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How to check the number of days before ESXi password expires?

08.08.2023 by William Lam // 4 Comments

Local user accounts created in ESXi including the root user has a default password expiration of 99999 days before administrators need to change the password. Users can control the password expiry by modifying the following ESXi Advanced Setting called Security.PasswordMaxDays which is also referenced in the ESXi Security Documentation along with other advanced configurations.

Password rotation or updates are typically managed by an organizations password management solution which is responsible keeping track and notifying when local passwords are about to expire. With that said, not everyone has a password management solution and how do you quickly check how many days left before an account password expires on an ESXi host? I initially thought this should be pretty simple to figure out, especially with utilities like chage but the version that ESXi ships is a stripped down version via Busybox and it did not provide any expiry details like the typical chage version might.

This meant, that the password expiry would need to be calculated manually and luckily, this is not a new concept. The answer lies in the /etc/shadow file which contains a number of fields that can then be used to figure out the number of days left before an account expires or if has already expired. I will not bore you with the details, but you can create the following shell script which can run in the ESXi Shell to provide you with the answer.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Security Tags // ESXi, expiry, password

How to relocate an existing vSphere Content Library from one vSphere Datastore to another?

08.03.2023 by William Lam // 11 Comments

When you create a vSphere Content Library using vCenter Server, the content library is comprised of both the raw uploaded files (OVF, OVA, VM Templates, ISO, etc) which are stored in a vSphere Datastore and the metadata that is generated by vCenter Server for the individual files, which are stored in the vCenter Server Database (VCDB). In contrast, when an External vSphere Content Library is created, which can be backed by any HTTP(s) endpoint, both the metadata along with the raw files are stored external to the vCenter Server and is managed separately.

Today, there is not an easy way to relocate or move an existing vSphere Content Library from one vSphere Datastore to another. The process would require creating a new vSphere Content Library, then manually using either the vSphere UI or API to then copy all the files from the previous content library to the newly created one which is backed by a different vSphere Datastore.

Typically, the reason for this use case is either you are running out of storage and can not expand further or you need to decomission the underlying storage backing the content library.

Recently, I needed to look into this for my own homelab setup where I plan to rebuild one of my setup which is running on vSAN and I wanted to preserve existing content library without having to transfer content back/fourth. The context above was important as I was able to figure out this could be done with some minor tweaks to the VCDB (which I typically do not recommend touching for this reason) but for this purpose, it really is the only way which I had also confirmed with Engineering.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, use at your own risk.

[Read more...]

Categories // vSphere Tags // content library

Changing the default HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports on ESXi 8.0 Update 1

07.31.2023 by William Lam // 8 Comments

Pre-ESXi 8.0 Update 1, if you needed to modify the default ESXi HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports, you would simply edit the HTTP reverse proxy configuration file, which I have previously blogged about HERE (pre-ESXi 8.0) and HERE (ESXi 8.0).

For ESXi 8.0 Update 1, the process is slightly diffrent as all ESXi configurations including configuration files have been completely migrated to the new ESXi Configuration Store, which was initially introduced back in vSphere 7.0 Update 1, which you can learn more about it HERE and HERE.

While most users stick with the system defaults with port 80 (HTTP) and port 443 (HTTPS), I know there are some organizations that require these ports to be changed to meet certain internal compliance requirements. Below are the updated instructions for modifying the ESXi HTTP(s) Reverse Proxy Ports when using ESXi 8.0 Update 1 or later.

Disclaimer: VMware does not officially support modifying the default HTTP/HTTPS ports on an ESXi host.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, vSphere 8.0 Tags // envoy, ESXi 8.0 Update 1, rhttpproxy

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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