hardware

This post shows how you can create your very own custom iso image with host specific customizations for a completely unattended ESXi installation

As a follow-up of my exploration of the HPE PDU REST API I wanted to create a Powershell module as a wrapper for the API. I’ve previously written a post on how to create a Powershell module as a wrapper for an API here. The PDU module will be built in the same way where there will be a private function that handles the actual API requests

Lately I’ve been playing around with the Redfish based REST API in the HPE G2 Metered and Switched Power Distribution Units. Through the API you are able to pull some details about the PDU as well as different utilization data. Based on your PDUs capabilities you should also be able to control different outlets. My focus has been to pull some details about the PDUs, and to pull the load on the different segments.

This article will describe how you can disable the IPMI over LAN access on HPE iLO. The IPMI protocol can present a security vulnerability where the authentication process for IPMI requires a server to send a hash of a user password to the client before authentication. This is not a new vulnerability and since this is a part of the specification of the protocol there is no fix for it besides disabling it or accepting it.

Recently we received lots of new hardware destined for a customer that has multiple locations world-wide. They need a robust server solution for their production environments locally. The environment is small in terms of number of VMs, but there is high demands on the environment and we need local hardware at the sites as the connections to these sites varies and they are not fast enough at all times. Lots of racks

The last months we have had several issues with ESXi hosts going in a “Not responding” status. The VMs are still active and online in this scenario, but the ESXi cannot be managed. This also affets backup as it won’t be able to reach the VMs through the APIs. Previously we have normally just restarted the management agents on the host and it has been able to connect to vCenter and after this we have managed to migrate the VMs off the host.

This blog post will be building on a previous post where I built a small PXE server environment for ESXi installation. In this post we will enhance the PXE install with customized kickstart files specific for the hardware we want to install. There’s two new components to discuss here. The kickstart file (ks.cfg) it self and how to point to it during PXE boot. Let’s take a look at the current environment The tftp server root is located at /var/lib/tftpboot and my images is stored as directories under this directory.

In our environment we run ESXi primarily on HPE Proliant servers. We use OneView for managing the hardware it self (i.e. monitoring, firmware), but for provisioning ESXi to the servers we have been doing some of it manually and some of it with HPE Insight Control Server Provisioning (ICsp). When preparing for deployment of a new batch of servers we found that Proliant Gen10 servers is not supported by ICsp. Furthermore after an unofficial chat with a HPE employee it seems that it won’t be anytime soon either.

We have quite a few Blade Enclosures with BL460c server blades in them and have been happy with those. For managing these we are primarly using HPE OneView and in some cases the Onboard Administrator (OA). Our latest batch of new hardware however was DL360 and DL380 rack servers. These will also be managed by OneView primarly, but initially we need to do some iLO config on each server which in the case of blades are done by the OA.

HPE released it’s 4th version of their OneView management appliance late in December. While version 3 was a great deal better than v2 and v1 I have some expectations on this release as well. I think all versions have had value and the new features and functionalities presented has been for the better. Still it wasn’t until version 3 I really felt that it was a solid product. We’ve run v3 for almost as long as it has been available and have been happy with it.