- Bitwarden adds secure text and files transfer features. You can also check the official product page
- FreshRSS 1.18.0 has been released with a bunch of improvements and some news features
- Increased ISCSI path limit with VMware vSphere 7.0 U2
- Veeam v11 – The Linux Proxy keep getting better
- Faster vMotion makes balancing workloads invisible
- REST API modernization in vSphere 7.0 U2
Bulk links #3
- Grafana-Zabbix 4.1.4 has been released
- Using ESXi shell to send Wake-On-Lan packet
- VMware vSphere 7 Update 2 is coming soon : What’s new?
- Ansible AWX 17.1.0 has been released
- Windows Server 2022 Preview has been announced
- Failed to load crypto64.efi when upgrading to ESXi 7.0 Update 2
Bulk links #2
- Homelab considerations for vSphere 7 : Some useful informations if you plan to upgrade your homelab to vSphere 7
- FreshRSS 1.16.0 has been released
- Some information regarding the new partitions layout of ESXi 7.0
- Zabbix database size calculator is a nice small tool to plan your needs in term of storage space for Zabbix database
- Veeam v10 NAS Backup support : A "must read" post about this new feature
- RVTools 4.0.4 has been released : The support of vSphere 7.0 has been added with some others features
- Home Assistant 0.109 has been released
- Grafana 7.0 has been released
Change OpenSSH Server default shell on Windows Server 2019
If you are using OpenSSH Server on Windows Server 2019, the default shell is cmd.exe.
If you want to set the default shell to PowerShell or even PowerShell Core, you can run the following PowerShell command (it will create a registry key) then restart the OpenSSH server service :
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\OpenSSH" -Name DefaultShell -Value "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -PropertyType String -Force
If you want to use PowerShell Core, change the path of the value variable but note that currently a path with space in directory name seems to be unsupported.
How to reset WSL password
If you are using Windows Subsystem for Linux and you forgot your password, here is a small howto to reset it.
This howto is based on Ubuntu 18.04 but it seems it can be used for any other version.
- Launch Ubuntu 18.04 and run the following command to get your username : whoami
your_username@computer:~$ whoami
your_username
- Launch a command or PowerShell console and run the following command. It will set the default user to root
ubuntu1804 config --default-user root
- Launch Ubuntu 18.04 again and you should be logged with the root account
root@computer:~#
- Reset you password by running the following command : passwd your_username
root@computer:~# passwd your_username
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
- In the command or PowerShell console run the following command to set the default account to your username instead of the root account
ubuntu1804 config --default-user your_username
- Enjoy using WSL
SSH avoid “Connection reset by peer”
If you are a regular SSH user, there are chances that you sometimes faced the error message “Connection reset by peer”. To avoid this message, you can edit some settings on server side or on client side. In this post I will show you both case.
Client side
Putty
If you are using Putty, there is a setting under the “Connection” tab that allow you to set the keepalive value. By default it’s disabled (value is 0).
You can set the value at 240 and each 240 seconds, Putty will send a null packets to keep the connection open.
Be sure to set this value by default each time you launch Putty by following this post : Change Putty default settings
OpenSSH
If you are using OpenSSH (from a Linux machine or using WSL under Windows 10), you can change a settings for your user by editing the config file under the SSH directory in your home directory.
You can follow those steps :
- Edit the config file
vi ~/.ssh/config
- Add the settings to enable the keepalive
Host *
ServerAliveInterval 240
- Set the following rights to the file
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config
With this setting, your client will send a keepalive packet each 240 seconds to the remote host.
Server side
On the server side, you can edit the SSH server configuration file. If you are using Debian it will be “/etc/ssh/sshd_config”.
First, uncomment the following line :
#ClientAliveInterval 0
Then replace the value 0 by 240, save the file and restart the service.
Change Putty default settings
If you are using Putty on a regular basis there could be some settings that you would like to set by default at each launch.
To set default settings, there is only a few steps to follow.
- Launch Putty. You will see that there is default profile called “Default Settings”.
- Set the settings that you want to change. By example logging settings.
- Once you have set all the settings, go back to the Session tab and select the “Default Settings” profile. Then click “Save”.
From now on, once you will launch Putty all the values will be set with the values that you have save on the “Default settings” profile.
Zabbix and Pure Storage monitoring V2
At the end of 2017, I’ve shared a post talking about Zabbix and Pure Storage monitoring. At this time we were using it as a POC. A few weeks later, we were so happy with the product that we decided to use it in production.
So it was an opportunity to rewrite my monitoring script from scratch.
It’s now time to share it with you.
If you want more information about the purpose, the way I’ve made the integration, etc. don’t hesitate to read my previous post as the only modifications are the code and the type of information the script can gather from the array.
Instead of writing a script for each part of the monitoring (volumes, array, disks,…), I’ve put everything in one file called “PureStorageMonitoring.py”.
The dependencies are still the same : purestorage and urllib3 libraries from Python and Python 3.x
A complete list of datas and triggers that will be gathered by the script is available at the end of this post.
Important note : This script has been tested with Zabbix 3.4.x and 4.0.x and Pure Storage 4.10.x and 5.1.x. I cannot guarantee that it will work fine with any other version even if I made my best regarding this point. The template available is exported from Zabbix 4.0.x so you will have to delete some settings to import it in Zabbix 3.4.x don’t hesitate to contact me in case of trouble.
Setup the proxy or server
To gather data, we need to make some works on the Zabbix Proxy or Zabbix Server.
- Be sure that you have Python 3.x installed on the server
- Install the pip packages
pip3 install purestorage urllib3 py-zabbix
Get API Token
To be able to use the REST API of Pure Storage, you have to find your API Token on the web interface.
Go on “SYSTEM”, then “Users” and under the Users menu, you will find “API Tokens”. Click on the three dots on the right of the screens and use “Show API Token” to get your API Token.
Download the scripts
The script is available on my Github repository.
You can download it on the server using the following steps :
- Find the directory where you have to download it, by looking at the value of “ExternalScripts” setting of your proxy or server (by default it’s “/usr/local/share/zabbix/externalscripts” but if like me you are using the official Debian packages from Zabbix, it will be “/usr/lib/zabbix/externalscritps”
- Go to this directory
cd /usr/lib/zabbix/externalscripts
- Download the scripts
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jeremyverda/zabbix-public/master/Pure%20Storage/PureStorageMonitoring.py
- Set the rights
chmod +x PureStorageMonitoring.py
chown zabbix:zabbix PureStorageMonitoring.py
Import the Zabbix template
You can find the Zabbix template on the Github repository.
You have to import it in Zabbix before you continue.
Configure the Zabbix host
In the Zabbix frontend, add a new host and set the information as follows :
- Agent interface IP : Fill in with the IP address of your Pure Storage
- Macros
- {$PURE_TOKEN_API} : Fill in with the API Token that you have copy previously
- {$PURE_ZBX} : WIll be the IP of your Zabbix Proxy or server that will be used by the Zabbix Sender. By default it will be 127.0.0.1
- Monitored by proxy : Set this field if you are going to use a Zabbix proxy
- Template : select the previously imported template : “Template Pure Storage”
Wait for the data
Once you have completed all the previous steps, you have to wait until the data are gathered by the script.
Data and triggers
Here is the list of data and triggers the script will gather from your Flash Array :
Data
- Global
- latencies
- read and write
- data reduction ratio
- array capacity, volume size, used space and shared space
- version
- remote assist
- phone home
- hostname
- etc.
- Volumes
- size and used size
- read and write
- latencies
- data reduction
- etc.
- Hosts (value corresponding to VMware or any other hosts connected to the array)
- latencies
- read and write
- Disks
- capacity
- last failure (currently this value won’t be empty but it will be corrected on a future API and Purity version)
- protocol
- status
- type
Triggers
- Global
- Phone home is disabled
- Remote assist is enabled
- Volume
- Volume size has changed
- Disks
- Error on disk status
This list will be updated for each data or trigger that will be added in the template. Don’t hesitate to ask me to add something if you need it.
Update
- 01/11/2018 :
- Replace the Zabbix Sender by a Python Library
- Increase the delay between each check
- Get more value at each check instead of requiring more check to get the same amount of values
Zabbix and Pure Storage monitoring
WARNING : A complete rewrite of this script has been made.
You can find it here : Zabbix and Pure Storage monitoring V2
A few weeks ago, at work, we have started a new POC for one of our infrastructure with a Pure Storage FlashArray.
To be able to give information about this POC to everybody inside the team, we needed a dashboard. So with the help of Flash Array Rest API, Zabbix and Grafana, I produced this dashboard :
Please, bear in mind : These scripts and the Zabbix template are a "Work in progress". Currently we are on a POC and not yet in production so other elements will be added (triggers, items, etc.) and this post will be updated.
Zabbix integration
The Zabbix integration is made of :
- Python scripts and libraries
- FlashArray Rest API
- Zabbix Sender (with Trapper items)
- Zabbix ExternalScripts (executed on Zabbix Server or Proxy)
- Low-Level discovery
- Zabbix Macro
There are four scripts :
- LLD_PureVolume.py
- PureArrayInfo.py
- PureArrayMonitor.py
- PureVolumeMonitor.py
How it works
There are two parts in the Zabbix template :- Discovery rules
- Static items
Be ready
Important note : We are using Zabbix 3.4.x. So you could face some problems while importing the template. Let me know if it’s the case.Before we start with the integration into Zabbix, be sure to have the following tools installed on your Zabbix Proxy or Server :
- Python 3.x
- purestorage and urllib3 libraries You can install them on your system by running the following command :
pip install purestorage urllib3
or (if your default Python version is not Python 3.x)pip3 install purestorage urllib3
- Zabbix Sender You can install it with the following command :
apt install zabbix-sender
Get the necessary information
Before going further, you will need to gather the following information from your Pure Storage FlashArray :
- IP
- API Token
To get the API Token, open your Flash Array web interface and go on "API Tokens" menu under the "Users" menu that you will find in the "SYSTEM" tab.
You will see a list of users and three dots on the right of the screen. Click on it and finally select "Show API Token"
Let's start
If your system is ready and you have all the information at hand, let's start the integration on your system.
Download the scripts and the template
All the scripts and template are available on my GitHub repository. Download all those files and put the scripts on your ExternalScripts directory on your Zabbix Proxy or Server. By default this directory is : /usr/local/share/zabbix/externalscripts but check your Zabbix configuration file if you have any doubt. By example, we are using the official Zabbix packages for Debian and this directory is /usr/lib/zabbix/externalscripts
Set the good rights
To allow Zabbix to execute those scripts you must allow them to be executed and owned by the Zabbix user on your system. You can execute the following commands (under the ExternalScripts directory) :
chmod +x LLD_PureVolume.py PureArrayInfo.py PureArrayMonitor.py PureVolumeMonitor.py
chown zabbix:zabbix LLD_PureVolume.py PureArrayInfo.py PureArrayMonitor.py PureVolumeMonitor.py
Create a new Zabbix host
Once you have imported the template, you can create a new host and fill the following information :- Agent interfaces IP address : Fill in with the IP address of your Pure Storage FlashArray
- Macros
- {$PURE_TOKEN_API} : Fill in with the API Token that you have gathered from the FlashArray web interface
- {$PURE_ZBX} : Will be the IP of your Zabbix Proxy or Server that will be used by the Zabbix Sender. By default it’s set to “127.0.0.1”
- Monitored by proxy : Set this field if you put the scripts on a proxy.
It’s done
Once you have done all those steps, you have to wait until the data are gathered from the Pure Storage FlashArray.Items explanation
If you some question about the meaning of some items, you will find a description of each items in the description of each one. Example :
Feedback
If you have any remarks or question about those scripts or the Zabbix template, you are welcome in the comments section or by using the contact form.Bulk links #1
“Bulk links” category, will be a series of posts where I will drop links from my Pocket, Feedly, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
So, here is the first list.
- If you want to use Veeam Backup & Replication Free to collect Veeam Agents Backup, here is the solution
- GitLab has released the 9.1 version
- NGINX has released the 1.13.0 mainline branch with TLS 1.3 support
- “16 Linux server monitoring commands you really need to know” by HPE
- Download the ADMX for Windows 10 Creator Update (1703)
- Zabbix 3.2.6 has been released
- Elastic Stack 5.4.0 has been released and it comes with Machine Learning
- Iptables will be replaced by nftables in Debian Stretch (9.x)