Backups are a good thing to have. While it can be super quick and easy to rebuild your ESXi config sometimes that is not always the case. It’s a good idea to have a backup just in case. Here’s how to do it.
vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/sync_config vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config…
My firewall recently blocked Microsoft Azure AD Connect which caused issues with syncing to 365. Turns out the issue was that my IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) flagged it as being “suspected RST injection”.
Normally when something like this happens it’s typically the IPS being overly sensitive and I usually can whitelist the specific detection however the IPS is blocking other things correctly that are also flagged as “suspected RST injection” because this is Microsoft Azure I can’t simply just whitelist the IP or a short IP range because there are so many and they can change fairly often.
Microsoft does list some of the IPs for most of 365 on their website however the IPs that were being blocked from my side of things was 52.239.186.132 and 52.239.149.106. Which aren’t in the main lists as they are part of the Azure side of things.
There’s a link on the same page that will take you to a download page for all the Azure IPs. However they update that file weekly. AWS publishes a JSON file of their IPs here.
It’s been years that people have asked for Microsoft to just publish the IPs in a JSON file like how AWS does. There’s a feedback request from 2016 asking for something like that here. Microsoft did make the JSON file available but in a roundabout way.
…You’ve spent many hours perfecting your GPO (Group Policy Object) and you have it perfect and you want to import it to another location and well you could look at manually comparing all the settings but no one has time for that. There’s an easier way.
There are a few ways to convert a system either P2V (Physical to Virtual) or V2V (Hyper V to VMware). This will show you how to convert a system using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client.
Before you start you should check a few things to make the whole process streamlined.
Here is how to update VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance specifically version 7) with the web UI
Here is how to add a host to VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance specifically version 7)
Here is how to change the host name in ESXi (specifically ESXi 7)
Here is how to set a static IP in ESXi
There have been a lot of critical exploits over the last few months. Really the best way to deal with that is Windows Updates. Now I can hear you complaining that Windows Updates left untamed will just reboot your servers randomly or I don’t want to build WSUS or my RMM doesn’t patch well and it sucks and <insert your excuse here>.
Well I’ve created a PowerShell script that I called DK Win Updates that will help solve the issue. It uses the Windows Update Agent API to search for updates and guess what you can run this as .ps1 file, you could build a scheduled task to run it, you can toss it in your RMM and run it as a script. (if your RMM can’t do that, you should find a new RMM).
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show version, show flash, and show config files
