Vmware Esxi Host Download
Mozell Rhule
Has anyone clone an entire ESXi Host as a backup? For example, I currently have a bare metal host (HP Z2 G9) with VMware ESXi 7.0U3 and I wanted to clone the entire VMware ESXi host to another similar bare metal host.
Update to all who are curious. This is what I did to clone an entire ESXI host from one bare metal host to another. (This was through a ESXi stand-alone environment/no cloud environment)
I am trying to migrate machines from one vSphere cluster to another. There is no network connectivity between the 2, so I plan on copying the vmdk and vmx files over via USB attached directly to the host for max thoroughput. Has anybody tried this? I looked in the documentation and online, and I see that the only file systems supported are FAT32 and ext3. For a 40GB VM, can I use an ext3 formatted USB stick, copy locally to it, and then attach that USB to a host on the new cluster and copy that over? Anybody see any issues with this? Currently we are doing this process via a USB attached to a user workstation, and SCPing from the host to the USB over the network. I figure cutting out the network transfer will speed up the process, currently a 40-50GB VM takes about 3 hours
If that's not all, they use the DCUI for tech Support mode which they link to in an article KB1017910 using the console is already a bit questionable on a production host. Using the console for daily operations is pretty much a No No.
Thanks, when you say a direct USB passthrough via VMKernel, are you referring to connecting the USB to the host? I'm just wondering because that process entails a reboot, and if I need to reboot when trying to mount a USB to the esxi host then it may not be too viable.
The USB is always connected to the host, and it only depends on how you want to access it. Direct PCI passthrough requires a reboot and for USB drives I would suggest going the USB route - that way you even have plug'n'play enabled, can safely remove it, etc.
If you are wanting to do this to a host in production level then I strongly recommend to steer away from that solution as it might lead to instability at the hypervisor management level and cause problems.
Hi, thanks for your response. If it's not supported, why are there KBs (VMware KB: Configuring a USB Flash drive to transfer files between Windows and an ESXi/ESX host ) that indicate the opposite? Just curious, I'm trying to streamline the process and copying the tarball is way too slow. We've found that exporting the ovf file is faster, so that may be a solution, but I would like to explore connecting USB to host as a solution for completeness' sake.
Thank you very much Wil for the great explanation. I have one more question, if you can be bothered to answer? You say only VFAT is mountable, is that pertaining to mounting at the host level? If we do the passthrough directly connected to the host, we are able to use ext2-4 or NTFS?
AFAIK ESXi/vSphere can only use the file system VFAT on a usb disk that you connect to the host, no other filesystem, no ext2-ext4, no NTFS.
If you use passthrough and connect the USB disk to a guest then you can use ANY filesystem that the guest supports.
Other requirements include a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) disk or a local and non-network, logical-unit-number configured (LUN-configured) Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) with unpartitioned space for hosting the VMs. Serial ATA (SATA) disks are also supported.
ESXi hosts support booting from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) on hard drives, CD-ROM drives or USB media. Network booting and provisioning of ESXi hosts with UEFI are also supported. For compatible hardware, ESXi can also boot from disks that are 2 TB or more in size.
The diagram below depicts a simplified representation of the VMware ESXi architecture. It includes VMkernel, the major processes mentioned above, and other processes like vpxa, SNMP, hostd, and syslog.
Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) supports both VMware ESXi Server and VMware vCenter as a VDI host. With Parallels RAS having any of these two as a VDI host, you can use them to manage VMs, create guest clones and publish desktops and applications. After setting up and configuring the host, you can set up an agent on the guest VMs, together with guest pools and templates, all from a single pane of glass.
I should also mention that utilizing VUM is not the only way to perform ESXi host upgrades. Upgrades for ESXi hosts can be done Interactively with a CD/DVD or USB drive, with vSphere Auto Deploy, scripted, or via esxcli commands. All methods may have different requirements which should be reviewed. Each method listed are valid and supported for upgrading ESXi hosts.
In this environment I will be using VUM to manage the upgrades of four ESXi hosts on vSphere 6.0 to vSphere 6.7. Before we begin upgrading the vSphere ESXi hosts we will need to have the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7 installation ISO (named similar to this;
.x86_64.iso) which is available on My.VMware.com. A vSphere Update Manager (VUM) Upgrade Baseline is also required since we will be using VUM to perform the upgrades of our ESXi hosts. I will cover how to create the baseline that we will use during this post. Last, we need at least one vSphere ESXi host to upgrade with our VUM baseline.
Next we will create a baseline for our Upgrade within vSphere Update Manager. VUM baselines are host baselines used to upgrade objects in your vSphere inventory. Baselines can be predefined, systemmanaged, or customized to fit your needs. Please review vSphere Update Manager Installation & Administration guide for more details on baselines and baseline Groups.
Once the Compliance Checks are completed we can quickly see that our vSphere hosts need attention. This is a good and expected result. What this means is that the vSphere 6.7 code is not running on these vSphere hosts.
A good practice is to validate that vSphere hosts are ready for Remediation. Click Pre-Check Remediation to validate that the hosts & cluster are in compliance. This pre-check will report any issues with the vSphere cluster. If issues are found they are reported along with helpful notes on the actions that must be taken before a vSphere host is remediated.
When all hosts are selected, one host at a time is placed in Maintenance Mode and VMs are evacuated to other hosts within the cluster. Updates are applied before the host is rebooted and has the new vSphere version installed.
Below we can see our vSphere host going into Maintenance Mode and preparing to Upgrade. Once this host is done and back online after its reboot, Update Manager will move to the next ready host in the cluster to update in the same manner.
Your system has been configured with default, random passwords at the time of installation. To perform the task of adding or deleting an ESXi host, you need the login credentials that are used for the original hosts in the cluster. Since the time of deployment, your organization may have updated the credentials for the environment. If the credentials have not been updated since deployment, complete the following steps to locate your default passwords.
In the Create ESXi Host window, enter a name for the host. Select a Pricing Interval Commitment and select the Pricing interval must be confirmed to continue check box.
The host creation status will show the stages, starting with Creating. Once the ESXi host is created, the state will change to Active. Keep in mind, this takes approximately 30 minutes.
Highlight the newly added host in the left pane. Select Actions from the drop-down list, select Maintenance Mode, and then select Enter Maintenance Mode.
Navigate to the Network page in vSphere. From the navigation tree, select DSwitch and then select Hosts. You will see the configured hosts in the list, but you will not see the new host just yet.
In late 2022, Mandiant published details surrounding a novel malware system deployed by UNC3886, a Chinese cyber espionage group, which impacted VMware ESXi hosts, vCenter servers, and Windows virtual machines (VM). Through continued security research and investigations over the past year, Mandiant has discovered additional techniques UNC3886 has utilized across multiple organizations to keep out of the sights of EDR solutions including:
This blog post describes an expanded understanding of the attack path seen in Figure 1 and highlights the implications of both the zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2023-20867) and VMCI communication sockets the attacker leveraged to complete their goal. In a followup post, we will provide artifacts present on hosts, which indicate historical attacker activity, optional logging to track Guest Operations at the guest level, and hardening suggestions for both vCenter and ESXi solutions.
Before diving into how UNC3886 was able to harvest service account credentials for ESXi hosts on vCenter servers, the following section describes what is currently known about the threat actor associated with the attack path in Figure 1.
The following section ties in the usage of the vpxuser mentioned in this blog post and describes how the attacker gained these service account credentials for ESXi machines by targeting the vCenter server the ESXi hosts were connected to.
Mandiant has identified additional attacker scripts that enabled UNC3886 to obtain vpxuser credentials, enumerate ESXi hosts and their guest VMs, and manipulate connected ESXi host firewall rules. These scripts enabled the attacker to perform the following actions:
The vpxuser account is a privileged service account created on an ESXi host automatically when it is first connected to a vCenter server. The password for this user is encrypted and stored in the vPostgreSQL database on a vCenter server and by default rotates automatically every 30 days. vCenter primarily uses this service account for administrative actions such as moving VMs between different ESXi hosts and modifying the configurations of running VMs. UNC3886 utilized this service account to deploy malicious vSphere Installation Bundles (VIB) that contained either the VIRTUALPITA or VIRTUALPIE backdoor.
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