vSAN and vROps Certification

VMware vSAN 2017 Specialist and VMware vRealize Operations 2017 Specialist are 2 new certificate introduced by VMware this month.


VMware vSAN 2017 Speciallist digital badge holders understand the vSAN 6.6 architecture and its complete feature set and know how to conduct a vSAN design and deployment exercise. Exam Code: 2VB-601.

VMware vRealize Operations 2017 Specialist digital badge shows that you can plan, manage, and help scale SDDC and multi-cloud environments through unified monitoring, automated performance management, cloud planning and capacity optimization. This badge and associated requirements cover vRealize Operations 6.2 through vRealize Operations 6.5. Exam Code: 2VB-602.

Source of infomation VMware Blog

VRA IDM User Password update

Today I got an interesting question from one of my friend “How can we change the Password of the vSphere.local domain users in VRA created while creating a new tenant?”

After a lot of search from VMware community i find a link, which give me some tips to solve the same.

 https://www.helloitscraig.co.uk/2016/07/managing-local-users-powervra.html

I found this post very helpful, thanks to the author.

So What do I need? 

First I updated my PowerShell to version 5 alteast. (System will be restart)

Second I downloaded PowerCLI 6 (may not be required)

Launch Powershell

Run the following cmdlet: Save-Module PowerVRA –Path c:\

Install-Module –Name PowerVRA

Once the Module is installed we are ready to run VRA commands, so first we need to initialized the connection to vra tenant where the user is defined

For example: connect-vraserver –Server sa-vra-01.vclass.local  -Tenant Eng -UserName vraadmin@vsphere.local

It will prompt to type the password of the user.

Once the connection is initialized use the following command to list all users in Tenant.

Get-VRAUserPrincipal

So identify the user (ID of the user) whose password you want to modify and run the following command.

First we declare a variable to store the secure string (Password you want to set for the user)

Then run the following command to change the password ($var1)

$var1 = ConvertTo-SecureString “Pa$$w0rd” -AsplainText -Force

Set-vRAUserPrincipal -Id vraadmin@vclass.local -Password $var1

The password will change. :)

vRA 7.2 Reinitiate Installation Wizard

Once you cancel the installation wizard from vRealize Automation Configuration portal, we know it will never provide us the installation wizard, here is a vami command through which we can reinitiate  vRealize Automation installation Wizard.

Connect to your vRealize Automation Appliance and from /usr/sbin directory run the vami command ./vcac-vami installation-wizard activate.

NSX Design Guide for vSphere Network Virtualization

From VMware NSX Solutions Team we have VMware® NSX Design Guide for vSphere Network version 3.0 available, this document is targeted towards virtualization and network architects interested in deploying VMware® NSX Network virtualization solution in a vSphere environment.

the guide also provides additional reference around:

1. Sizing for small and medium data centers with NSX

2. Routing best practices

3. Micro-segmentation and service composer design guidance

Download Link

NSX Ports and Protocols Requirements

To have the proper communication between various components of NSX,  certain ports need to be configure here is the list as per NSX 6.2.

Source	Target	Port	Protocol	Purpose
Client PC	NSX Manager	443	TCP	NSX Manager Administrative Interface
Client PC	NSX Manager	80	TCP	NSX Manager VIB Access
ESXi Host	vCenter Server	80	TCP	ESXi Host Preparation
vCenter Server	ESXi Host	80	TCP	ESXi Host Preparation
ESXi Host	NSX Manager	5671	TCP	RabbitMQ
ESXi Host	NSX Controller	1234	TCP	User World Agent Connection
NSX Controller	NSX Controller	2878, 2888, 3888	TCP	Controller Cluster - State Sync
NSX Controller	NSX Controller	7777	TCP	Inter-Controller RPC Port
NSX Controller	NSX Controller	30865	TCP	Controller Cluster - State Sync
NSX Controller	NTP Time Server	123	TCP	NTP client connection
NSX Manager	NSX Controller	443	TCP	Controller to Manager Communication
NSX Manager	vCenter Server	443	TCP	TCP vSphere Web Access
NSX Manager	vCenter Server	902	TCP	vSphere Web Access
NSX Manager	ESXi Host	443	TCP	Management and provisioning connection
NSX Manager	ESXi Host	902	TCP	Management and provisioning connection
NSX Manager	DNS Server	53	TCP	DNS client connection
NSX Manager	Syslog Server	514	TCP	Syslog connection
NSX Manager	NTP Time Server	123	TCP	NTP client connection
vCenter Server	NSX Manager	80	TCP	TCP Host Preparation
REST Client	NSX Manager	443	TCP	NSX Manager REST API
NSX Controller	NTP Time Server	123	UDP	NTP client connection
NSX Manager	DNS Server	53	UDP	DNS client connection
NSX Manager	Syslog Server	514	UDP	Syslog connection
NSX Manager	NTP Time Server	123	UDP	NTP client connection
VXLAN Tunnel End Point (VTEP)	VXLAN Tunnel End Point (VTEP)	8472 or 4789*	UDP	Transport network encapsulation between VTEPs
ESXi Host	ESXi Host	6999	UDP	ARP on VLAN LIFs
ESXi Host	NSX Manager	8301, 8302	UDP	DVS Sync
NSX Manager	ESXi Host	8301, 8302	UDP	DVS Sync

*In NSX before 6.2.3, the default VTEP port for new installs was 8472. Starting in NSX 6.2.3, the default VTEP port for new installs is 4789. NSX deployments upgraded from a prior version of NSX to NSX 6.2.3 continue using the same port by default.