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vInception #NotSupported Slides Posted

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I was pinged by a few folks asking if my #NotSupported session that I presented at VMworld US would be available online, so here is the slide deck to my vInception presentation.

I would also like to thank everyone that attended my session! I had a lot of fun and hopefully you did too!  

UPDATE: I just realized the livestream recording videos are online, but they are not very clear. Apologies for that. I heard the better records from the vBrownbag crew should be up shortly, so once those are up, I will replace them on the site.

Part 1:

Watch live streaming video from vmwarecommunitytv at livestream.com

Part 2:

Specifying Default Domains for vSphere Web Client Login

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If you add an additional identity source to vCenter SSO, such as Active Directory during vCenter Server setup, you might have noticed that you need to specify the full domain name and user id to be able to login to the vSphere Web Client.

It took me awhile to figure out where to set the default domain as I thought it would have been in the VCSA web management interface as I deployed my VCSA using an automated script. I thought I share this quick tidbit in case someone was running into a similar issue.

To specify a default domain for one of your identity sources, you will need to login to vSphere Web Client as "root" or an administrator who has access to the vCenter SSO Configurations. Click on Administration tab and then to Configuration under "Sign-On and Discovery" on the left hand side of the screen.

You should see your AD identity source at the top as well as the two default identity source provided by vCenter SSO (these can not be removed). If you want to add an identity source as a default domain, you will need to highlight your identity source and then select the CD icon with the arrow, which will add that to list of default domains at the bottom of the screen. 

Once your domain is listed at the bottom, you will need to perform one additional step which is to actually save the configuration by clicking on the little "disk" icon. I did not realize this until I logged out and nothing changed.

Note: By default, when you add to the default domain list, you will append to the very end of the list. You have the ability to arrange the order by highlighting the domain and using the up/down arrows.

Go ahead and log out and log back in and now you only have to specify the username as the default domain will automatically be used.

Automatically Join Multiple VCSA 5.1 using New vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On)

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You may have recently heard about the new vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On) feature that is now part of the latest release of vSphere 5.1 which provides centralized authentication and directory services (supports multiple identify sources) across your vCenter Servers. vCenter SSO also provides a true single pane of glass for managing and viewing all your vSphere infrastructure and solutions, unlike it's predecessor Linked Mode feature, which many used to get a centralized view of all their vCenter Servers but without the true single-sign on capabilities.

Note: If you would like to learn more about the new vCenter SSO, I would recommend you take a look at the What's New vCenter Server 5.1 whitepaper by Justin King. 

I really love the new vCenter SSO feature, especially in my home lab where I have several vCenter Server 5.0 and 5.1 hosts running and I can view all of them in a single interface! One thing I tend to do a lot in my lab is automated deployments (you probably might have already guessed) and though the configuration web interface for vCenter Server is pretty easy to use, there is still a lot of clicking involved (as you know, I hate clicking a lot).

Just like with automating VCSA 5.1 deployments, I also looked into automating the joining of a VCSA to an existing vCenter SSO server. The example below will outline configuring a single VCSA to act as the primary vCenter SSO server and then configure two additional VCSA which will then connect to this primary vCenter Server providing them SSO capabilities.You can also run through this manually through the configuration web interface for each VCSA, but as mentioned earlier, it is manual and did I forget to mention ... tedious!

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Please test this in a development environment before using it on actual systems.

Step 1 - Configure your primary VCSA which will be the main SSO server. You will be leveraging the same script as shown in this article. 

Step 2 - Next, you will need to configure you secondary and tertiary (or n-others) VCSA using a similar script as in Step 1, but instead of configuring for an embedded SSO server, it will connect to the external SSO server which is specified by the IP Address or hostname of your primary VCSA.

Here is a script with the minimal commands needed for configuring your additional VCSA:
Note: Make sure you update the PRIMARY_VC variable to reflect the IP Address or hostname of your primary VCSA that was configured in Step 1

You will notice the output to be very similar, but it actually queries for the primary VCSA's lookupservice SSL thumbprint to configure the VCSA to use an external SSO server.

Once you have successfully deployed and configure your additional VCSA servers, you should now be able to login to your primary VCSA and view all your vCenter Servers in the inventory.

Is this not a cool feature!? You no longer have to manage dozen of vSphere C# Clients to get a view of your vSphere infrastructure!