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Tag Archives: vsphere

Introducing the vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0

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Fresh out of development today VMware has a new tool to help everyone with the implementation of custom certificates. The vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0, will help customers update certificates needed for running vCenter Server and supporting components. This is primarily of interest to customers who use custom certificates either generated internally from Corporate CAs, or from public CA’s like VeriSign.

To add a little background information various components within vSphere and the vCenter platform use certificates for identifying themselves as well as for secure communication with external software entities (browsers, API clients).  These can broadly be classified into the following categories:

  1. Secure token Service Certificate – Certificate used by vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) for encryption tokens
  2. Solution User Certificates – Certificates used by each solution to identify themselves as users to SSO
  3. SSL Certificates  – certificates needed for SSL communication for the UI and API layer
  4. Host Certificates – These certificates are deployed in each ESXi host and used for secure vCenter to ESXi communication.

Note: The new certificate tool automates the updating of certificates in the management layer only (a, b, c above). This tool does NOT handle replacement of certificates in ESXi hosts.

The vCenter Certificate Automation Tool aims to automate the process of uploading certificates and restarting the following components within the vCenter Platform:

  1. vCenter Server
  2. vCenter Single Sign On
  3. vCenter Inventory Service
  4. vSphere Web Client
  5. vCenter Log Browser
  6. VMware Update Manager (VUM)
  7. vCenter Orchestrator (VCO)

For more information on how to download, install, and use the tool, refer to KB article: Deploying and Using the SSL Certificate Automation Tool (2041600).

Really getting to know vSphere 5.1

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Some of you early adopters might have VMware vSphere 5.1 down pat by now, but we’re sure many of you are still trying to wrap your heads around all the new bits. Today we thought we’d highlight some really good documentation that is more than just your typical step-by-step instructions. These guides come in multiple formats such as HTML, PDF, EPUB and MOBI so you can download it to your device of choice and carry it around with you. We highly encourage you to check out the following:

To see what’s new specifically in vSphere 5.1, these white papers focus on different areas to highlight in depth what the key changes are.

Collecting diagnostic information from vCenter Server 5.1

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We have recently updated KB article: Collecting diagnostic information for VMware vCenter Server (1011641) with vCenter Server 5.1 information, says Joel Yaross, Technical Support Engineer in our Broomfield Colorado office.

“If you’re using the vSphere Web Client, you can select hosts from which to generate and download system log files with the option to include vCenter Server and vSphere Web client logs. For more information, see KB: Collecting diagnostic information for ESX/ESXi hosts and vCenter Server using the vSphere Web Client (2032892).

Note: You can also you use the Log Browser feature in the vSphere Web Client to view, search, and export one or more vCenter Server or ESXi log files. For more information, see Using the Log Browser to view, search, and export Logs for troubleshooting (2032888).”

vSphere SSO Resources

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Ever since vSphere 5.1 launched we’ve been getting a fair number of support calls about Single Sign On, or SSO for short. It is a requirement now, and many of you are getting caught on some aspect of the upgrade/implementation.

We don’t like our customers having to call into support. Not that we don’t love to hear from you, but we’d rather document how to deal with different issues and push the information out to you before you run into them. Then, you don’t have to waste time calling us!

Let’s start with two particularly important KB articles. These are classified as ‘Resolution Paths’. They walk you through an ordered set of steps in resolving a problem. You can read more about resolution path articles here.

 

If those two don’t address your problem, here are a few more resources to help you along your way on the upgrade path. Enjoy!

Installation and Deployment
Single Sign On installation details matrix (2036922)
How vCenter SSO Deployment Scenarios Affect Log In Behavior
Setting up Apache load balancing software with vCenter Single Sign On (2034157)
Troubleshooting VMware Single Sign-On configuration and installation issues in a Windows server (2033880)
Configuring SSO for HA (2033588)
Manually Replicate Data in a Multisite vCenter Single Sign On Deployment
Installing vCenter Single Sign On in a multisite deployment (2034074)
Deploying SSO at each site in multi site mode
SSO server Deployment Modes
Configuration
Replacing Default SSL Certificates for vCenter components (pdf)
When you log into the vSphere Client, linked vCenter Server systems do not appear (2033213)
vCenter Single Sign On and dependent services fail to start after you reboot the system (2032749)
After updating SSL certificate for SSO, a newly installed instance of VC fails to start (2033215)
Unable to connect to vCenter Inventory Service (2032356)
Repointing and reregistering vCenter Server and components (2033620)
Configuring SSO for HA (2033588)
Troubleshooting SSO on Windows (2033208)

  • autodiscovery fails
  • Single Sign On Installation fails completely
  • error occurs that references the vCenter Inventory or Web Client
vCenter Single Sign On fails to start at startup or initialization (2033164)
Troubleshooting Single Sign On with the vCenter Server Appliance configuration on an external database (2033624)
Troubleshooting vCenter Server Appliance configuration with an external vCenter Single Sign On server (2033737)
Troubleshooting Single Sign On and Active Directory domain authentication with the vCenter Server Appliance (2033742)
Change the vCenter Single Sign On Mode in VCVA
Update vCenter Single Sign On settings after you change the hostname or port of the database server (2033516)
Admin and Login
Troubleshooting SSL certificates updates and SSO (2033240)
Troubleshooting vSphere Web Client login errors (2033253)

  • provided credentials are invalid
  • user account is locked
  • Single Sign On server fails to respond
  • vCenter Server administrator permissions are not valid by default on Single Sign On
Troubleshooting SSO on VCVA (2033338)
Updating SSL certificates for vCenter Single Sign On servers behind a load balancer (2034181)
Unable to log in to vCenter Server with the vSphere Client (2034798)

Here are a few more links for good luck:

VMware vSphere Tech Preview – Distributed Storage

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This is the last video for today, but it is a special one indeed.

Note: This is a video of a Technology Preview.

VMware made some significant announcements around its storage direction at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco last month.

One of the announcements was about a new feature, Distributed Storage – basically the ability to take ESXi hosts with just local storage and build a distributed datastore across all hosts in the cluster. There are so many neat features attached to this, such as its scale out capability, the ability to have compute-only nodes in the cluster ,and the introduction of Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) to define virtual machine storage requirements such as performance and availability in the form of a profile.

There is so much more to Distributed Storage than that, of course.

In this video, we have Cormac Hogan (Senior Technical Marketing Architect at VMware) discuss and demonstrate some interesting aspects of this new feature.

Cormac touches on:

  • Scale Out Storage
  • VM Storage Profile Creation
  • Provisioning a VM using Storage Profiles
  • vMotion
  • Resilience

We have worked with Cormac on several video tutorial projects in the past, so naturally we were delighted to work with him again on this really cool and interesting video topic. In fact, we  are working on a few new video tutorials in coordination with Cormac relating to the VSA or vSphere Storage Appliance which we hope to make available for your viewing pleasure at some point in the next two weeks…so watch this space!

For now,  you can get more information about this over at Cormac’s blog post.

For those of you heading to VMworld 2012 in Barcelona in October, Cormac highly recommends attending session INF-STO2192. For those of you who cannot make VMworld, Cormac highly recommends watching this video :-) .

VMware vSphere 5 Memory Management and Monitoring

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This presentation expands on the diagram provided in knowledge base article: VMware vSphere 5 Memory Management and Monitoring diagram (2017642). It provides a comprehensive look into the ESXi memory management mechanisms and reclamation methods, and also provides the relevant monitoring components in vCenter Server and the troubleshooting tools like ESXTOP.

Getting Started with vSphere 5: vCenter Server 5 Basic Installation

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It's been a few weeks since we uploaded our last video but we are happy to announce that we have just uploaded a new vSphere 5 related video for your viewing pleasure.

This video shows you how to install VMware vSphere 5 vCenter Server in its basic configuration. vCenter Server 5 is a part of vSphere 5 product family and is used to offer system administrators a centralized management solution for remotely managing ESX Servers.

Additional documentation for the VMware vSphere 5 product is available at:

 

Validating vSphere 5 license information using vSphere PowerCLI script

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Alan Renouf, a Senior Technical Marketing Architect here at VMware today updated his PowerCLI script that you can run on your existing vSphere 4 systems.

The script generates an HTML report showing your current license information and the equivalent vSphere 5 information. You can drill down into the license details to gain insight into your vRAM details, including pooled vRAM capacity, vRAM usage if all VMs were powered on and more.

Check out the video below, then grab the script.  We’ve captured the specific steps you need to follow in a new Knowledgebase article: Validating vSphere 5.0 license information using vSphere PowerCLI script (2003877).