Incorrect Product Forwarding Class on vDS When Upgraded via PowerCLI

I recently encountered network issues on a VM migrated to a new host, it turns out it was due to a mismatch on the “Product_Forwarding_Class” between the host and vDS. The Forwarding Class configured for vDS version 6.5.0 and below is “etherswitch”, and from vDS version 6.6.0, and above the Forwarding Class is “cswitch” When upgrading my vDS from…

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Install Free SSL Certificate for vSphere 7 Home Lab

Last year I wrote the follow guide Install Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate for your vCenter 6.7 Lab. The certificate was issued by Let’s Encrypt via a project called ZeroSSL. Recently ZeroSSL stopped using Let’s Encrypt, and started issuing the certificates themselves, therefore the process to generate the certificate outlined in that guide is no…

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Fix Error, You cannot visit site right now because the website uses HSTS

I faced this error on Chrome. You cannot visit “site” right now because the website uses HSTS. The HTTP Strict-Transport-Security response header (HSTS) lets a web site tell browsers that it should only be accessed using HTTPS, instead of using HTTP, therefore, preventing access. I received this error because I had accessed this URL previously…

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Converge External PSC to Embedded with vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode Configured

VMware announced the deprecation of the External Platform Services Controller. vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode was only supported with the External PSC (Platform Services Controller) deployment architecture. With the release of 6.7, VMware announced a simplified vCenter SSO (Single Sign-On) domain architecture by enabling vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode support for the vCenter Server Appliance with embedded…

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vCenter 6.7 U3 Upgrade Has Limited Deployment Size options with Snapshots

I encountered an interesting issue while attempting to upgrade a vCenter 6.5 Update 2 appliance to 6.7 Update 3. I started by mounting the 6.7U3 iso, executing the installer and selecting the upgrade option. The first step was to connect to the source vCenter appliance that I was upgrading and the vCenter that was managing…

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Manually Update vCenter Server Appliance via VAMI

I decided to upgrade my home lab from vSphere 6.7 Update 1 to vSphere 6.7 Update 3. The way to do this is via the VAMI (VMware Appliance Management Interface). If your vCenter appliance has internet access this very straight forward, however, some organisations don’t allow internet connectivity, so the steps below are the simple…

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Install Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate for your vCenter 6.7 Lab

In this post, I’ll show you how to install a valid SSL certificate for your vCenter server for FREE!. For this I’ll use a free, open-source web-based tool by ZeroSSL to generate a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate quickly and easily. Let’s Encrypt is a free open certificate authority brought to you by the non-profit Internet…

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