HA errors after update to esx 3.5 u2

Yesterday I updated my whole ESX farm to 3.5 u2 and suddenly encountered a strange one: A few minutes after updating one of my test clusters gone red telling me the ha agent has an error. So i checked out the communities and found that i was not alone. Many people had the same issue. Now there are several guides online how to fix it, but most of them didn´t solve it for me now here is how I solved it:
First, it seems like this is some kind of DNS issue. So check the hostname in the
vi client. Lets say its esx1.domain.local
Now enter console and check

/etc/hosts

and make sure the entry from the vc is exactly the same, especially check for upper/lowercase mismatches. If your /etc/hosts shows ESX1.domain.local, change it to esx1.domain.local.
Now, thats not all, check

/etc/opt/vmware/aam/FT_HOSTS.

Your cluster members should be in this file, but only the first part f the dns name, if you dns name is esx1.domain.local, only esx1 should be in FT_HOSTS.
If there is any other entry or you are not shure, simply delete FT_HOSTS and reconfigure your cluster. Reboot the ESX hosts.

Now: Mostly these steps seemed to solve the problem but not for my test lab. The next day i encountered the error again. Now this is what I have done in addition which seemed to finally solve the problem.

Put your esx hosts in maintenance mode, remove them from the cluster, delete the cluster and create a new one with a different name. Put your esx hosts out of maintenance mode and assign them the cluster again. Now finally to be 100% sure right click em and reconfigure HA. That whole bunch solved the problem for me (have my eyes now on it for a few hours).

VMware´s got a new CEO

The VMware board of directors announced today that they appointed Paul Maritz as President and CEO of VMware effective immediately. The community is shocked as well as the investors. The stock crashed more than 30% to its lowest value since the IPO. I personally can´t understand this decision in any way. I got to know Diane Greene at VMworld 2008 in Cannes together with her husband Mendel Rosenblum, they are my absolute personal dream-couple and also dream-leaders of such a great company. And speaking of that, what will Mendel Rosenblum, VMwares chief scientist do now?

 

Installing Nessus on Backtrack 3

As i blogged lately Backtrack 3 was released. Now the worst thing about it is that Tenable would not allow nessus for redistribution, therefor it is not included. Here is how to fix this for yourself (tested successfully with the vmware version of bt3 final):

Download the Nessus and NessusClient Fedora Core 8 RPM’s from the Nessus website, then
convert them to TGZ :
rpm2tgz Nessus-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm
rpm2tgz NessusClient-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

Use the Slackware Package Tool to extract and install the packages from the current directory:
pkgtool

Configure the application:
cd /opt/
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nessus/sbin:/opt/nessus/bin:
cp /usr/lib/libssl.so /lib
cp /usr/lib/libcrypto.so /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessus.so.3 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessusrx.so.0 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libpcap-nessus.so.3 /lib
cd /lib
ln libssl.so libssl.so.6
ln libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.6

nano /etc/ld.so.conf
/opt/nessus/lib #add this line to the config file

ldconfig
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-mkcert
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-adduser

Next update your plugins. Make use you registered at the Nessus website. Use the code they emailed to you below.
cd /opt/nessus/etc/nessus
nessus-fetch –register bla-bla-bla-bla

Run the Nessus Server:
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessusd

Launch the Client
/opt/nessus/bin/NessusClient

the credits for this CUTE guide go to williamc, the source is forums.remote-exploit.org