5.1

VMware View 5.1.x Now Compatible with vSphere 5.1!

October 26, 2012 by Josh Townsend 3 Comments

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago about the incompatibility of VMware View 5.1 and vSphere 5.1, but mentioned a forthcoming patch based on an update to VMware knowledge base article 2035268 (https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2035268) that I saw through a RSS subscription to the article. Good news as of last night – that patch is now available for download, making vSphere 5.1 compatible with View 5.1. I am a bit surprised that the patch, ESXi510-201210401-BG, applies to ESXi 5.1 instead of View 5.1. I would expect that the older View 5.1 (released in May 2012) would need to be patched to work with the newer ESXi 5.1 (released in September 2012). The fix for ESXi 5.1 corrects an issue with the View Storage Accelerator’s use of the Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) functionality in ESXi. Without the patch, multiple CBRC disable requests issued from View to hostd might cause View to lose connectivity to an ESXi host.

While this compatibility does not mean that you’ll be able to start using the new View-targeted features in vSphere 5.1 such as the new Space Efficient Sparse Disk vmdk format or virtual shared graphics acceleration (including 3D graphics), it does allow VMware admins to begin upgrading their environments to take advantage of the other new features in vSphere 5.1 such as 32-host clusters for Linked Clones (up from 8 hosts), the improved vSphere Distributed Switch, vSphere Data Protection for full clone or manual desktop backups, and the new vSphere Web Client.

As with any upgrades, be sure to first check the VMware Product Compatibility Matrix at https://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php to make sure the components you are putting together are compatible and there are no known caveats.

VMware View 5.1 Not Compatible with vSphere 5.1

October 11, 2012 by Josh Townsend 4 Comments

Update: 10/26/2012 – a patch has been released to correct compatibility between View 5.1 and vSphere ESXi 5.1. See here for more: https://vmtoday.com/2012/10/vmware-view-5-1-x-now-compatible-with-vsphere-5-1/

VMware released vSphere 5.1 shortly after VMworld 2012. The new release of vSphere includes features that will be of great benefit to VMware View virtual desktop infrastructures such as the new Space Efficient virtual disk (.vmdk) format and a new virtual machine format (hardware version 9) that enhances virtual shared graphics acceleration. However, the current version of VMware View (5.1.1) is not compatible with vSphere 5.1. VMware has a knowledge base article (https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2035268) that explains that no current versions of View (up to View 5.1.1) are compatible with vSphere 5.1. The article advises customers to not upgrade vSphere above the supported versions listed in the VMware View 5.1 Release Notes. The article also notes that “vSphere 5.1 is in the process of being certified against VMware View.”

It appears that progress is being made in making vSphere 5.1 compatible with View 5.1. I subscribed to updates to VMware KB 2035268 via RSS and found that on 10/1/2012 an update was published on the article with information on an express patch for vSphere 5.1. The patch info is in the Confidential Information section of the KB article, so you won’t be able to read it and probably won’t get access to the patch. I wonder if the patch would be made available to customers with active SNS who had an itchy trigger finger on their vSphere 5.1 upgrade without reading release notes or checking VMware’s Interoperability Matrixes.

Confidential patches aside, don’t upgrade your View environments to vSphere 5.1 just yet. Wait for VMware to certify interoperability, then work up a good plan for your upgrade and for enabling new vSphere 5.1 features to enhance your VDI environment.

VMworld Europe News and Announcements

October 10, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

I wanted to let you all know about some announcements that have come out at VMworld Europe over the past couple days. These announcements help round out some of the new products and features announced at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco. These new and updated features are a big deal for customers who want to take a wholistic approach to deploying and managing a hybrid cloud across different service providers. If you’re thinking about upgrading your vSphere license to a vCloud Suite license (you have until December 15th to claim the free upgrade to the vCloud Suite Standard Edition, along with aggressive discounting on upgrades to vCloud Suite Advanced and Enterprise), these new features may help you decide. I’ll cover the feature sets of the updated suites at the bottom of this post, but first – new and updated products:

End User Computing Updates

View is a pretty awesome product, but it can’t solve all desktop deployment scenarios. We saw VMware Mirage announced and demoed at VMworld 2012 San Francisco. Now, new validated designs from Nimble Storage, Cisco (on UCS-E) and other partners for ROBO desktops using View and/or VMware Mirage to deploy and manage remote desktops. With Mirage, remote offices lacking resources or connectivity can be managed with the ease of a View desktop, without the constraints of connectivity and datacenter technologies. More on the ROBO solution here: https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/10/using-vmware-mirage-in-remote-and-branch-offices.html and here: https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/10/better-management-eucremote-branch.html.

New Products

vCloud Automation Center 5.1 – Based on DynamicOps (VMware acquisition in July 2012), vCloud Automation Center provides a solution for hybrid cloud governance through policy-based provisioning and cross-cloud automation of cloud resource request management. vCloud Automation Center can manage VMware vSphere & vCloud environments, Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure, and public clouds like Amazon EC2. The product is not yet available, but will be coming in Q4.

VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 – The VMware IT Business Management Suite gives customers transparency into the cost, quality and value of cloud services, providing a business context for IT activities and enabling fact-based decisions aligned with business goals and ultimately transform to become a broker of IT services. Availability is expected in Q4 2012.

Updated Products

vFabric Application Director 5.0 – standardizes and accelerates how customers model and deploy multi-tier applications to any cloud through easy-to-create blueprints with standardized, pre-approved OS and middleware components. While optimized for VMware vCloud Suite-based clouds, vFabric Application Director 5.0 will make it possible for customers to use the same blueprints to deploy applications across multiple virtual and hybrid cloud infrastructures, including Amazon EC2. Availability is expected in Q4 2012.

With this release, VMware will continue to expand vFabric Application Director application support to include all Microsoft packaged applications (Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint) as well as custom applications (Java,.Net, Ruby on Rails). VMware vFabric Application Director will also help simplify ongoing application maintenance tasks such as code and configuration, and it will support auto-scaling of applications in response to changing business needs.

vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.6 – Enhancements to the VMware vCenter Operations Suite 5.6 continue to deliver on VMware’s strategy to converge management disciplines, incorporating new compliance views into the operations dashboard to help customers proactively enforce compliance with IT policies, security guidelines and regulatory requirements. New, customizable, group-based views will enable IT operations to more closely align with business priorities. VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.6 will also include VMware vFabric Hyperic application-level monitoring to help customers proactively manage the health of business-critical applications, including Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows OS as well as Oracle Database and custom Java applications. vCOps will be able to monitor machines running across a hybrid could, including VM’s on Amazon and Azure.

A new vCOps edition is now available – vCOps Manager Foundation. This is FREE in all vSphere editions and provides vSphere Health and Performance monitoring, alerting, and trending beyond what vCenter can provide. The Foundation edition cannot monitor VM’s, and cannot do Capacity Optimization, Chargeback, Configuration Management, etc.

Availability is expected in Q4 2012.

vCloud Connector 2.0 – a bridge that enables customers to transfer VMs and applications across vSphere and vCloud Director private cloud environments as well as public clouds from VMware vCloud Service Providers. vCloud Connector 2.0 will help make it possible to extend both networks and workload catalogs across hybrid cloud environments – in effect, extending the logical boundaries of the datacenter – without the need for reconfiguring networks or settings when moving workloads. Also, distributed teams will be able to coordinate their development efforts by ensuring that everyone has a single, synchronized workload catalog that spans across the cloud environment.

vCloud Connector will come in two editions – Core Edition and Advanced Edition. Core comes free with any vCloud Director purchase, Advanced is packaged with all editions of the new vCloud Suites. Availability is expected in Q4 2012.

vCloud Suite Changes

All of the new and updated products above are now included in the new vCloud Suite.

All editions of vCloud Suite (Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise) pick up the new vCloud Connector
vCloud Suite Advanced picks up new features of vCOps 5.6, including vSphere change and configuration management, Application Awareness, and Chargeback.
vCloud Suite Enterprise gets everything: vCloud Automation Center, vFabric, vCOps all features (including Configuration Manager, Storage Adapters for Symmetrix, VMAX, VNX, NetApp).

These new additions to the vCloud Editions do not bring any price changes. Customers simply get new and enhanced functionality. Here’s the updated edition breakdown:

	vCloud Suite Standard	vCloud Suite Advanced	vCloud Suite Enterprise
Cloud Management
vCloud Automation Center Provisioning and management of IT services in vSphere environments			✔
vFabric Application Director Automated configuration and deployment of multi-tier cloud applications			✔
vCenter Operations Management Suite Application Monitoring – OS, middleware, databases Configuration Compliance – vSphere host & VM change and configuration Performance & Capacity Optimization – analytics, dashboards and alerting Application Awareness – discovery and dependency mapping Chargeback – metered utilization reporting and accountability		✔✔✔✔ .	✔✔✔✔ ✔
Cloud Infrastructure
vCenter Site Recovery Manager Automated disaster recovery planning, testing, and execution			✔
vCloud Networking and Security Advanced continuous availability, firewall and network Software defined networking, security, and ecosystem integration	✔	✔✔✔	✔✔✔
vCloud Director & vCloud Connector Advanced Edition Virtualized datacenters with multi-tenancy and public cloud extensibility	✔	✔	✔
vSphere Virtualized infrastructure with policy-based automation	✔	✔	✔
Note: vCloud Suite Editions are licensed per CPU.

EMC News

We’re big fans of EMC at Clearpath (and they like us too: we were named their SMB Partner of the Year!). While there are not a whole lot of new EMC announcements at VMworld Barcelona, there are some demos of using the new VMware vVols technology that virtualizes storage (SAN, NAS, DAS, internal, etc.) to manage and present distributed storage nodes to VM’s. More explanations and demo videos of this technology preview here: https://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2012/10/vmworld-2012-psst-want-to-see-the-future-of-storage-with-vmware-and-emc.html#more

Webcast: VMworld 2012 Recap: What’s New from VMware

October 1, 2012 by Josh Townsend 1 Comment

Update: If you missed the webcast, you can watch the recorded session playback here: https://clearpathevents.webex.com/clearpathevents/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=5836487&rKey=29a86bf8d53cdfc8

The presentation is available on Sliderocket if you want to skip through the presentation quickly without listening to my goofy voice:

Webcast: VMworld 2012 Recap: What’s New from VMware
Tuesday, October 2, 10-11 am Eastern

In keeping current with the latest news from VMware, Clearpath’s team followed all of the breaking developments at VMworld 2012 to observe and report on all the changes and updates in VMware’s portfolio. But whether you’re in the know or still catching up, how will you leverage these improvements to positively impact your organization? And, how will you plot the roadmap to transition your infrastructure and systems without disrupting workflow?

Join us Tuesday, October 2nd for the webcast “VMworld 2012 Recap: What’s New from VMware”. Virtualization Practice Manager and vExpert, Josh Townsend (that’s me), will be reviewing new information on vSphere 5.1, vCloud Director 5.1, vCloud Suite, VMware Mirage and VMware Horizon; as well as reviewing important details on implementation and how to take advantage of current upgrade promotions. Don’t miss this opportunity, signup for this webcast today!

Webcast: VMworld 2012 Recap: What’s New from VMware
Date: Tuesday, October 2nd
Time: 10 am – 11 am Eastern

Failed to connect to VMware Lookup Service on VMware vCenter Virtual Appliance

September 23, 2012 by Josh Townsend Leave a Comment

I’ve been rebuilding my home VMware lab environment recently. I decided to jump right into vSphere 5.1 with the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance instead of the traditional Windows SQL combo. Deploying a vApp is much faster and cheaper from a licensing perspective than a full-blown Windows and SQL setup. After I imported the vCenter Virtual Appliance .OVA, I logged into the administrative web interface of the appliance (https://vcenterIP:5480) and started to make a few configuration changes. First up were assigning a hostname, setting the correct time zone, and setting a static IP address. The hostname change required a reboot of the virtual appliance.

After the reboot I tried to log into the vSphere Web Client at https://vcenterFQDN:9443/vsphere-client/. The login failed with an error:

Failed to connect to VMware Lookup Service – https://vcenterIP:7444/lookupservice/sdk

The site showed an invalid certificate when it loaded. When I viewed the certificate I found that the cert was issued to localhost.localdom. This didn’t match my hostname and peaked my curiosity.

A quick google pointed me to this article: https://www.vi-tips.com/2012/09/vsphere-web-client-failed-to-connect-to.html. The confirmed that the invalid SSL certificate was the right place to start troubleshooting, but the resolution didn’t seem quite right. I poked around in the vCenter Virtual Appliance web admin interface. On the Admin tab I found a button for ‘Toggle Certificate Setting‘. This button corresponds with the ‘Certificate regeneration enabled’ option.

After toggling this setting to Yes, I rebooted the virtual appliance using the reboot button on the System tab of the vCenter Virtual Appliance web admin interface. After the reboot, I was able to log into the slick new vCenter Virtual Appliance vSphere Web Client. The self-signed certificate now shows and Issued To: and an Issued By: name of the FQDN of my vCenter Server Virtual Appliance.