VMware News, Views, and How-To's from vExpert Josh Townsend
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it’s awesome working for an awesome company that supports the greater EMC, VMware and Cisco communities. The inaugural class of EMC Elect are finding the custom shirts that Clearpath had made for them at EMC World. The shirts are just one of our ways of saying thanks to the EMC Elect for their contributions to the EMC community. If you are one of the EMC Elect, make sure you stop by the Bloggers area at EMC World to pick up your custom shirt!
The Clearpath team is attending EMC’s EMCworld event in Las Vegas this week. EMC is announcing new products and solutions, and we’ll be covering those announcements in a series of posts on the Clearpath Blog. If you’re not already following Clearpath, feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed or fill out the form for email updates on our site. The first update of the week is from Ted Evans, our Baltimore area pre-sales technical consultant. Ted writes about EMC’s DataDomain OS upgrade (DDOS) to version 5.3. 5.3 includes a host of improvements that will improve backup performance using DataDomain Boost and increase the flexibility of your DataDomain backup appliances by consolidating backup and archive functions on the same box.
Check out the feature list for DDOS 5.3 in Ted’s post (https://blog.clearpathsg.com/blog/bid/289811/The-Latest-Software-Update-for-Data-Domain) and stay tuned to Clearpath’s blog for updates throughout the week!
VMware has released updates to several products over the past couple weeks. Many of the updates take the version 5.1 products announced at VMworld 2012 to Update 1 (i.e. the first major service pack). The updates, spanning vSphere (ESXi and vCenter), vCloud Director, vCenter Operations, vCenter Orchestrator, vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM), vSphere Data Protection, and the vSphere Storage Appliance, include bug fixes, security fixes, and functionality changes. Here’s what you need to know about the updates, including a few upgrade bugs that you need to know about before you pull the upgrade trigger.
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1 Update 1 contains some functionality changes, a bunch of bug fixes, and some administrative changes.
First, ESXi support for several guest operating systems will be deprecated after this release. Those guest OSs include:
In ESXi 5.1 U1, support for certain host server CPU models will be eliminated with the requirement of SAHF and LAHF support on the CPU. While most processors produced after 2006 will support these instruction sets, it is possible that your test/dev or home labs could not run ESXi. For more on LAHF/SAHF, read here: https://vsphere-land.com/news/what-is-sahf-and-lahf-and-why-do-i-need-it-to-install-vsphere-51.html.
Fixes and resolved issues in ESXi 5.1 U1 include improved SNMP trap handling, better support for Mac OS X VMs running hardware version 9, purple screen and guest blue screen fixes, a unicast flooding condition with long running vMotion operations, improved Host Profiles functionality, and improved ESXi Upgrades.
Added functionality in Update 1 includes Component-based logging to enhance log detail for simplified troubleshooting, and an increased VMFS Heap size to allow ESXi hosts to address more than 60TB of open files on VMFS5 (more on that in this post: https://vmtoday.com/2013/04/is-spanning-vmdks-using-windows-dynamic-disks-a-good-idea/).
You can find the release notes for ESXi 5.1 Update 1 here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-esxi-51u1-release-notes.html
vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 supports installation on Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server 2012 and 2008 R2.
Guest customization of Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Ubuntu 12.04, and RHEL 5.9 are no also supported.
This release (release notes here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-vcenter-server-51u1-release-notes.html) has a ton of bug fixes for everything from a minor VMs display a red warning icon in the VM inventory list when there is no alarm triggered, to more substantial issues like vCenter and SSO services failing to start.
There is a known issue with this release that causes account lockouts when a vCenter SSO enabled user who is in many domain groups attempts to log in. If you might be in this situation, hold off on the upgrade until VMware releases a fix. More on the issue here: https://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2013/04/alert-login-issue-after-updating-to-vcenter-5-1-update-1.html
If you are planning to upgrade to vSphere (ESXi and vCenter) 5.1 Update1, VMware has published a knowledgebase article at https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2037630 that covers the complete upgrade sequence and product compatibility. Not all solutions are compatible with the new 5.1 Update 1 release. VMware View 5.1.x, for example, is not compatible with vSphere 5.1 Update 1. If you run Horizon View and want to go to vSphere 5.1 Update 1, you’ll have to first update View to v5.2 You should also review the VMware Compatibility Matrix at https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php and the Product Interoperability Matrix at https://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php to verify that your hardware and VMware software elements are compatible with this release. If you run into problems or have questions, drop us a comment and we’ll be happy to help!
vCloud Director was rev’d to version 5.1.2. Among the functional changes in vCloud Director 5.1.2 are:
Bug fixes in 5.1.2 include database error fixes, networking fixes, and virtual machine/vApp. Full release notes for vCloud Director 5.1.2 can be found here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vcd/doc/rel_notes_vcloud_director_512.html.
VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1.3 provides a distributed shared storage solution that abstracts the computing and internal hard disk resources of two or three ESXi hosts to form a VSA cluster. The VSA cluster enables vSphere High Availability and vSphere vMotion.
If you are running VSA and upgrade to vCenter 5.1 Update 1, you must upgrade your VSA to 5.1.3 due to know compatibility issues. Beyond making VSA compatible with vSphere 5.1 U1, VSA 5.1.3 adds functionality that improves performance and scalability of the solution.
Notable improvements include the ability to add storage capacity of an existing VSA cluster, the ability to manage multiple VSA clusters from a single vCenter, and the ability to install VSA on hosts that already have VMs running on their local storage.
Release notes for vSphere Storage Appliance 5.1.3 can be found here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vsa/doc/vsphere-storage-appliance-513-release-notes.html
vSphere Data Protection is VMware’s built-in full VM backup solution, based on EMC Avamar technology. This release includes a bunch of usability improvements, with additional options presented for backup and restore operations, as well as additional options for VM configuration post-restore (connect the NIC, auto power on, etc.).
VDP 5.1.10 also includes a migration utility that automates the process of moving from the old vSphere Data Recovery (vDR) solution if you happen to be running that.
You can find the full release notes here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vdr/doc/vdp_5110_releasenotes.html
vCenter Orchestrator is a automation tool that allows administrators to develop complex workflows for vSphere, as well as other systems. Orchestrator is included with vCenter Server. Orchestrator automates deployment and customization of VMs, as well as additional tasks like creating VMFS datastores, adding VMs to Active Directory, and updating third-party change management databases. VCO is an incredibly powerful tool with hundreds of built-in workflows to get you started.
If you want to learn more about VCO, check out the documentation here: https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/orchestrator_pubs.html
SRM 5.1.1 and VR both received minor updates. While no new functionality was introduced in these releases, both include a host of stability and performance improvements. Among the fixes are:
Release notes for SRM 5.1.1 are here: https://www.vmware.com/support/srm/srm-releasenotes-5-1-1.html
Release notes for VR 5.1.1 are here: https://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere5/doc/vsphere-replication-511-release-notes.html
Jason Shiplett covered the release of vCenter Operations (vCOps) 5.7 in an earlier blog post here: https://blog.shiplett.org/vcenter-operations-manager-5-7-whats-new-and-how-to-upgrade/. vCOps 5.7 includes new views, policies, and improved usability. Read Jason’s post for more information on vCenter Operations 5.6.
By Ted Evans
EMC has announced the latest software update to its Data Domain platform – DDOS 5.3. It seems like there is something for everyone in this upgrade, so make sure to review the new functionality to see if there is something there for your environment. I’ve listed out some of the highlights below.
