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Quick Tip - Block or remove download URL for VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in (EAP)

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There was a new VMware Security Advisory (VMSA-2024-0003) that was published this week that affects the deprecated VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in (EAP) and as part of the remediation, per VMware KB 96442, there are instructions on how to uninstall the EAP plugin from desktop systems that had it installed.

I also noticed there were also questions from the community about disabling the EAP download itself, which is available as a hyperlink from the vSphere UI login page as shown in the screenshot below.


Having spent some time exploring and customizing the vSphere UI login page back in 2015, I knew there were a few ways of either blocking and/or removing the download URL all together, so I figure I would put together the list of options depending on what users were comfortable with.

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Google Chat space notification for failed vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups using VEBA

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It is always good idea to verify that your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backups are occurring and if there are any failures, you are notified about them immediately!

As alluded to at the end of that blog post, you can easily build event-driven automation using the popular VMware Event Broker Appliance (VEBA) solution, triggering notifications based on several types of VCSA backup events:

  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.finished.event
  • com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.start.event

I recently built a PowerShell function that would send a notification to a Google Chat space by enabling their incoming webhook integration as you can seen from the screenshot below:


While the message customization is not as extensive as using Slack (e.g. supporting advanced layouts and emoji), it does get the job done and you will know immediately when a backup has failed or when it has started or has completed.

Note: For existing VEBA users (pre-v0.8 release), the function.yaml needs to be updated to trigger off of the subject keyword rather than the type, which is due to replacing the event router with Tanzu Sources for vSphere. You also need to ensure the prefix of "com.vmware.vsphere" is removed along with trailing "v0" as this is the next syntax for vCenter Events once VEBA v0.8 is released.

spec:
  broker: default
  filter:
    attributes:
      subject: com.vmware.applmgmt.backup.job.failed.event

Heads Up - ESXi 8.0 Update 2 requires XSAVE CPU instruction even with allowLegacyCPU=true

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As shared back in 2022 in my Homelab Considerations for vSphere 8.x blog post, if you attempt to install ESXi on system where the CPU is no longer being supported by the OEM vendor, who then informs VMware on what to publish on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide (VCG), you will see the following error message preventing you from proceeding.


Also mentioned in that article, you can override this default behavior with the following ESXi boot option: allowLegacyCPU=true which would convert this from an error to warning message but allowing you to proceed in an installation or upgrade.

Obviously, this is not officially supported by VMware and its behavior was never guarantee but it certainly was a nice gesture, in my humble opinion from Engineering, as they could have easily not allowed any override based on on our official VCG. For homelab use cases, it might be okay to use a CPU that is 5 to 6 years old, knowing that it should be replaced hopefully in the near future.

I just had a couple of users report issues while upgrading to the latest ESXi 8.0 Update 2 release when using the allowLegacyCPU boot option and saw the following error message

VMB: 716: Unsupported CPU


The ESXi installer immediately halts and prevents the upgrade from proceeding ...

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