WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.560 Welcome back to vSphere 8 in the real world. We're going to go over configuration of ESXi. 00:00:06.560 --> 00:00:13.200 So in the last chapter, in the last lesson, after the demo of installing ESXi, I did go through and 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:19.120 do the initial configuration of the host. I did go in and choose the network adapter that I wanted 00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:26.240 to use for my management network. I also assigned the adapter a VLAN ID. I assigned it an IP address. 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:32.720 I tested the configuration that I had on there and all those different settings. So this might 00:00:32.720 --> 00:00:36.959 seem a little familiar. This is going to be kind of a recap of what we did on the last demo at the 00:00:36.959 --> 00:00:44.400 end of the last chapter. So after you've installed ESXi, then the host is going to automatically 00:00:44.400 --> 00:00:49.119 reboot and it's going to start up. Then you'll have the option of logging in through your console, 00:00:49.119 --> 00:00:55.919 the DCUI, and you can configure some of the basic settings. You can give it an IP address. You can 00:00:55.919 --> 00:01:00.560 choose what adapter you want it to use. You can choose if you want to assign a VLAN to that VM 00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:07.040 kernel adapter. Do you want to assign a host name? What DNS servers do you want to use? You can also 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:12.879 then test those settings. So you can do system settings like the name, for example, network 00:01:12.879 --> 00:01:18.239 settings, IP address, that kind of stuff. Storage settings, you're not going to do the DCUI. Your 00:01:18.239 --> 00:01:23.199 storage settings you're going to do once you have finished that first configuration, the DCUI, 00:01:23.199 --> 00:01:27.360 you'll log into the web interface and from there you can configure storage. You can attach to 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:31.839 shared storage or configure vSAN or whatever kind of storage configuration you're going to do. 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:40.080 So here at the console, I'll refer to the DCUI. You can do some configuration changes. 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:45.919 You can do some troubleshooting. You also have the ability actually of going out to a full-on 00:01:45.919 --> 00:01:52.320 shell to where you can actually issue ESXi CLI commands and you can configure actually just 00:01:52.320 --> 00:01:59.360 about anything you could do anywhere you can do from that shell. So you can do configure things 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:04.879 like storage, VM kernel ports, networking. You can look at VM virtual machine performance, 00:02:04.879 --> 00:02:10.080 things like that. You can configure access controls, access to what resources you want 00:02:10.080 --> 00:02:17.520 users to access. Troubleshooting, you have access to logs. You have access to ESXi top and a lot of 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:25.199 things like that. All right. You can also go to the vSphere client, either the vSphere client for 00:02:25.199 --> 00:02:29.839 vCenter if the host is connected to vCenter. You also have a web interface you can connect to there 00:02:29.839 --> 00:02:37.919 as well. All right. So some common things you might configure, you know, you might configure 00:02:37.919 --> 00:02:43.199 keyboard settings. You might configure to the web console things like a banner when you log in. 00:02:43.199 --> 00:02:48.559 You want a banner to be issued like, you know, only authorized access, that kind of thing. 00:02:50.479 --> 00:02:55.360 And then through the console, through the DCUI, you have some manual boot options you can configure 00:02:55.360 --> 00:03:00.399 as far as how you want the machine to boot up. You want to make sure you have your BIOS set 00:03:00.399 --> 00:03:05.440 correctly for the right drive. Do you have a TPAM you need to configure or something like that. 00:03:05.600 --> 00:03:09.839 This is just showing you the console. So I've logged in. I'm at the console on the host. 00:03:09.839 --> 00:03:16.720 I hit F2 if I want to log in. I, you know, put in my root password and now this is the option where I 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:22.399 can configure a new root password if I want to. I can configure that management network. These are 00:03:22.399 --> 00:03:26.320 the steps that we went through on the last demo from the last chapter where I showed you how you 00:03:26.320 --> 00:03:32.399 can configure that management network, VLAN ID for the VM kernel port, IP addresses. You can restart 00:03:32.720 --> 00:03:38.080 IP addresses. You can restart the management network. We tested the management network to make 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:42.320 sure that we could ping our default gateway and our DNS servers and things like that were all 00:03:42.320 --> 00:03:48.000 working correctly. So all this is done through the console by pressing F2 and then entering your root 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:55.600 password. You can also log in through a web interface, right? You can log in through HTTP, 00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:01.679 usually HTTPS. You don't want to have HTTP, you know, without the security enabled on that. 00:04:01.679 --> 00:04:06.399 And you can use either a hostname or you can use the IP address of the host and connect to it. 00:04:06.399 --> 00:04:10.960 You can use the vSphere client to manage your vCenter server if the host is in vCenter. 00:04:10.960 --> 00:04:13.839 You can add the host to vCenter if it's not already in there. 00:04:14.639 --> 00:04:18.079 All right. So again, hostname or IP address, either way. 00:04:21.119 --> 00:04:26.559 So here's the thing. My root by default doesn't have a password. When you install ESXi, you have 00:04:26.559 --> 00:04:30.799 to give it a password. You have to give it a password. It needs to be, you know, of a minimal 00:04:30.799 --> 00:04:35.119 length. You want to make it, you know, long enough. You want to make it secure. Your company probably 00:04:35.119 --> 00:04:40.559 has some kind of security policy as far as like password complexity and password lengths and 00:04:40.559 --> 00:04:44.239 things like that. Make sure you're following your company policy or corporate policy 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:53.200 for root account access. It can be very dangerous if you use, you might, I've seen situations where 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:58.640 people have very secure passwords for vCenter but their root passwords and their hosts aren't secure 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:03.440 and they get hit with ransomware because they aren't able to compromise the host easily because 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:08.160 they have easy passwords to guess and their hosts are compromised. So that's a dangerous thing. 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:14.079 Make sure that, you know, you have secure root passwords for your host, very secure root passwords 00:05:14.640 --> 00:05:19.839 for vCenter. Administrator password is very secure for vCenter. Any users, if you have like 00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:24.959 Active Directory integration for vCenter, make sure that any users that are able to access 00:05:24.959 --> 00:05:30.000 vCenter, you know, must have secure complicated passwords that change frequently. 00:05:32.559 --> 00:05:37.200 So here's just showing that you, in the DCUI, you went and you chose the option to change the 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:40.959 root passwords. You're going to enter the old root password and then you can say the new one 00:05:40.959 --> 00:05:49.040 and then you can confirm the new one and then enter it okay then. You want to configure the 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:54.160 networking as we discussed, as we showed you in the demo, the last demo. You're going to configure 00:05:54.640 --> 00:05:59.679 network adapter. You want the VMkernel port, that first VMkernel that's created to use, 00:06:00.320 --> 00:06:06.640 what VLAN ID, if it's a VLAN ID you want it to use, the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, 00:06:06.640 --> 00:06:10.720 all those good things there. Okay. You can also choose just to let it use DHCP. 00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:16.000 I don't think I've ever seen an environment where their ESXi hosts are using DHCP. They 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.040 always have static IP addresses assigned. I've never once seen DHCP chosen as an option. 00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:30.480 So here you can go in and check the settings. As we discussed, there's a bunch of different 00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:35.440 things you can go in there and you can do. You can configure IPv4. You can configure IPv6. 00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:40.000 You can set the address mask. All these things we actually have discussed and we also demoed 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:47.839 in the last lesson here. And this is just showing where you can say if you want to use DHCP or if 00:06:47.839 --> 00:06:52.160 you want to set a static address and what the screen would look like, where you go in, you 00:06:52.160 --> 00:07:00.399 would type in the IP address mask gateway. So that is basically the initial configuration, 00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:06.640 that very first simple default configuration on a brand new installed ESXi host. So you've 00:07:06.640 --> 00:07:11.040 installed your host, you went in, you were going to configure the VM kernel port for that first one. 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:15.760 Now you can access it through the web interface and configure any web settings, 00:07:15.760 --> 00:07:21.200 more advanced settings you want to. You also are now able to bring it into vCenter, 00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:25.519 add it to a cluster, and configure some of the more advanced settings you might want to do there. 00:07:25.519 --> 00:07:30.320 If you have an Enterprise Plus license, maybe you'll add it to a distributed virtual switch 00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:35.519 or something like that. But you now know how to install an ESXi host and get that initial 00:07:35.519 --> 00:07:38.720 configuration on there so you can access that machine from the network.