Enterprise Admins.org

Last week I was working with snapshots in my lab. I came up with this one liner to create a bunch of snapshots on the same virtual machine:

for ($i=1; $i -le 5; $i++) {get-vm "snaptest" |new-snapshot -name "snapshot00$i" -Description (get-date -format "'Created: 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm") -memory:$true}

As you can see I’m using the virtual machine snaptest and the snapshots will be named snapshot001-snapshot005 and have a description containing the date/time the snapshot was created.

In a recent service request with VMware, Tech Support enabled ssh on one of my ESXi hosts. Unfortunately, the outage that prompted my support request impacted multiple hosts in different clusters, so we were looking at many things in the entire environment. I didn’t write down the name of the host where we enabled SSH, or even the cluster it was in. The following script helped me identify which one I was looking for – I’m sure there are better ways to check this, but I was looking for something quick which prompted this combination of existing scripts:

$VMH = Get-VMHost | Sort Name

#If the port is closed/filtered PowerShell will return a warning.  This will suppress:
$ErrorActionPreference="SilentlyContinue"

#The port I want to check for SSHD
$portnum =22

#The loop to check all hosts in a vCenter
$VMH | %{
#port check sample from http://halr9000.com/article/418
$socket = new-object Net.Sockets.TcpClient
$socket.Connect($_.name, $portnum)
if ($socket.Connected) {
  $status = "Open"
  $socket.Close()
}
  else {
  $status = "Closed / Filtered"
}
  $socket = $null
  write-output "$_`t$portnum`t$status"
}

This pointed out which of my hosts (it was only 1) that had SSH running.

I’ve had to create a bunch of SSL certificates for ESX/ESXi hosts. Its always a pain because there are a bunch of steps and I can’t remember what my company always uses for the Organization name/Organizational unit name. I created some documentation on the process and have to look at it every time I create a certificate. It works okay, but who wants to read documentation when you can lean on a simple batch file…like this one? You just need to specify the name of the batch file and the host name of your ESX/ESXi host from a command prompt:

@echo off
REM ======================================================================
REM == Script to generate SSL Certificate for ESX/ESXi host             ==
REM == Usage: esx_ssl.bat esxhostname.domain.name                       ==
REM == Note:  On Windows 7 this script must be ran from an              ==
REM ==        elevated/administrator command prompt.                    ==
REM ======================================================================

set pathToOpenSSLbin=C:\OpenSSL\bin
set pathTovCLIbin=C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin
echo The specified ESX/ESXi host: %1

REM Generate the SSL
"%pathToOpenSSLbin%\openssl.exe" genrsa 1024 > "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.key"
"%pathToOpenSSLbin%\openssl.exe" req -new -key "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.key" -subj "/CN=%1/OU=Department Name/O=Company Name/L=CityName/ST=State/C=US/emailAddress=user@domain.name" > "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\rui.csr"

REM Open the Certificate Signing Request in wordpad
"%ProgramFiles%\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe" "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\rui.csr"

REM The CSR contents must be manually copied to the internal cert server
echo
echo ======================================================================
echo The following steps must be manually completed
echo 1.) Select the contents of rui.csr and copy them to the clipboard
echo 2.) Open the certificate server site (https://internal-ca.domain.name/certsrv)
echo 3.) Select "Request a certificate"
echo 4.) Select "Advanced certificate Request"
echo 5.) Paste the contents of rui.csr into the saved request box
echo 6.) Select "Web Server" in the certificate template drop down
echo 7.) Save the Base 64 version of the certificate in the following path:
echo      %pathToOpenSSLbin%\certnew.csr
echo ======================================================================
pause

"%pathToOpenSSLbin%\openssl.exe" x509 –in certnew.cer –out %1.cer

set /p hostpass=Please enter the root password for %1 :

"%pathTovCLIbin%\vifs.pl" --server %1 --put "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.key" /host/ssl_key --username root --password %hostpass%
"%pathTovCLIbin%\vifs.pl" --server %1 --put "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.cer" /host/ssl_cert --username root --password %hostpass%

REM Create a backup copy in case you need this SSL certificate again:
copy "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.key" "\\vcenter\SSL_Certificates$\%1.key" /y
copy "%pathToOpenSSLbin%\%1.cer" "\\vcenter\SSL_Certificates$\%1.cer" /y

echo Please reboot the host %1 and verify the SSL certificate.
pause