TBL Networks, The Blinky Light

So I am at VMworld this week and I will attempt to cover session highlights that I feel will be useful to our existing and potential clients. The first session is all about the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA). If you haven’t started using the vMA, I suggest you get familiar with it.

After vSphere 4.1 there will be no more Service Console (COS). VMware will be transitioning to ESXi and I am encouraging all of my clients to get a head start on migrating to the ESXi platform. The time to plan for this is now.

Session MA6580: Bridge the ESX/ESXi Management Gap Using the vSphere Management Assistant Highlights

-vMA is a 64 bit CentOS VM
-It can be deployed as a downloaded OVF or straight from a URL
-As of version 4.x you can update it with the vma-update command.

Authentication
-There are 3 methods:
-Interactive
-FastPass (Stores vi-admin password in a hash on each host.)
-Rotate the password with the “vifp rotatepassword” command
-Active Directory (Recommended if available)

Logging
-vilogger can be used to configure the vMA as a syslog server (As ESXi logs do not survive a reboot.)
-Be aware that the vpxa logs are not sent to syslog. See KB1017658

Best Practices
-Use one vMA for every 100 hosts when utilizing vilogger
-Place the vMA on the management VLAN
-Use a static IP, Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), and DNS for the vMA.
-Clean up accounts left over from previous vMA installs if you have been using the vMA

Bottom Line…

I believe that clients should start planning for the migration to ESXi today. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the transition to ESXi.