security

PowerCLI – creating port groups and specifications to modify port groups

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I wanted to quickly create some standard VM port groups across a particular vSwitch for all hosts in my lab / testing environment at work. Since I was using Standard vSwitches and not a dvSwitch, I didn’t feel like using the GUI to create these on every individual ESXi host. In addition to creating the port group on each vSwitch, I also wanted to change the security policy on each for Promiscuous mode to “Accept”. The reason for this being that this port group is going to be used to run virtual nested ESXi hosts, and this is required to allow nested VMs to communicate on the network.

 

So the obvious solution here for me was to create a quick PowerCLI script to create these port groups on all hosts and set the security option for each too. Here is the script:

 

$vSwitch = "vSwitch0"
$portgrpname = "vInception Portgroup"
$AllConnectedHosts = Get-VMHost | Where {$_.ConnectionState -eq "Connected"}

foreach ($esxihost in $AllConnectedHosts) {
	$currentvSwitch = $esxihost | Get-VirtualSwitch | Where {$_.Name -eq $vSwitch}
	New-VirtualPortGroup -Name $portgrpname -VirtualSwitch $currentvSwitch -Confirm:$false
	$currentesxihost = Get-VMHost $esxihost | Get-View
	$netsys = Get-View $currentesxihost.configmanager.networksystem
	$portgroupspec = New-Object VMWare.Vim.HostPortGroupSpec
	$portgroupspec.vswitchname = $vSwitch
	$portgroupspec.Name = $portgrpname
	$portgroupspec.policy = New-object vmware.vim.HostNetworkPolicy
	$portgroupspec.policy.Security = New-object vmware.vim.HostNetworkSecurityPolicy
	$portgroupspec.policy.Security.AllowPromiscuous = $true
	$netsys.UpdatePortGroup($portgrpname,$PortGroupSpec)
	
}

 
Keep in mind that this script will create the port group on “vSwitch0” – change this if your vSwitch that is hosting this port group on each host is named differently. It will obviously rely on this vSwitch existing to work. You can also modify the $portgrpname to your own choice of course.

Lastly, you can easily modify this script to change other Security options for the new port group, as the port group specification has already been created in this script. Just use the $portgroupspec.policy.Security object to add other specifications.

Enjoy!
 

Cannot save the attachment. Can’t create file in Outlook.

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Had this problem on a PC today – Outlook was having trouble opening .MHT file attachments from a contact item. Any attempt to open any .MHT file would result in an error message stating “Cannot save the attachment xxxxxxxxx.mht. Can’t create the file. It then asked to open the folder / file in question and check security permissions. This could happen for any attachment type, but in my case it was .MHTs.

Anyway the quick solution I found is to browse to the “OutlookSecureTempFolder” and remove all files listed in that directory. Close and restart Outlook and everything should be working again. Credit to this page where I found the solution.

1. Open REGEDIT.EXE and go to Edit -> Find… In the Find dialog box type “OutlookSecureTempFolder” without the quotes and locate that registry key.

2. That key will contain the actual folder location, and will look like:

C:\Documents and Settings\%USER_NAME%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK#\ (where # is a random letter or number)

3. Copy the location of that folder.

4. Click on Start -> Run… and paste the folder location from step #4 then click OK.

5. Windows Explorer will open that folder. Please, delete all files present.

6. Restart Microsoft Outlook and you should be able to open your attachments.

A quick update to this – the error occurs when you have the same document saved in this folder 99 times. This seems to be the maximum limit of times you can have an attachement from Outlook saved into this “temp” folder. Each time you open a file with the same file name from Outlook a new copy is saved here. For example (filename.zip (1) filename.zip (2) etc.)