Category Archives: Virtualisation

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VMware

VMware vCenter: Howto add an Active Directory Domain as SSO Identity Source and using system session credentials

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Attention: If plan a update to VMware vSphere/vCenter 5.1.0 Update 1. Currently this version contains a bug which prevents User from Login. VMware is working on an Fix. See KB2050941

=> Bug is solved in 5.1.0 Update 1a

Hi everybody,

since VMware vCenter 5.1 a new service SSO, the Single Sign On Service,  handles the authentication for all logons. The advantage is that multiple authentication sources are possible. For example Local User and groups, OpenLDAP Directory Services and of course Microsofts Active Directory.

This post is related to vCenter Version 5.1.0b and describes how to add an Active Directory Domain as Identity source and get this running by using the “Reuse session” Authentication Type. The last one is the tricky part :-).

Let us start. Start the vSphere WebClient with a login which owns the appropriate rights, for example admin@system-domain or any other user who owsn has the SSO administrator privileges, and navigate to Administration/Sign On and Discovery/Configration. In the default configuration two identity sources are added by default. The SSO database and the user management of the local server.

To add an Active Directory as identity source the following informations are required

  • The Domain fully qualified domain name
  • The Domains NetBIOS Name
  • At least one domain controller
  • The Base DN for the users and groups

The attached powershell script GetSSOParameters.ps1 should determine this for your domain. You must start the script with the fully qualified domain name as parameter. Try it!

PS c:\>GetNetBiosDomainName.ps1 yourdomain.com
Basic Config for VMware SSO Identity source
NAME: YOURDOMAIN
Primary Server: ldap://domaincontroller1.yourdomain.com
Secondary Server: ldap://domaincontroller2.yourdomain.com
BaseDN Users: DC=yourdomain,DC=com
Domain: yourdomain.com
Domain Alias: YOURDOMAIN
BaseDN Groups: DC=yourdomain,DC=com

If you have the necessary information you can add the Identity source. See Screenshot below. First try to add by specifing a Username and a password which have the rights to query the Active Directory

VMware SSO Identity Source with "Password" option
VMware SSO Identity Source with “Password” option

Press the Test Connection Button and normally this return that the connection is successfully established. Continue reading VMware vCenter: Howto add an Active Directory Domain as SSO Identity Source and using system session credentials →

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Virtualisation

Creating a virtual floppy disk image for Windows XP installation on VMware

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For VMware Workstation or ESX Server and other virtualisation Software it is sometimes necassary to have a virtual floppy disk file.

For example if you want to install Windows XP in a VMware virtual environment and you want to use a SCSI Disk at the virtual LSI Controller.  Windows XP hasn’t any driver for this controller and therefore no harddisk ist found and the installation aborts. Solution is, creating a virtual floppy file, copy the driver to this and attach the file as virtual floppy to the virtual machine.

Note: In the vSphere GUIs you can only enlarge SCSI Disks online. For IDE Disks you have to do this at the ESXi host command line which is described here.

Best system for do this is linux, here for example debian. There are all tools which are needed, except two are missing, installed by default .  Check if the dostools and unzip are not installed or get them via

apt-get install dosfstools unzip

Creating a empty floppy image with an 1,44MB FAT 12 filesystem is very easy. Name the  file as you want. For VMware vSphere the extension .flp should be the better choice. Create the floppy by using the following command

mkfs.msdos -C /tmp/floppy.img 1440 -F 12

Floppy is now ready to take some files .
Continue reading Creating a virtual floppy disk image for Windows XP installation on VMware →