to the snapshot tab.
• Click on the snapshot you want to revert to and then press finish to restore the VM to the snapshot.
• Once you have fixed the issue, make sure to delete that snapshot and then create a new snapshot for the latest version.

Troubleshooting

Changing root password:

• To change the password of the root user, access Asgard and open Yggdrasil in the console.
• From here, enter the root user and password to login.
• Once you have logged in, type shell and then type passwd to create a new password.

Changing root password (no password):

• https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/html/3.0/photon_troubleshoot/resetting-a-lost-root-password.html

Mail Alerts

In vSphere it allows you setup custom alerts for a multitude of reasons. From when a VM turns on to when a entire host blows up. Before you can use the mail alerts you need to change a couple settings in both vSphere and the email address you will be using to send out the emails. For me I had to change some settings in the [email protected] address that way I could use it to send out emails.

The following is a list of the alerts we have setup:

• Creation/Deletion of VMs
• Replication Sync Status of VMs
• Host Hardware Failure

Helpful links:

• https://masteringvmware.com/configuring-email-alert-in-vcenter-server/
• https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/tutorial/How_to_use_Gmail_SMTP_server_to_send_emails_for_SRM
• https://help.texadasoftware.com/knowledge/using-gmail-to-send-email-in-srm