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SSH Keys & Lockdown Mode Caveat in ESXi 5

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Hopefully everyone is familiar with ESXi's Lockdown Mode and what it means from a security standpoint. Here is a table of the behavior between normal and Lockdown Mode:

In ESXi 5, the use of SSH keys is officially supported without having to manually create any hacks to preserve .ssh directory as you did with prior releases of ESXi. If you use Lockdown Mode, there is an additional caveat to be aware of in which the use of SSH keys is able to by-pass the Lockdown Mode configuration for an ESXi 5 host.

Here is a quick example demonstrating the process from VMware's VCVA (vCenter Virtual Appliance):

Step 1 - Create SSH keys

vcenter50-1:~ # ssh-keygen -t dsa
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/root/.ssh/id_dsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /root/.ssh/id_dsa.
Your public key has been saved in /root/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
a1:8c:24:60:0e:fe:9a:cf:4a:35:17:d6:89:ba:08:9d root@vcenter50-1
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ DSA 1024]----+
|o. |
|=. o . |
| o. .+ o. |
| ..+oo.. . |
|. E=..o S |
|. = + |
| = . |
|. o |
| ..o |
+-----------------+

Step 2 - Copy SSH public keys over to destination ESXi 5 host into the authorized file under /etc/ssh/keys-root/authorized_keys

vcenter50-1:~ # scp .ssh/id_dsa.pub root@vesxi50-4:/etc/ssh/keys-root/authorized_keys
Password:
id_dsa.pub 100% 606 0.6KB/s 00:00

Step 3 - Enable Lockdown Mode via vCenter

Step 4 - SSH into locked down ESXi 5 host utilizing SSH keys

By default the support of SSH is enabled, you will need to manually disable it to ensure that you are fully lockdown when you choose to enable Lockdown Mode. To disable SSH key support, you just need to comment the following line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# AuthorizedKeysFile /etc/ssh/keys-%u/authorized_keys

The change takes effect right away and you do not need to restart the SSH daemon.

If you are interested in automatically disabling the use of SSH keys or you would like to copy an existing SSH key into your ESXi 5 host via kickstart, take a look at Automating ESXi 5.x Kickstart Tips & Tricks for more details.

What's New in VMware Vsish for ESXi 5

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I wrote about What Is VMware Vsish back in 2010 which included a list of 771 configuration parameters some public and some hidden. With the latest release of ESXi 5, I have compiled a list of the net new configuration parameters that comes out to the following:

Total: 232 
Public: 146
Hidden: 86

***As usual with any hidden configurations, please be careful and use at your own risk as the vsish interface is not officially supported by VMware***

Some of the interesting hidden parameters such as /VMFS3/EnableBlockDelete and /VMFS3/BlockDeleteThreshold could be useful in dealing with Dead Space Reclamation also known as the UNMAP VAAI primitive. For more details about the UNAMP feature, take a look at Duncan Epping's detailed post here.

For the complete list, please take a look at https://s3.amazonaws.com/virtuallyghetto-download/complete_vsish_config_500ga.html.

There's a new mob in town, FDM MOB for ESXi 5

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That's right, vSphere is not the only one with a MOB, the new FDM (Fault Domain Manager) feature also includes a MOB view on an ESXi 5.0 hosts that is part of an FDM/HA enabled cluster. I originally noticed this new URL while parsing through the systems logs an ESXi host to get a better understanding of the startup process and found this little nugget. This page contains private APIs that are currently not exposed for public consumption with respect to FDM service, please use at your own risk.

To access the FDM MOB, you will need to point your browser to the following URL:

https://[esxi5_hostname]/mobfdm

Here is a screenshot of the main summary page:

On the summary page, you have some basic information about the particular host in question, one interesting property is the "clusterState" which will be either a master or slave node, this can be useful in troubleshooting if you do not have access to vCenter

The are two interesting methods that can provide some useful information: RetrieveClusterInfo and RetrieveHostList which should be pretty self explanatory in what they will be doing.

To generate the URL for the RetrieveClusterInfo you will need to point your browser to the following URL:

https://[esxi5_hostname]/mobfdm/?moid=fdmService&method=retrieveClusterInfo

As you can see from the screenshot, it provides a summary for the particular ESXi host within the FDM cluster, including the masterID, this ID will be useful when we call the other method to identify the master node in the FDM cluster.

To generate the URL for the RetrieveHostList you will need to point your browser to the following URL:

https://[esxi5_hostname]/mobfdm/?moid=fdmService&method=retrieveHostList

This method extracts all hosts from the FDM cluster and provides quite a bit of information about each host including the hostname and also the hostID. You can now translate ID found in the last method to identify the master node of the FDM cluster.

When you login to the FDM MOB for an ESXi host that is a master node in the cluster, the page will look slightly different with even more details including all slave nodes and protected VMs within the cluster.

As you can see this can be a useful tool for quickly identifying the master and slave nodes within an FDM cluster without going to your vCenter Server.

You can also get this information within the ESXi Shell, there is a hostlist file in an XML format that you can view the same information found in the RetrieveClusterInfo method located in /etc/opt/vmware/fdm/hostlist

~ # cat /etc/opt/vmware/fdm/hostlist
host-70
FB43716F-84A5-45AD-A5BB-F08BC64148DF-14-5db552f-vcenter50-133host-205esxi50-2.primp-industries.com58:C9:81:F1:3D:A1:47:B8:7A:C0:33:93:71:3A:B9:A1:51:AD:25:51172.30.0.7300:19:bb:26:25:8e00:19:bb:26:25:7e/vmfs/volumes/664220b6-9628e4e3/vmfs/volumes/f0613bc2-56e80c59443host-70esxi50-1.primp-industries.com25:C3:FE:23:B1:DB:5C:F8:94:13:A3:CD:B0:DC:EA:51:72:F1:53:4F172.30.0.7200:1f:29:c9:48:e200:1f:29:c9:48:f8/vmfs/volumes/664220b6-9628e4e3/vmfs/volumes/f0613bc2-56e80c59443

You also get the details of RetrieveHostList and cleaner output of the FDM host using the following script: /opt/vmware/fdm/fdm/prettyPrint.sh. The script can accept three different arguments: hostlist, clusterconfig and compatlist

Here is a screenshot of the hostlist:

Here is a screenshot of the clusterconfig:

Here is screenshot the compatlist: