New Release Menu Nov 10

VMware is constantly pushing new and updated software which can be a time consuming task to keep track of every new release. And there are lots of products to keep track of. In converstations with customers I often hear, "Oh when did that come out?" Or, "I heard about that version but don't know anything about it."

In the spirit of being helpful, I'm starting a new category called New Release Menu which I hope to publish every 2 - 3 weeks. Below you'll find a short compilation of VMware's New Releases over the past few weeks and links to their respective Release Notes. I will have each post titled with that day's date. Enjoy!

vSphere Data Protection 6.1.1 and 6.0.3 (Nov 10th)

vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0.3.3 Infrastructure (Oct. 29th)

vSphere Replication 5.0.3.3 Infrastructure (Oct. 29th)

Fusion 8.0.2 Consumer Desktop (Oct. 29th)

Workstation Pro/Player 12.0.1 Consumer Desktop (Oct. 29th)

Integrated OpenStack 1.0.3 Virtual Team (Oct. 23rd)

vCloud Director 5.5.5 vCloud (Oct. 22nd)

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Why VMware Premier Services?

VMware, not unlike most IT companies, offers multiple tiers of support. Two of which fall under the umbrella of Premier Services. These are the highest tiers available and are currently broken into what's known as Business Critical Support and Mission Critical Support.

Both offerings are all about the "white-glove" treatment. But which one is right for you? Let's break it down:

Business Critical Support (BCS)

Personalized support delivered by a designated team

Add-on to Production Support - this means BCS cannot exist without a valid Production Support Agreement. Generally speaking, these times will usually compliment one another so that you aren't left without a current support agreement - but it's certainly something to be aware of!

Designated Senior TSE for 6 Customer Contacts -  Each BCS customer is assigned a Senior Technical Support Engineer. This engineer is their dedicated point of contact into the Support Organization and is responsible for holding regular cadence meetings with the 6 Support Administrators (customer contacts entitled for BCS).

Technical Relationship - Your dedicated TSE is considered an extension of your IT team. With regular meetings in place and a deep knowledge of your VMware Infrastructure, your assigned TSE builds a invaluable rapport with the designated Support Administrators.

Mission Critical Support (MCS)

Priority access to senior-level engineers and proactive account management

Add-on to Production Support - Same situation as BCS above.

Designated Account Manager - MCS requires TAM services and many MCS customers utilize an MCS TAM that helps drive support success, as well as drive projects and regular environment reviews.

Senior TSE Team Routing for Unlimited Customer Contacts - The 6 "Support Administrator" limitation (like with BCS) is gone and an unlimited amount of contacts are entitled to MCS support.

Enhanced SR and Phone Response - All other support offerings have a Severity 1, 2, 3, and 4 level for SRs with response times of 30 min, 4 hours, 8 hours, and 12 hours, respectively. MCS, however, has 30 min, 2 hours, 4 hours, and 8 hour response times, respectively.

Onsite Support - In extreme situations when the customer would benefit from an onsite support presence, MCS will offer to send one if its Senior Resources who specializes in the subject matter at hand to help drive the current challenges to resolution.

All in all, VMware Premier Service's goal is to ensure the customer is nothing but delighted with the level of support they're paying for. For more information on the differences between the support offerings, check out the comparisons on VMware's website.

Speak with your TAM or VMware Sales Team if you have questions about VMware Premier Services.

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Upgrading vRealize Operations

vRealize Operations (formerly known as vCenter Operations Manager) is an indispensable tool for monitoring a VMware environment. The upgrade process between recent versions is riddled with pitfalls, however. Here, I will cover the process and make notes of all the gotchas so that you can have as smooth of an experience as possible.

The upgrade process goes from 5.x -> 5.8.1+ -> 6.0.x -> 6.2.

Upgrading from 5.x to 5.8.5

Prerequisites and Common Pitfalls:

• You should change your admin password before attempting the upgrade. New security policies that come with this upgrade will expire older passwords for admin. It must be a complex password that you have not used before. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2013358


• You should ensure that you have a good amount of free disk space on the UI and Analytics VMs. You can check this with “df -h” on the command line.
  
  
  
  • Appliances that were originally deployed as 5.6 and earlier had a smaller root partition that may get filled by the update. If you run into any issues caused by this, you can follow http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2074688
  
  
  • If the /data partition is >85% full on either VM, you should add a disk and reboot. Boot-time scripts will handle data volume expansion onto new disks for you.
  
  
  
  

Steps to Upgrade:

1. Take a snapshot of both VMs.


2. Follow the instructions in the release notes for the upgrade at https://www.vmware.com/support/vcops/doc/vcops-585-vapp-release-notes.html#upgrade


3. After ensuring that you can get in to the UI, delete the snapshots.

Migrating data from 5.8.1+ to 6.0.x

Prerequisites and Common Pitfalls:

• You must be migrating from version 5.8.1 or higher. The data migration will be more reliable with version 5.8.5, but is known to work with all versions from 5.8.1+.


• You must have forward and reverse DNS entries in place for your source 5.8.1+ VMs, as well as for every node in your new 6.0.x cluster.


• Please size your nodes appropriately per the handy Excel spreadsheet attached to the bottom of http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2130551


• When naming and addressing your version 6 nodes, please note:
  
  
  
  • Node and host names can not have underscores
  
  
  • The roles of a node are subject to change, so naming a node according to a role may get confusing in the future.
  
  
  • Node names are extremely difficult to change, and attempting to do so is quite likely to break things.
  
  
  
  


• All nodes of a vROps 6 cluster (with the exception of remote collectors) must be on the same physical LAN (>1MS latency will cause problems) and must not be separated by a firewall.


• You should change your admin password on 5.8.1+ before attempting the migration. An expired password is common, sometimes difficult to identify, and will cause vague errors. It must be a complex password that you have not used before. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2013358


• If you suspect that performance may be an issue, stopping DT calculation and new data collection on the 5.8.1+ appliance will improve the speed of the data migration greatly. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2040008


• Although it is not supposed to be an issue anymore, there are some cases where DNS resolution does not work properly and this KB may still be necessary: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2100944

Steps to upgrade:

1. Install the latest version of 6.0.x per the documentation at http://pubs.vmware.com/vrealizeoperationsmanager-6/index.jsp


2. After you bring your cluster online, you will be presented with a wizard. Don’t select the option for importing data or enter a license key when it asks you. Even though you are going to import data and probably have a license key, it is more reliable to do these things after the setup wizard completes in my experience.


3. Go to Administration>Solutions and select the tab called “Import Data”


4. Follow the prompts for importing data.


5. Once the import is complete, you can run the old 5.8 instance in parallel with 6.0 until you are comfortable with the results, then delete the 5.8 instance when you are ready.

Upgrading from 6.x to 6.2

Prerequisites and Common Pitfalls:

• Because the upgrade process will convert two of the databases to another type and not delete the source data sets (in case of issues), you must plan for this extra disk space to be consumed.
  
  
  
  • To calculate how much extra space will be consumed by the database conversion, you can log in to the shell of each data/master/replica node and run:
    $  du -sch $STORAGE/db/vcops/*xdb* | tail -n1
    You should add around 10% to this value to be safe, which is in addition to the 15% total free space you ought to maintain on /storage/db for general stability.
  
  
  • To check how much total free space is available on the system, run:
    $ df -h $STORAGE/db
  
  
  
  


• If you have nodes that are separated by slow, latent, or unreliable links, the update may time out when the master node pushes the update out to them. This will be apparent if the upgrade fails without presenting you with an EULA. You can pre-stage the update pak files to work around this: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2127895


• There are a few instances where upgrading to 6.2 or 6.2a will take an indefinite amount of time to complete. If your upgrade takes more than 24 hours to complete, please contact VMware support. They will be able to help finish the upgrade.
  This is fixed in 6.2.1.


• These should no longer be necessary, but I'll leaving them here for reference:
  
  
  
  • Previous updates, patches and add-on Management Packs may cause issues if their files still linger in your update queue. To avoid issues with this, you should log in to each node via console or SSH and move the pak files in “$STORAGE/db/casa/pak/dist_pak_files/” somewhere else.
  
  
  • Large database blobs from a previous data migration may choke the update process. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2132479
  
  
  • The cluster state files may have some malformed data in them. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2106950
  
  
  • Expired projects may cause an upgrade failure when going from 6.1 to 6.2 http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2136536
  
  
  • There may be a malformed upgrade state file from previous versions. You should remove this before upgrading. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2120616
  
  
  • I have a script that can automate many of the above tasks and more at
    https://github.com/nakedhitman/vrops-cluster-repair
  
  
  
  

Steps to upgrade:

1. Take a snapshot of all your nodes.


2. Install the OS Update pak file. (This step is very important and must be done before the application update.)


3. Install the Application Update pak file.
   
   
   
   1. Ensure that you check both the boxes so that the “Reset out of the box content” option is selected. If you do not do this, some parts of the system may not be upgraded. This will not affect custom dashboards or other user-created content. Only the content that ships with the system that you ought not to have changed will be affected. If you do have customizations to the built-in content, you can clone them to preserve your changes.
   
   
   
   


4. Log in to the product UI as admin and ensure that your dashboards, adapter instances, and other data are present and working as expected.
   
   
   
   1. If it makes you go through the first run setup wizard again: don’t panic, its probably fine. Just choose evaluation mode and complete the wizard. Everything should be there when it’s complete. http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2132452
   
   
   2. If you end up with vCenter adapter instances that cannot be configured, missing dashboards or licenses, or end up loosing historical data, you should revert your snapshot and tell VMware about it immediately. If you don’t have a support contract, then make some noise on the communities site. VMware pays attention to this stuff and wants to prevent it from happening.
   
   
   
   


5. Once you’re sure that everything is running OK, delete the snapshots.

Conclusion

Although the upgrade process is a bit of an ordeal that can consume a good chunk of time, the features, stability, and performance of a successful upgrade really are worth it. VMware is working hard to make it better, and does listen to the things that are said on the communities site should you have any issues.

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Horizon Collector for Mac now on VMware Flings

I'm happy to announce that my little project to automate collecting Horizon View Client logs for Mac OS X has been published to VMware Flings!

Why Horizon Collector for Mac?

Currently, the Horizon Client for Windows has a built-in log collection feature. Even the Linux Client has a script that's provided by VMware to collect the necessary files. There is, however, no automated process provided by VMware to collect client logs for Mac OS X, leaving admins and end-users on their own to navigate through system files and manually set log collection levels and manually upload to support.

Here is what Horizon Collector does

• Automates collection of Horizon Client Application logs, as well as PCoIP, RTAV, USB, and Printing logs


• Easily enables full DEBUG logging if requested by Admins or VMware Support (and turns DEBUG off when you're done)


• Puts complete log bundle in a single .zip on your desktop


• Automates FTP upload to VMware Support (if applicable)

You can download the tool over at VMware Flings.

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Upgrading Workspace Portal to VMware Identity Manager (vIDM)

In this post, we'll be upgrading an HA Cluster of Workspace Portal 2.1.1 to vIDM 2.4 per the official documentation instructions. Some technical knowledge of pgAdmin and other tools is assumed in the official guide, so hopefully this post can help fill the gaps.

Step 1: Break the HA configuration

Upgrading requires us to temporarily revert to a single-node configuration which is a little daunting to hear, but fortunately it's much easier than reverting all the steps it took to create the cluster in the first place. If you don't have Workspace setup in HA mode, then you can move on to Step 2.

1. Verify you see more than 1 node listed when running curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true' // This means there are multiple nodes in the cluster, just like you configured it to be.
   


2. Launch pgAdmin and connect to the primary node
   


3. Expand Databases > saas > Schemas > saas > Tables
   


4. Find the Table called ServiceInstance and right click > View Data > View Top 100 Rows
   


5. Your nodes should all be listed here. Go ahead and delete all rows except for the master node
   


6. Perform the same steps for the FailoverConfiguration Table, but make sure to delete all rows


7. Run curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true' again and ensure only 1 node is returned
   


8. Now we need to update the Load Balancer in place to only use the master node. This will likely be different for most people since not everyone uses the same LB. In my case, I'm using NGINX as a Reverse Proxy. Consult your Load Balancer's documentation to achieve this step.

Step 2: Perform an Online Upgrade

1. Verify the prereqs. There are actually quite a few but the big ones are:
   
   
   
   1. Verify there is at least 2.5GB of space on root available
      
   
   
   2. Take a snapshot of the Workspace vApp
   
   
   3. Take a snapshot of the Workspace Database (if on an external DB server)
   
   
   4. Verify you can reach vapp-updates.vmware.com (where the update will be downloaded from)
      
   
   
   5. In the Map User Attributes page, make distinguishedName a required attribute, if you plan to sync Citrix-published resources (XenApp) to vIDM.
   
   
   6. Unjoin the master node from the Domain (Required if if coming from Workspace 2.1.0 and if planning on configuring HA cluster... Workspace 2.1.1 does not require this).
   
   
   
   


2. On the Appliance Console, run the following commands to verify vIDM 2.4 shows available:
   /usr/local/horizon/update/updatemgr.hzn updateinstaller
   /usr/local/horizon/update/updatemgr.hzn check
   


3. Run /usr/local/horizon/update/updatemgr.hzn update to update the appliance
   


4. If it completes successfully, you should be prompted to reboot the VM
   

Congratulations! Workspace has now been upgraded to vIDM! You should be able to confirm this in the blue console window.

Reconfigure the HA Cluster

If you would like to reconfigure the HA cluster, follow the below steps:

1. In the vSphere console, clone the master node. It may save time if you power down the master node before cloning.


2. Name the clone whatever you want, and we'll configure it's FQDN after.
   


3. Once the clone operation is complete, edit the vAPP properties of the VM to configure it's FQDN (Hostname) and IP. These must be unique values (as in, different than the master node).
   
   


4. Click ok and power on (first power on the master node before powering on the clone if need be).


5. The initial boot will check for a new hostname and IP and if they're different than the master, it will pass as a clone, then get autoconfigured as necessary. Once the boot is complete and the blue console screen is visible, login as root and type the following commands to ensure you see all the nodes in the cluster (in this case, 2 nodes)
   

   curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true'

   
   

   rabbitmqctl cluster_status

   
   


6. Now add the clone back into your Load Balancer's configuration. Once again, you must consult your LB's documentation in order to complete this step.


7. You can perform this cloning operation as many times as needed to build out your HA cluster. You can also perform these steps at any time - the HA cluster does not have to be built out right away.

What about my old slave-nodes from 2.1.1?  -- These can be deleted or stored for backup/reference use. The new vIDM cluster will not be referencing or using them in any way.

Post-Upgrade Configuration

The official post-upgrade steps can be found here, but here are some additional things to check:

• Ensure admin users and end-user accounts can both login to the portal. If you have trouble using one of the domain users to log in, then in an upgraded environment, append /SAAS/login/0 to the login URL using the local admin account. For example, if your login URL is https://myco.example.com, you would change it to https://myco.example.com/SAAS/login/0.


• Re-join the domain if you had left it prior the upgrade


• Verify apps and desktops launch as expected (a View sync may be a good idea at this point - Keep in mind View Sync should only be enabled on 1 node)


• Upgrade end-user's Desktop Clients to version 2.4. Be sure to uninstall the current Workspace Desktop Client, then install the 2.4 client.

I hope you've found this post helpful in upgrading your Workspace Portal deployment to vIDM! Let me know in the comments how it went!

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Today's new releases from VMware

VMware released a lot of updated software today. For simplicity, I've compiled the new releases and links to their Release Notes below. Enjoy!

VMware vSphere 6.0 U1

• Customer Experience Improvement Program: The Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) provides VMware with information that enables VMware to improve the VMware products and services and to fix problems. When you choose to participate in CEIP, VMware will collect technical information listed below about your use of the VMware products and services in CEIP reports on a regular basis. This information does not personally identify you. For more details, see the vSphere Documentation Center.


• Feature Enhancement: Suite UI is now enabled by default for the vSphere Web Client.


• Support for SSLv3: Support for SSLv3 has been disabled by default.


• vCSA Authentication for Active Directory: VMware vCenter Server Virtual Appliance (vCSA) has been modified to only support AES256-CTS/AES128-CTS/RC4-HMAC encryption for Kerberos authentication between vCSA and Active Directory.


• Installation and Upgrade using HTML 5 installer: The following installation and upgrade scenarios are supported for vCenter Server using HTML 5 installer:
  
  
  
  • Installation using HTML 5 installer and target as vCenter Server is supported
  
  
  • Upgrade using HTML 5 installer and target as vCenter Server is not supported
  
  
  • Upgrade using command line and target as vCenter Server is supported
  
  
  
  

VMware Integrated Stack 2.0
VMware Integrated OpenStack enables the rapid deployment of OpenStack on a VMware vSphere virtual platform. This release provides the following new features and enhancements.

VMware vSphere Update Manager 6.0 U1

• The Update Manager Web client is now available with full set of capabilities, that is required to perform both patch and version management for your vSphere inventory.


• The libxml that is bundled with Update Manager 6.0 Update 1 is upgraded to version 2.9.2.


• VMware vSphere Update Manager Database re-initializer option is available in Update Manager Utility under Database Settings.


• Additional database support: The Update Manager 6.0 Update 1 server and the UMDS 6.0 Update 1 are compatible with:
  
  
  
  • Microsoft SQL 2008 R2-SP3
  
  
  • Microsoft SQL 2012 SP2 (Standalone and Clustered)
  
  
  • Microsoft SQL 2014(Clustered)
  
  
  
  


• The Microsoft XML used by Update Manager is upgraded to version MSXML6.dll.


• The Oracle (Sun) JRE package is updated to 1.7.0_80. The update addresses multiple security issues that exist in the earlier releases of Oracle (Sun) JRE.


• OpenSSL is updated to 1.0.1m to resolve multiple security issues. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2015-0286, CVE-2015-0287, CVE-2015-0289, CVE-2015-0293, CVE-2015-0209, and CVE-2015-0288 to these issues.


• Support for SSLv3 is disabled in Update Manager 6.0 Update 1 by default.

VMware Horizon (with View) 5.3.5
VMware Horizon View 5.3.5 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues in the previous releases. For information about the issues that are resolved in this release, see Resolved Issues.

To improve security, Horizon View 5.3.5 does not support weak ciphers such as RC4 by default. On Windows XP machines, you must:

• Upgrade Horizon Client to version 3.2.1.


• Use Firefox or Chrome to access View Administrator or connect to desktops using HTML Access.

Care Systems Analytics for EPIC 1.0.4
VMware Care Systems Analytics for Epic 1.0.4 updates cover all major areas of the product including installation, migration, configuration, alerting, dashboards, and widgets.

This release adds support for vRealize Operations Manager version 6.0.3 and 6.1.0 and Epic System Pulse edition 2015.

VMware vRealize Automation (VRA) 6.2.3
This release of vRealize Automation contains the following enhancements:

• Added support for the Change Reservation operation to vCloud vApps to enable administrators to change the business group of a provisioned vApp.


• Added the ability to disable snapshot options for all users, including the business group manager and support user, if snapshot is not enabled on the blueprint.


• Added support for vCloud Government Service and Amazon Web Services GovCloud.


• Updated version support for the following endpoints:
  
  
  
  • OpenStack Juno
  
  
  • vCloud Director 5.5.3
  
  
  • vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.3
  
  
  • vSphere 5.5 Update 3
  
  
  • vSphere 6.0 Update 1
  
  
  
  


• Added support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP2.


• Improved error logging for the Windows version of the guest agent.


• Enabled the Customer Experience Improvement Program by default.

For information about what's new in vRealize Orchestrator Plug-In, see the VMware vCenter Orchestrator Plug-In for vCloud Automation Center 6.2 Release Notes.

VMware vRealize Business Adv/Ent 8.2.3
vRealize Business Advanced and Enterprise 8.2.3 is a maintenance release with the following enhancements:

• Upgraded Apache POI to 3.12
  Apache POI is upgraded to 3.12 in this release.


• Upgraded JRE to 1.8.0_51
  JRE package is upgraded to 1.8.0_51 in this release.

VMware vRealize Business Standard 6.2.3
This release of vRealize Business Standard contains following enhancements:

• Enables to view deleted virtual machine information. You can view the price or charge details of deleted virtual machines for the current month under Consumers List.


• Support for business unit mapping. Even if your vRealize Business Standard is categorized based on vRealize Automation, you can map the business units to Tenant Administrator and Business Management Controller users in a manner similar to vCloud Director or vCenter Server categorization.


• Upgraded JRE to 1.7 update 85. JRE has been upgraded to 1.7.0_85 in this release.


• Uses latest build of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP3. vRealize Business Standard uses the latest build of SLES11 SP3.


• Upgraded Pivotal tc Server from 2.9.8 to 3.1.0. vRealize Business Standard server runs on Pivotal tc server 3.1.0 version.

VMware vRealize Code Stream 1.2.0
vRealize Code Stream is a release automation product that enables an organization to deliver quality software while leveraging existing tools in the build, development, test, provisioning, and monitoring environments.

VMware vRealize Log Insight 3.0.0
VMware vRealize Log Insight 3.0 delivers the best real-time log management for VMware environments. Machine learning-based Intelligent Grouping and high performance search enables faster troubleshooting across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. vRealize Log Insight can analyze terabytes of logs, discover structure in unstructured data, and deliver enterprise-wide visibility using a modern Web interface.

VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.3
vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.3 updates cover all major areas of the product including installation, migration, configuration, licensing, alerting, dashboards, reports, and policies. There are no new features in this release.

VMware vRealize Operations Manager 6.1
vRealize Operations Manager 6.1 is the latest release of VMware's integrated operations suite. Updates cover all major areas of the product including installation, configuration, licensing, alerting, dashboards, reports, and policies. This release introduces the following enhancements.

VMware vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.3
vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.3 is a patch release that introduces a number of improvements and bug fixes.

VMware vCenter Orchestrator Plug-in for VRA 6.2.3
This release of the vCenter Orchestrator Plug-In for vCloud Automation Center introduces the following new functionality:

• vCenter Orchestrator Plug-In for vCloud Automation Center 6.2.3 works with vRealize Automation 6.2, 6.2.1, 6.2.2, and 6.2.3 and vRealize Orchestrator 6.0.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, and 6.0.3.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 6.1
VMware Site Recovery Manager 6.1 provides the following new features:

• Support for VMware vSphere 6.0 update 1.


• Storage policy based protection of virtual machines.


• Support for stretched storage when using storage policy protection groups in enhanced linked mode.


• Support for auto-mapping of stretched NSX networks.


• Enhancements to mappings for test networks.

VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) 6.1
Virtual SAN 6.1 introduces the following new features and enhancements:

• Stretched clusters: Virtual SAN 6.1 supports stretched clusters that span two geographic locations to protect data from site failures or loss of network connection.


• The VMware Virtual SAN Witness Appliance 6.1 is a virtual witness host packaged as a virtual appliance. It functions as an ESXi host configured as a witness host for a Virtual SAN stretched cluster. You can download the Virtual SAN Witness Appliance 6.1 OVA from the VMware Virtual SAN download Web site.


• New on-disk format. Virtual SAN 6.1 supports upgrades to new on-disk virtual file format 2.0 through the vSphere Web Client. This log-based file system, based on Virsto technology, provides highly scalable snapshot and clone management support per Virtual SAN cluster.


• Hybrid and all-flash configurations. Virtual SAN 6.1 supports both hybrid and all-flash clusters. To configure an all-flash cluster, click Create a new disk group under Virtual SAN Disk Management (Manage > Settings), and select Flash as the Capacity type. When claiming disk groups, you can select flash devices for both capacity and cache.


• Improved upgrade process. Upgrade supports direct upgrades from Virtual SAN 5.5 and 6.0 to Virtual SAN 6.1.


• Virtual SAN 6.1 includes an integrated Health Service that monitors the cluster health and enables you to diagnose and fix issues with the Virtual SAN cluster. The Virtual SAN Health Service provides several checks on hardware compatibility, networking configuration and operations, advanced configuration options, storage device health, and Virtual SAN object health. If the Health Service detects any health issues, it triggers vCenter events and alarms. To view the health checks for a Virtual SAN cluster, click Monitor > Virtual SAN > Health.


• Virtual SAN monitors solid state drive and magnetic disk drive health and proactively isolates unhealthy devices by unmounting them. It detects gradual failure of a Virtual SAN disk and isolates the device before congestion builds up within the affected host and the entire Virtual SAN cluster. An alarm is generated from each host whenever an unhealthy device is detected and an event is generated if an unhealthy device is automatically unmounted.

VMware vSphere Replication 6.1
The following features are new for this release:

• 5 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for replication between Virtual SAN data stores – This version of vSphere Replication allows customers to replicate virtual machine workloads with an RPO setting as low as 5 minutes between Virtual SAN data stores.


• Support for NFS v 4.1 – This release introduces support for NFS v 4.1 data stores. It allows customers to protect and recover virtual machines that are provisioned onto NFS v 4.1 environments using vSphere Replication.


• UI Enhancements - the RPO settings in the Configure Replication wizard are simplified and provide more granular options of predefined RPO settings.

vRealize Orchestrator Plug-in for vSphere Replication 6.1
The VMware vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Replication allows VMware administrators to simplify the management of their vSphere Replication infrastructure by leveraging the robust workflow automation platform of vRealize Orchestrator. The vRealize Orchestrator plug-in for vSphere Replication extends automation capabilities for certain vSphere Replication operations by including them in vRealize Orchestrator workflows.
The plug-in also delivers pre-built out-of-the-box building blocks and complete workflows that cover certain existing vSphere Replication actions.

vCloud Director 8.0 for Service Providers

• vSphere 6.0 support: vCloud Director for Service Providers 8.0 adds support for vSphere 6.0 in backward compatibility mode.


• NSX support: vCloud Director for Service Providers 8.0 adds support for NSX 6.1.4 in backward compatibility mode. This means that tenants' consumption capability is unchanged and remains at the vCloud Networking and Security feature level of vCloud Director 5.6.


• Organization virtual data center templates: Allows system administrators to create organization virtual data center templates, including resource delegation, that organization users can deploy to create new organization virtual data centers.


• vApp enhancements: Enhancements to vApp functionality, including the ability to reconfigure virtual machines within a vApp, and network connectivity and virtual machine capability during vApp instantiation.


• OAuth support for identity sources: Support added for OAuth2 tokens.


• Tenant throttling: : Prevents a single tenant from consuming all of the resources for a single instance of vCloud Director and ensures fairness of execution and scheduling among tenants.

vSphere Data Protection (VDP) 6.1

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Installing the all new VMware Identity Manager (vIDM) 2.4

VMware Identity Manager (vIDM) is the exciting next evolution of Workspace Portal, a critical piece within the Horizon Suite providing application provisioning, self-service catalog, conditional access controls and Single Sign-On (SSO) for SaaS, web, cloud and native mobile applications. Playing a central role in the One Cloud, Any Application, Any Device initiative, you're going to start hearing a lot more about vIDM in the coming weeks and months. To find out more about this new release, check out my vIDM announcement post.

Installing vIDM using the vSphere Web Client

NOTE: I used a beta build throughout this post so some screenshots may reference WorkspacePortal where your deployment says Identity Manager

Pre-Reqs

• Static IP


• Pre-configured DNS entry


• Active Directory


• User Authentication Methods (AD, Kerberos, RSA, etc etc)


• 2 vCPU / 6GB RAM / 24 GB Disk space (minimum)


• Port 443 must be open in Firewalls for external access


• Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, IE 10/11, Safari, Microsoft Edge (use latest available version unelss specified)

1. Deploy the downloaded OVA
   
   
   
   1. In the vSphere Web Client, right click your cluster and choose Deploy OVF Template
      
      
      
   
   
   2. Select your OVA file, Review the file details, and accept the EULA
      
      
   
   
   3. Choose your desired storage and network, then customize the deployment with the following items
      NOTE: You can enter these values in the vApp properties post-deployment if you don't want to enter them now. If you do this, be sure to UNcheck Power On After Deployment
      
      
      
      
      1. FQDN (make sure DNS forward and reverse entries exist)
      
      
      2. Default Gateway
      
      
      3. DNS Server
      
      
      4. IP Address
      
      
      5. Netmask
      
      
      
      
   
   
   4. Review all the deployment info and click Finish
      
   
   
   
   


2. Once deployment is completed, you can now power on the vApp - it will take longer during the first boot.
   NOTE: if you skipped entering the network details earlier, edit these in the vApp Properties before powering on.


3. When booting is complete, you should see a screen similar to the one below. If you see errors or the boot doesn't seem to complete, you may need to delete from disk, and attempt re-deploy.
   


4. Follow the onscreen instructions to navigate to https://<fqdn>:8443


5. Here we'll see a new yet familiar Setup Wizard
   


6. Click Next and set your passwords (make sure you document these passwords!!)
   


7. Select your Database - Internal will use an embedded PostgreSQL DB
   


8. Wait for the appliance to configure the DB and ensure there are no errors
   


9. When setup is complete, you're instructed to login to the administration console with the admin credentials you just setup
   


10. Clicking the administration console link brings you to the login page where you'll enter the admin username and password previously configured
    


11. Congratulations, you've now done the initial configuration of the vIDM appliance!
    

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