Thursday, 6 December 2018

VMware CEO Lists Top 3 Priorities for 2019: NSX, Cloud, and Containers


The three main priorities of VMware for 2019 are NSX, the cloud and the containers, and in that order, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger.

"If we go out next year and let people really see us lead in those domains, let's rate," he said, during his presentation at the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference of Barclays Global.

"Obviously I love my son vSAN, it's not as important as my son NSX," he added, referring to VMware's software-defined storage and networking and security platform, respectively.

The company has taken steps over the last year to extend the virtualization of its network from the data center to the edge and the cloud, adding SD-WAN from its acquisition of VeloCloud and support for vSphere private clouds, native Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). ) workloads and VMware Cloud in AWS.

Last month, at VMworld Europe, the company overfed its container game. Upgraded Cloud Foundation, its hybrid cloud stack, with the new Kubernetes support. VMware also announced a new integration with the Kubernetes managed service of IBM Cloud. And he's buying Heptio, a startup whose founders created Kubernetes while they worked at Google.

With that acquisition "VMware has jumped to the front of the container technology line," Gelsinger said at the Barclays event.

He also said that the relationship with Amazon Web Services, announced for the first time in 2016, was a turning point for VMware. At that time, stock prices fell and investors were not convinced that the infrastructure defined by VMware software was relevant in a cloudy world. Gelsinger, however, continued to preach the hybrid cloud.

"The relationship with Amazon was the only thing that caused that spark that people said: 'oh, you are part of the cloud, the multiple cloud, the future of the hybrid cloud,' said Gelsinger. "That was the only thing that caused people to change."

We went to today and partners launched VMware Cloud in AWS, allowing VMware customers to run their workloads in the public cloud using their existing VMware software stack. This summer they launched the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) in VMware. This new service allows customers to implement the native public database in the cloud at their local data centers based on VMware.

And in the recent edition of AWS re: Invent, companies announced AWS Outposts: AWS brand servers running in customers' local data centers. This could hurt legacy hardware vendors such as Dell Technologies, which owns 81 percent of VMware, and next week is about to make its relationship with VMware even closer by buying VMware tracking shares.

So, what does Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell (also known as Gelsinger's boss) think of VMware being comfortable with AWS in the data center?

"Michael sees it publicly if it's good for VMware, it's good for Dell Tech," Gelsinger said. "Because how much profit does Michael get from Amazon's relationship? Approximately zero. How much value does Michael get from the announcement of the outpost? Negative. Get a new hardware competitor. "

Thursday, 12 July 2018

VMware 1V0-601 Question Answer

A network administrator wants reduce the network clutter in his infrastructure and decides to use virtual switches. How can virtual switches help reduce network clutter?

A. By troubleshooting and resolving all the network issues.
B. By reducing the number of physical machines.
C. By reducing the number of physical network cables plugged into hosts.
D. By reducing the virtual network traffic.

Answer: C


Which statement about standard switches is true?

A. Performs Port Mirroring simultaneously for virtual machines in all port groups
B. Performs Port Mirroring for virtual machines in the same port group.
C. Bridges traffic between virtual machines in other port groups.
D. Bridges traffic internally between virtual machines in the same port group.

Answer: D

Thursday, 1 March 2018

VMware 1V0-601 Question Answer

What can an administrator do if they does not want Storage DRS to perform all storage balancing functions?

A. Use automatic mode in Storage DRS
B. Use manual mode in Storage DRS
C. Use Storage vMotion
D. Disable Storage DRS

Answer: D


What are two features of vSphere with Operations Management? (Choose two.)


A. Enables proactive identification of system issues through predictive analysis.
B.
Allows reclaiming overprovisioned capacity to increase resource utilization.
C. Provides a secure portal for requesting new IT services.
D. Delivers real-time log management.

Answer: A,B

Friday, 29 December 2017

How to Build a Virtual Hacking Lab with VMWare ESXi

Welcome back hackers, today we’re going to be visiting a subject that many of you may be familiar with, building a lab. Specifically, building a virtual lab. Normally you would use something like Oracle’s VirtualBox or VMWare Player, but today we’re going to take it a step further and use VMWare’s ESXi. ESXi is a hypervisor which comes in the form of a server operating system. By using ESXi to create a server dedicated to running VMs, we can make a hacking lab which can easily manage and deploy VMs.

We’ll start by making a bootable USB stick of the ESXi installer, then we’ll install ESXi, and finally we’ll create a VM of a CTF from VulnHub. So, let’s get started.

Note: ESXi is a server OS, so you’ll need a spare system strong enough to run ESXi and the VMs you need.

Step 1: Obtaining the ESXi Installer Image

First, we need to actually download the ESXi image. For that, you’ll need to create an account at VMWare:

Once you’ve created and logged into your account, you can download the ESXi image. Make sure you take a look at the SHA256 hash while you’re there, we’re going to verify our download once it’s done:


Now that we have our ESXi image downloaded, we need to verify it. This will insure that our file hasn’t been modified or corrupted. To do this we’re going to use a Python script that I wrote. Use the curl command to download the script (you may need to use dos2unix to convert it to the correct format):


This script will make a hash out of a file, which we can use in conjunction with the hash given at the download to verify that our file is good:


Upon inspection we can conclude that our file is legit. Now that we’ve downloaded and verified our file, we can move on to making a bootable USB out of it.


Step 2: Create a Bootable USB with the Image

In order to make the bootable USB there’s quite a couple things we need to do. The first of which is to identify our USB drive. We can use fdisk for this:


My USB drive is under /dev/sdb, but yours may be different. Once you know where your drive is, you should follow the documentation to set up the structure and move the image files. Once you’ve completed this step, boot up your spare system and change the BIOS options to boot from the USB, once it’s booted, follow the prompts to set up ESXi as you need it. Once the installation has completed, you should be able to boot the system and connect to the ESXi interface through a browser over the network. This is the interface we’ll use to deploy and manage our VMs.
Step 3: Deploy VMs

Now that we have this dedicated virtualization server set up, we can run the VMs we need! As an example, I’ll be setting up a boot2root from VulnHub. The ESXi interface should look something like this:


Log into ESXi with the credentials you set up at install. Now that we have control through this web interface, we can upload our VM image:



Once the image finishes uploading, we can create VM out of it:


Once you get your VM options laid out and finished, you should be able to boot into your newly created VM!

This software allows us to create lab environments that help us to practice our skills in a safe, legal environment. There’s little risk since all machines are created and maintained in a controlled environment. A large benefit of this is that you can implement it as a server, which allows you to control it over the network, allowing for more flexible means of management.

It’s important that you familiarize yourself with virtualization technology, as we’ll be using it quite frequently here, not only for CTFs, but for virtualizing entire networks to attack.

Monday, 30 October 2017

VMware 1V0-601 Question Answer

How does Storage Replication handle data replication without a dedicated link between various storage sites?

A. By using storage I/O control for replication of datastores.
B. By Using the host as a medium to provide asynchronous replication of datastores.
C. By using volume level mirroring.
D. By using storage vMotion.

Answer: D

Tuesday, 5 September 2017

VMware 1V0-601 Question Answer

Which three vSphere 6.x features allow an administrator to perform effective resource
management? (Choose three.)


A. DRS
B. vMotion
C. vRealize Operations
D. Storage I/O Control
E. NAS

Answer: A,B,D


What is the minimum number of virtual NICs that you can configure for a virtual machine?

A. Four
B. One
C. Zero
D. Two

Answer: B