Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Server

Changing the vSAN Skyline Health Interval

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On the VMTN forum Lars asked a great question, how do you change the vSAN Skyline Health interval. This used to be an option in the UI pre vSphere 7.0 but now seems to have disappeared. I never really touched it, so I had completely forgotten it was even an option at first. As vSAN also has an extensive CLI through “RVC”, and I used RVC before to disable a particular health check I figured this may also be a configurable setting, and indeed it is. It is rather straightforward:

SSH to your vCenter Server instance and open RVC. I use the following command to open an RVC session:

rvc administrator@vsphere.local@localhost

I then “cd” into my vSAN cluster object. Simply do an “ls” after you “cd” into a directory. My complete tree looks like this:

/localhost/Datacenter/computers/Cluster

When you are at the cluster level simply check the current configured interval:

vsan.health.health_check_interval_status .

Next you can configure the new internal, default setting is 60 minutes, but you can change it anywhere between 15 minutes and 1 day, I am configuring it to 15 minnutes:

vsan.health.health_check_interval_configure -i 15 .

Unexplored Territory #009: Preventing Ransomware attacks with Kendra Kendall

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In episode #009 of the Unexplored Territory Podcast we talk to Kendra Kendall, Tech Marketing Specialist at VMware for Carbon Black. Kendra explains how ransomware attacks work, and how you can leverage Carbon Black to develop a defense-in-depth strategy. Listen now via Apple (https://apple.co/34H5OcV), Spotify (https://spoti.fi/3J5MPrl), or any other podcast app of your choice, or simply use the embedded player below!

I can’t download vCenter Converter / Standalone Converter?

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UPDATE: Please read this article about the new Beta of VMware vCenter Converter! Yes, it is back!!

I tweeted about this yesterday, but as I had about 14 questions in 24 hours I figured I would do a blog post as well so that it gets indexed by Google properly. Many folks are asking where vCenter Converter / Standalone Converter has gone to as it has disappeared from the VMware Download website. Although the links are still there on the VMware website and for instance in VMware Workstation, those links do not go to a download.

As stated in the article I tweeted, the downloads for Converter have been completely removed from the VMware website. There are some locations on the internet where you can still find the download like on Softpedia, Filehorse, Download3k, and probably some other random sites. I do however not recommend downloading the product as it is “end-of-life”, has not been updated for years, and there are some security concerns. According to the official blog, VMware is working on a new product for P2Vs, a timeline has not been provided, but there are alternatives out there from other vendors and for V2V there’s VMware’s HCX.

vSAN File Services IPs not reachable when using NSX-T?

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I’ve had this question a few times, if you enable vSAN File Services and you use NSX-T and it’s not possible to reach the vSAN File Service IP addresses, what should you do? In 999 out of the 1000 cases, it typically is a matter of enabling Mac Learning on the Segment Profile for the segment being used by vSAN File Services. I stole the below screenshot from William, it shows you how to enable it.

You may wonder why this needs to be enabled, well basically because the vSAN File Services VM is not what you are directly communicating with. The IP Address and MAC address you communicate with is associated with the vSAN File Service protocol stack container. As a result, MAC Learning needs to be enabled. I described this already in my FAQ post, but as it comes up frequently I figured I would dedicate a post to it.