I had a frustrating issue with Packer, specifically with VMware Tools installation.
During the Packer install, I load up a script and have VMware Tools 12.1.5 installed. It seems to install successfully, But I noticed that the VMTools service is not running. I have to re-run setup64.exe via the GUI and do a repair, then I see the service exist and runs, and Packer can discover the IP address of the VM to finish it.
The Solution
I used a older autounattend.xml which i never checked the time zone.
Setting the correcting time zone the trick:
Virtual Machine with Windows Server 2022 with KB5022842 (Feb 2023) installed en configured with secure boot enabled will not boot up on vSphere 7 unless updated to 7.0u3k (vSphere 8 not affected)
In VM vmware.log, there is ‘Image DENIED’ info like the below:
2023-02-15T05:34:31.379Z In(05) vcpu-0 – SECUREBOOT: Signature: 0 in db, 0 in dbx, 1 unrecognized, 0 unsupported alg.
2023-02-15T05:34:31.379Z In(05) vcpu-0 – Hash: 0 in db, 0 in dbx.
2023-02-15T05:34:31.379Z In(05) vcpu-0 – SECUREBOOT: Image DENIED.
To identify the location of vmware.log files:
Establish an SSH session to your host. For ESXi hosts
Log in to the ESXi Host CLI using root account.
To list the locations of the configuration files for the virtual machines registered on the host, run the below command:
#vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms | grep -i “VM_Name”
The vmware.log file is located in virtual machine folder along with the vmx file.
Record the location of the .vmx configuration file for the virtual machine you are troubleshooting. For example:
If you already face the issue, after patching the host to ESXi 7.0 Update 3k, just power on the affected Windows Server 2022 VMs. After you patch a host to ESXi 7.0 Update 3k, you can migrate a running Windows Server 2022 VM from a host of version earlier than ESXi 7.0 Update 3k, install KB5022842, and the VM boots properly without any additional steps required.
With all the Fabric configuration done we can test our setup.
I’m creating two overlay segments in NSX connected to a Tier-1 gateway, and after that we’ll create a Tier-0 gateway and connect the T1 gateway to it to get North/South connectivity to the overlay resources
Two VMs will be deployed, one VM in each of the two overlay segments
Create a Tier-1 Gateway
The Tier-1 Gateway will initially not be connected to a Tier-0 Gateway (I haven’t configured a T0 gw yet) or an Edge Cluster.
Tier-1 Gateway
Create Logical segments
We need two logical segments, both using the Overlay Transport Zone. I’m defining different subnets on them, 10.0.1.0/24 and 10.0.2.0/24.
Segments
Add VMs to Logical segments
We have two Photon VMs which should be added to the logical segments.
Two Photon VMs
Test connectivity
Now let’s verify that the two VMs can ping each other
Don’t forget to enable the echo rule on the Windows Firewall….
Connectivity test
This shows that the overlay is working, and note again that the Edge VMs are not in use here.
External connectivity
Traffic is flowing between VMs running on Logical segments inside the NSX-T environment, but what if we want to reach something outside, or reach a VM inside a NSX-T overlay?
Then we need to bring a Tier-0 Gateway in to the mix.
The T-0 gateway can be configured with Uplinks that are connected to the physical network. This is done through a segment which can reach the physical network, normally through a VLAN.
To configure the uplink interfaces we need to have Edge VMs so finally we get to bring those into play as well.
Create segment for uplinks
First I’ll create a segment mapped to VLAN 99 in my lab. Note that I select the VLAN transport zone, and I do not connect the segment to a gateway
Create Uplink VLAN segment
Create Tier-0 gateway
Now we’ll create a Tier-0 gateway, note that I now also select my Edge cluster.
Create T0 gateway
Static route
To be able to forward traffic out of the NSX-T environment the T0 gateway needs to know where to send queries for IPs it doesn’t control. Normally you would want to configure a routing protocol like BGP or OSPF so that the T0 gateway could exchange routes with the physical router(s) in your network.
I’ve not set up BGP or any other routing protocol on my physical router, so I’ve just configured a default static route that forwards to my physical router. The next hop is set to the gateway address for the Uplink VLAN 99, 192.168.99.1
Static route
Link T1 gateway to T0 gateway
We’ve done a lot of configuring now, but still we’ve not got connectivity in or out for our VMs. The final step is to connect the Tier-1 gateway to the Tier-0 gateway, and we’ll also activate Route Advertisement of Connected Segments and Service Ports
Tier-1 Gateway
Test connectivity
Verify North/South connectivity
Yes!
Test Distributed Firewall
Let’s also do a quick test of the Distributed Firewall feature in NSX-T.
First we’ll create a rule blocking ICMP (ping) from any to my test vm and publish the rule
ICMP firewall rule
Now let’s test pinging from from my pc to nested Windows 2016 server. With the rule not enabled en enabled.
Ping blocked
Summary
Hopefully this post can help someone, if not it has at least helped me.
Now we have working environment so we can go testing some things.
Also scripting/automation against a nsx environment I will look in to!
I’m doing a mini-series on my NSX-T home lab setup. It’s only for testing en knowledge about NXS-T.
With newer versions of NSX-T 3.1 and later a couple of enhancements have been made that makes the setup a lot easier, like the move to a single N-VDS with the ability to run NSX on a Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS) in vCenter with VDS version 7.0.
The NSX manager appliance has been downloaded and imported the OVF to the cluster. I won’t go into details about this, I just followed the deployment wizard.
In my lab I’ve selected to deploy a small appliance which requires 4 vCPUs, 16 GB RAM and 300 GB disk space. For more details about the NSX Manager requirements look at the official documentation
Note that I’ll not be deploying a NSX Manager cluster in my setup. In a production environment you should naturally follow best practices and configure a cluster of NSX Managers
NSX-T deployment
Now let’s get rocking with our NSX-T setup!
We’ll start the NSX manager and prepare it for configuring NSX in the environment
Initial Manager config
After first login I’ll accept the EULA and optionally enable the CEIP
License
Next I’ll add the license.
Add license
Import certificate
IP Pools
Our Endpoints will need IP addresses and I’ve set aside a subnet for this as mentioned. In NSX Manager we’ll add an IP pool with addresses from this subnet. (The IP pool I’m using is probably way larger than needed in a lab setup like this)
TEP pool
Compute Manager
With all that sorted we’ll connect the NSX manager to our vCenter server so we can configure our ESXi hosts and deploy our edge nodes.
Best is a specific service account for the connection
Compute Manager added
Fabric configuration
Now we’re ready for building out our network fabric which will consist of the following:
Transport Zones
Overlay
VLAN
Transport Nodes
ESXi Hosts
Edge VMs
Edge clusters
Take a look at this summary of the Key concepts in NSX-T to learn more about them.
Transport Zone
The first thing we’ll create are the Transport Zones. These will be used later on multiple occasions later on. A Transport Zone is used as a collection of hypervisor hosts that makes up the span of logical switches.
The defaults could be used, but I like to create my own.
Transport Zones
Uplink Profiles
Uplink profiles will be used when we configure our Transport Nodes, both Hosts and Edge VMs. The profile defines how a Host Transport node (hypervisor) or an Edge Transport node (VM) will connect to the physical network.
Again I’m creating my own profile and leave the default profiles be as they are.
Uplink profile
In my environment I have only one Uplink to use. Note that I’ve set the Transport VLAN to 0 which also corresponds with the TEP VLAN mentioned previously.
Transport Node Profile
Although not strictly needed, I’m creating a Transport Node profile which will let me configure an entire cluster of hosts with the same settings instead of having to configure each and every host
In the Transport Node profile we first select the type of Host switch. In my case I’m selecting the VDS option, which will let me select a specific switch in vCenter.
We’ll also add in our newly created Transport Zones
Creating Transport Node profile
We’ll select our Uplink profile and our IP Pool which we created earlier, finally we can set the mapping between the Uplinks
vCenter View
Creating Transport Node profile
Configure NSX on hosts
With our Transport Node profile we can go ahead and configure our ESXi hosts for NSX
Configure cluster for NSX
Select profile
After selecting the profile NSX Manager will go ahead and configure our ESXi hosts.
Hosts configuring
After a few minutes our hosts should be configured and ready for NSX
Hosts configured
Trunk segment
Next up is to create our Edge VMs which we will need for our Gateways and Services (NAT, DHCP, Load Balancer).
But before we deploy those we’ll have to create a segment for the uplink of the Edge VMs. This will be a Trunk segment which we create in NSX. Initially I created a Trunk portgroup on the VDS in vSphere, but that doesn’t work. The Trunk needs to be configured as a logical segment in NSX-T when using the same VLAN for both the Hypervisor TEPs and the Edge VM TEPs
Trunk segment
Edge VM
Now we can deploy our Edge VM(s). I’m using Medium sized VMs in my environment. Note that the Edge VMs is not strictly necessary for the test we’ll perform later on with connecting two VMs, but if we want to use some services later on, like DHCP, Load balancing and so on we’ll need them.
Deploy edge VM
Note the NSX config, where we set the switch name, the Transport Zones we created, the Uplink profile, the IP pool and finally we use the newly created Trunk segment for the Edge uplink
NSX Edge config
Edge cluster
We’ll also create an Edge cluster and add the Edge VM to it
Edge cluster
Summary
Wow, this was a lot of configuring, but that was also the whole point of doing this blog post. Stuff like this is learnt best while getting your hands dirty and do some actual work. And I learn even better when I’m writing and documenting it as well.
In the next blog post we’ll test the fabric to see if what we’ve done is working. We’ll also try to get some external connectivity to our environment.
Hopefully this post can help someone, if not it has at least helped me.
Microsoft announced the addition of the Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification to our portfolio, to be released in early December 2021. This new certification validates the skills of administrators working in hybrid environments.
Administrators in this role support their teams and organizations using Windows Server—both in the cloud and on-premises/
The Windows Server Hybrid Administrator Associate certification
On the 16th of September, a KB article was published by VMware, which contains statements of Removal of SD card/USB as a standalone boot device option.
USB/SD is not the right choice going forward! Why? The volume of reads/writes to and from the OS-DATA partition continues to increase with every release, which means that the lower grade devices will simply wear out faster.
Issue The host goes into an un-responsive state due to: “Bootbank cannot be found at path ‘/bootbank” and boot device is in an APD state.
This issue is seen due to the boot device failing to respond & enter APD state (All paths down). Some cases, Host goes to non-responsive state & shows disconnected from vCenter.
As of 7.0 Update 1, the format of the ESX-OSData boot data partition has been changed. Instead of using FAT it is using a new format called VMFS-L. This new format allows much more and faster I/O to the partition. The level of read and write traffic is overwhelming and corrupting many less capable SD cards.
The action plan for future resolution would be to replace the SD card/s with a capable device/disk. Per the best practices mentioned on Installation guide.
The version 7.0 Update 2 VMware ESXi Installation and Setup Guide, page 19, specifically says “As even read-only workloads can cause problems on low-end flash devices, you should install ESXi only on high-endurance flash media“.
In March 2020, Microsoft is going to release a update which will essentially disable the use of unsigned LDAP which will be the default. This means that you can no longer use bindings or services which binds to domain controllers over unsigned ldap on port 389. You can either use LDAPS over port 636 or using StartTLS on port 389 but it still requires that you addd a certificate to your domain controllers. This hardening can be done manually until the release of the security update that will enable these settings by default.
How to add signed LDAPS to your domain controllers
After the change the following features will be supported against Active Directory.
How will this affect my enviroment?
Clients that rely on unsigned SASL (Negotiate, Kerberos, NTLM, or Digest) LDAP binds or on LDAP simple binds over a non-SSL/TLS connection stop working after you make this configuration change. This also applies for 3.party solutions which rely on LDAP such as Citrix NetScaler/ADC or other Network appliances, Vault and or authentication mechanisms also rely on LDAP. If you haven’t fixed this it will stop working. This update will apply for all versions.
Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10 1507, Windows Server 2016, Windows 10 1607, Windows 10 1703, Windows 10 1709, Windows 10 1803, Windows 10 1809, Windows Server 2019, Windows 10 1903, Windows 10 1909
How to check if something is using unsigned LDAP?
If the directory server is configured to reject unsigned SASL LDAP binds or LDAP simple binds over a non-SSL/TLS connection, the directory server will log a summary under eventid 2888 one time every 24 hours when such bind attempts occur. Microsoft advises administrators to enable LDAP channel binding and LDAP signing as soon as possible before March 2020 to find and fix any operating systems, applications or intermediate device compatibility issues in their environment.
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