Tag: vROPS

vRealize Operations Manager delivers intelligent operations management with application-to-storage visibility across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. Using policy-based automation, operations teams automate key processes and improve IT efficiency.

Using data collected from system resources (objects), vRealize Operations Manager identifies issues in any monitored system component, often before the customer notices a problem. vRealize Operations Manager also frequently suggests corrective actions you can take to fix the problem right away. For more challenging problems, vRealize Operations Manager offers rich analytical tools that allow you to review and manipulate object data to reveal hidden issues, investigate complex technical problems, identify trends or drill down to gauge the health of a single object.

vROPS 6.6 Deployment: Subnet Problem

Last week I was deploying a VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROPS) environment at a customer and that was causing problems because of no TCP/IP connectivity to the virtual machines. At first, it seemed like an administrator configuration error or typo, but it appeared to be a VMware bug. This blog post is about my findings and the solution to this problem.

Problem:

To find the source of the TCP/IP communication problems, I did some basic testing:

  • Is the vROPS web interface available on port 80 or 443?
  • Does the virtual machine respond to a ping (ICMP) request?
  • Is the vNIC enable on the virtual machine?
  • Is the vNIC connected to the right Port Group of (NSX) Logical Switch?
  • Are there no NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW) or physical firewall blocking the traffic?

After these tests, I could confirm the problem is inside the appliance/virtual machine.

Solution:

When I was looking at the network card configuration files it appeared that there was a problem with the configured subnet mask. The ‘NETMASK’ field has a prefix notation filled in… not a subnet mask notation. Here is a quick write-up to fix your problem.

  1. Open the Virtual Machine console with the vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client.
  2. Press ALT + F1 to get into the console (Hint: ALT + F2 to get back to the main screen).
  3. Login with the root account and root password.
  4. Open the network card configuration file with the vi editor (vi /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0).
  5. Search for the line that starts with ‘NETMASK’.
  6. Replace the current prefix 28 to a subnet mask 255.255.255.240 (Hint: The values listed here are an example).
  7. Restart the vROPS appliance.
  8. After a reboot of the appliance, the IP connectivity should be working.

Screenshot(s):

The screenshots below are taken from the Virtual Machine console and gives you basic directions.

Final word:

As a result of inserting a prefix in the OVF deployment screen, the network card configuration failed. A test with a subnet mask notation did not result in these problems. The problem is caused by a network configuration script that sets the network card configuration in the Operating System. VMware please fix this problem… it’s possibly a small code change or the prefix/subnet mask detection is not working correctly.

Update 04-11-2017: Today I received a notification from an ITQ college that the vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) deployment also is suffering from the same problem (vRLI link).

 

VMware Product Vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638)

A security vulnerability has been discovered in some VMware products (CVE-2017-5638). It’s a critical vulnerability which allows remote code execution (RCE) on Apache Struts 2.

The vulnerability affects the following VMware products:
– DaaS 6.X / 7.X
– Hyperic 5.X
– vCenter 5.5 / 6.0 / 6.5
– vROPS 6.X

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