So I’m trying to build up a 180 day hacking streak at TryHackMe, so in the last 3 months, I’ve earned a total of 17 New Badges! and here they all are!
17 More badges earned from @RealTryHackMe in 3 months!
April 23rd, 2024VMware vExpert Sub Programs
April 23rd, 2024So I thought it was time to apply for the VMware vExpert Sub Programs, of which there are several. I’ve been a vExpert PRO for several years, which is one of the sub programs, so this year I also applied for the VMware vSphere vSAN and vSphere sub programs.
and I’m happy to report that I’ve been excepted into the VMware vSphere vSAN and vSphere sub programs for 2024, as well as a vExpert PRO 2024.
AI
April 22nd, 2024Test RSS Feed
April 22nd, 2024End Of General Availability of the free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x) (2107518) – ISO Hashes here to help you find the ISOS !
February 9th, 2024As Published on the VMware by Broadcom website!
End Of General Availability of the free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x) (2107518)
(spelt correctly!)
Sadly ESXi FREE is now longer available! You will need to join VMUG Advantage+ or become a vExpert
Here are the hashes for the ESXi 8.0.2.22380479 8.0U2 ISO before it is removed:
Name: | VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0U2-22380479.x86_64.iso |
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Release Date: | 2023-09-21 |
Build Number: | 22380479 |
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image | |
Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools. | |
MD5SUM: | 2403e11fb6d46dd57ba0a6ee0fa1c833 |
---|---|
SHA1SUM: | a2773c2519715e28d23f39753f4d6064f29fef48 |
SHA256SUM: | ff062f843be45760b591096fbf7be0b1003f6469db24f2d2e40a4c8ed3d86c21 |
Here are the hashes for the ESXi 7.0U3n-21930508 ISO before it is removed:
Name: | VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0U3n-21930508.x86_64.iso |
---|---|
Release Date: | 2023-07-06 |
Build Number: | 21930508 |
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image | |
Boot your server with this image in order to install or upgrade to ESXi (ESXi requires 64-bit capable servers). This ESXi image includes VMware Tools. | |
MD5SUM: | 0cacd44568b7f6112c6d003ef210dcfe |
---|---|
SHA1SUM: | 07b2f7677b274fca656bac564445c0882b540835 |
SHA256SUM: | b5e65fc738900296dd70d1938d76ebb72dab19b9b722dedad445669fc77f1272 |
Some new badges earned from @RealTryHackMe
January 8th, 2024For the past 5 years, I’ve been completing the AoC (Advent of Cyber), which is 24/25 days of cyber “hacking” tasks, every day leading up to Christmas Day. These are the new badges I’ve earned for 2023.
This year was a special year, because not only did THM have the usual AoC, they also had some very insanely difficult Side Challenges, to complete a single challenge earned this badge from TryHackMe
To complete ALL the four challenges earned this badge
A list of all my @ExpertsExchange articles and videos can be found at The CodHeadClub
August 21st, 2023A list of all my Experts Exchange articles and videos can be found here – at the – CodHeadClub – To copy and paste!
http://tinyurl.com/AwesomeResourcesURL
This is an Awesome List of Computer Science, Technology, Programming and Educational resources for the benefit of all who care to use it.
The list was originally created by Closebracket.
I’ve now written over 140 articles and created 40 hours of tutorial VMware vSphere videos on vSphere 7.0 and 8.0. and today published Part 50 – VMware vSphere videos on vSphere 7.0.
HOW TO: Perform storage performance tests on VMware vSphere vSAN, using the VMware Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark fling (HCIBench)
August 14th, 2023In this video presentation which is part of the Hancock’s VMware Half Hour HOW TO Video Series I will show you HOW TO: Perform storage performance tests on VMware vSphere vSAN, using the VMware Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark fling (HCIBench).
HCIBench is a storage performance testing automation tool that simplifies and accelerates customer Proof of Concept (POC) performance testing in a consistent and controlled way. VMware vSAN Community Forum provides support for HCIBench.
The storage devices we are using in this video are the Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series 375GB, 2.5in PCIe x4, 3D XPoint™, but this procedure can be use to add any compatible storage devices in ESXi to a vSAN datastore.
This video follows on from the follow video in this series
If you are creating a design for VMware vSphere vSAN for a Production environment, please ensure you read the VMware Cloud Foundation Design Guide 01 JUN 2023 – this should be regarded as The Bible!
References
WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH INTEL OPTANE? – Mr vSAN – Simon Todd
VMware vSAN 8.0 U1 Express Storage Architecture Deep Dive
VMware vSAN 7.0 U3 Deep Dive Paperback – 5 May 2022
The results generated from this video are available here in these PDFs for download
FIO Benchmarks
VDBENCH Benchmarks
4K/70%Read/100%Random
4K/100%Read100%Random
8K/50%Read/100%Random
256K/100%Write/100%Sequential
Openreach ONT and BBU Service !
August 12th, 2023I thought I would document this, as I could not find any photos, videos, pictures on the internet, of a complete “legacy” system, as Openreach only supply an ONT at present, no BBU, so you don’t have a larger box, which contains, ONT and BBU, and I found it difficult to remove the BBU, you need to push up and pull ! It does budge, it’s not screwed, e.g. you do not need to remove the entire box from wall and disturb the fibre!
It’s been five years now, since the FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) was installed, and during that time it has worked flawlessly with no issues.
But 2023, we’ve had a few issues and recently in the last week we’ve had two major outages, the first outage lasted 5 hours, which was an underground fault 1000m away, and Openreach just physically moved “the shire” onto another fibre in the ground.
and then Friday just gone, off for 15 hours, whilst I suspect another fibre cable in the ground had failed.
So this has given me a moment to change the AA batteries in the BBU (battery back unit), which has had a failed RED light on for many years, and Openreach no longer supply/install or replace the batteries in these units, it’s Self Service!
So off to Amazon, to purchase 8 x AA Energiser rechargeable batteries, the specifications state any batteries > 2000mAh
#intel #optane SSD demo units received as part of the vExpert Program not being detected as a datastore in ESXi 7.0 or ESXi 8.0 ?
July 3rd, 2023This blog is specific to the #intel #optane demo units received as part of the vExpert Program. but later you will observe that this applies to all storage devices connected to ESXi 7.0 or ESXi 8.0.
and again my special thanks to fellow #vExperts – Mr vSAN, Matt Mancini, and vCommunity Guy for arranging this fantastic opportunity to work with #intel #optane demo units for free in our #homelabs .
These demo units received may have been previously used as part of the #intel loan program.
I received 10 (ten) #intel #optane – Intel® Optane™ SSD DC P4800X Series 375GB, 2.5in PCIe x4, 3D XPoint™
the form factor I selected for my #homelab was U.2 15mm, rather than a PCIe slot in card, because I want to use them, in the storage/disk slot of a server, I could connect them to a U.2 to PCIe card, but I would rather use them as “intended”. More on the complications of that later with my #homelab.
For ease, I did quickly connect them all to a recommended (thanks Mr vSAN) – StarTech.com U.2 to PCIe Adapter – x4 PCIe – For 2.5″ U.2 NVMe SSD – SFF-8639 PCIe Adapter – U.2 SSD – PCIe SSD – U.2 drive (PEX4SFF8639) for testing and formatting in my test bench. In fact I’ve now got a bucket full of these cards, I’ve tried and tested, how difficult can it be to connect a U.2. NVMe interface to a PCIe slot, when some cards are £50 GBP, and other cards are available from that well known China website for £1.99 GBP ! and some are described as Low Profile – NOT! – but more on that later!
You may notice if you look through the above photos, there is one U.2 #intel #optane unit with a RED DOT! Read on.
This because it was faulty, ah, or so I thought! I must admit, it was very odd, because it worked in Windows 10, and on checking in ESXi and Ubuntu, the devices were present.
But when trying to create a datastore, no device was available to create a datastore.
BUT BUT BUT After discussions with Mr vSAN, Mr Todd (MrVSAN) suggested checking that the #intel #optane SSD how not been formatted to/with LBA 4K sectors! Because ESXi 7.0 and 8.0 does not support LBA 4K. I was surprised that it would not list the SSD device!
Interestingly on Twitter at the same time, another vExpert was also having similar issues!
Checking with an Ubuntu Live “CDROM” USB flash drive
Using the nvme-cli, which you can pull using sudo apt-get install nvem-cli, and use the command sudo nvme list to list NVMe devices
to check the LBA format – sudo nvme id-ns -H /dev/nvmeXnY | grep “LBA format” you can see in the screenshot below I have two NVMe devices /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme1n1 and both show
[3:0] : 03x Current LBA Format Selected
if you look at LBA Format 3: it states Data Size – 4096 bytes !
Argh! 4K ! lets just reformat with – sudo nvme format -l 0 /dev/nvme0n1, it does not display any progress, as there is no -v verbose option, but eventually it will respond with Success Formatting Namespace:1
for #shitsandgiggles I’ve left /dev/nvme1n1 formatted as 4k, but now above you can see /dev/nvme0n1 is 512 sectors, so now back and restart ESXi. I’ll do a quick video on /dev/nvme1n1 for Hancock’s VMware Half Hour
If I now check the storage devices in ESXi, there is a Local NVMe SSD available
and if you now try to create a datastore – Viola!
You will notice from the above storage device list the 4K formatted NVMe device is still missing. Q.E.D
Anyway kudos and my sincere Thanks to Simon Todd aka Mr vSAN !
So onward with my #intel #optane #homelab journey more later!