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Tag Archives: vSphere 5.1

Did you know vCenter Server can manage multiple hypervisors?

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VMware vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager is a component that enables support for heterogeneous hypervisors in a VMware vCenter Server environment. It provides the following benefits to your virtual environment:

 
  • An integrated platform for managing VMware and third-party hypervisors from a single interface.
  • A hypervisor choice for the different business units in your organization to accommodate their specific needs.
  • No single hypervisor vendor lock-in.

When you add a third-party host to vCenter Server, all virtual machines that exist on the host are discovered automatically, and are added to the third-party hosts inventory.

The ability of vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager to migrate virtual machines from third-party hosts to ESX or ESXi hosts is implemented by exposing the capabilities of vCenter Converter Standalone in the vSphere Client. See VMware KB article 2048927 for information about dependency between vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager and vCenter Converter Standalone.

Key Capabilities

vCenter Multi-Hypervisor Manager 1.1 introduces the following set of basic management capabilities over third-party hosts:

  • Third-party host management including add, remove, connect, disconnect, and view the host configuration.
  • Ability to migrate virtual machines from third-party hosts to ESX or ESXi hosts.
  • Ability to provision virtual machines on third-party hosts.
  • Ability to edit virtual machine settings.
  • Integrated vCenter Server authorization mechanism across ESX/ESXi and third-party hosts inventories for privileges, roles, and users.
  • Automatic discovery of pre-existing third-party virtual machines
  • Ability to perform power operations with hosts and virtual machines.
  • Ability to connect and disconnect DVD, CD-ROM, and floppy drives and images to install operating systems.

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VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 Released

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There have been some rumors but I can now officially share the update release 1 for vSphere vCenter Server 5.1.

vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 | Build 1064983
vCenter Server Appliance 5.1 Update 1 | Build 1065184

Download from VMware.com

What’s New

This release of VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 offers the following improvements:

  • vCenter Server is now supported on Windows Server 2012
  • Additional vCenter Server Database Support: vCenter Server now supports the following databases.
    • Microsoft SQL Server 2012
    • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2
  • Additional Guest Operating System Customization Support -vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
    • Windows 8
    • Windows Server 2012
    • Ubuntu12.04
    • RHEL 5.9
  • vCenter Essentials no longer enforces vRAM usage limit of 192 GB
    With vSphere 5.1 Update 1, the Essentials and Essentials Plus licenses no longer restrict virtual machine power-on operations when the vRAM usage limit of 192 GB is met.
  • Resolved Issues – This release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in the Resolved Issues section.

Click to review the complete VMware vSphere 5.1 Update 1 release notes

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vCenter Certificate Automation Tool – Now Available

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With the release of vCenter 5.1 adding additional certificates into the environment to make communication between components more secure, the process of updating these certificates with customers’ own signed certificates has been a challenge.

We are pleased to announce the general availability of vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0. This tool provides an automated mechanism to replace certificates in the following components of the vCenter Server 5.1 management platform:

 

The tool is available now and can be downloaded for free from the VMware download website

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

This tool is fully supported by VMware.

 

Note: The new certificate tool does NOT handle replacement of certificates in ESXi hosts.

How To Restart The Custom Attributes To Tags Migration Process

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One of the coolest feature in my opinion is Tagging in the new vSphere Web Client. Unlike Custom Attributes which was limited to an ESXi host and Virtual Machine object, the new Tagging capability allows you to create custom labels and metadata on ANY vSphere inventory object. In addition, you can have multiple tags per object and you can search based on tags to help you quickly find what you are looking and making this feature even more powerful. Just like with anything new, it takes time to get used to. To help you use the new Tagging feature, there is a built in Custom Attributes to Tags migration tool in the vSphere Web Client as Tagging will be the future going forward.

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vCenter Single Sign-On – Part 4: Pre Install Requirements

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The installation of vSphere vCenter Sign-On is a relatively a straight forward process when planned correctly and as there are many factors of the environment that the installation process will touch, it is important to review the vCenter Single Sign-On Server prerequisites prior to deployment, preferably during the initial design phase. It is important to note that the vCenter Single Sign-On server is the first component to be installed prior to vCenter Server install or upgrade.

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vCenter Single Sign-On – Part 3: Availability

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Before we continue with the pre-requisites and installation of SSO we need to complete the planning of our vSphere install/upgrade design and this includes the desired level of availability required, if any.

When speaking to partners and customers I am often stumbled by the amount of attention and time that is placed on individual SSO availability. My response is bluntly why? followed by the question on what do you use today to protect vCenter server? to which the response is typically nothing or vSphere HA, sometimes vCenter Heartbeat. Don’t get me wrong my background is in business continuity and the way I look at it, SSO is an authentication component of the vCenter server, nothing more, nothing less and so when looking to protect SSO, the solution you choose for protecting vCenter server will provide the best protection of all vCenter components. If you choose not to protect the vCenter server then no protection of SSO is required, if SSO goes down, you bring down the vCenter server management, if only vCenter server goes down, you’re in the same situation, without vCenter server your not going to have much use for an SSO server unless shared with multiple vCenter servers (see below). There are solutions that enable themselves with SSO but these all have a dependency on the vCenter server to be operational. I understand that when reading up on SSO at the excellent vSphere 5.1 Documentation Center, there is a configuration called SSO HA (not to be confused with vSphere HA) and as this is an installable configuration, some believe this is the only option for SSO availability which is not correct. While this solution works, it can be very complex to setup, requires the use of third party technologies but does it give me anymore protection than say vSphere HA? I hope to answer this for you.

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Clarification on (Zero-Down Time) VMware Tools Upgrade in vSphere 5.1

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There have been some recent questions about upgrading to the latest version of VMware Tools in vSphere 5.1 and the benefits it may bring with future upgrades of VMware Tools. Historically, VMware Tools upgrades has always required an operating system reboot as new device drivers and kernel modules will not go into effect until the next reboot. For Windows operating systems, you could “suppress” a reboot by specifying an advanced installer option. For UNIX/Linux operating systems, the new device drivers and kernel modules will be staged when you upgrade VMware Tools, but will only be activated upon the next reboot. In both case, you can continue to run your virtual machine in a partially upgraded state for a limited amount of time until your next maintenance window, but it is recommended that you reboot as soon as possible.

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Heading to the VMware Partner Exchange this year?

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If your going to be in Las Vegas for the annual 2013 VMware Partner Exchange, why don’t you come and check out my sessions on vSphere 5.1 covering the vSphere web client and vCenter components like Single Sign-On

Thursday, Feb 28, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
CI1544 - vSphere Web Client - Technical Walkthrough
With the release of vSphere 5.1 was a new primary client for the management of vSphere Solutions. With this session we will build competency in the adoption of the vSphere Web Client by highlighting the differences, easing the initial reaction to a Web Client and show you how to wow your customers with real world use cases

Thursday, Feb 28, 10:15 AM – 12:15 PM
CI1545 - vSphere – Deployment Best Practices
With the new technologies introduced with vSphere 5.1 many unanswered questions exist with designing and deploying the vSphere 5.1 environment. This session will share best practices learned from the field and provide common scenarios with recommended configurations of vCenter, Single Sign-On, Inventory Service and the web client that will future proof your customers environment. This session has now been extended to include Kyle Gleed (@VMwareESXi) discussing best practices on deploying and working with vSphere hosts (ESXi)

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vCenter Single Sign-On – Part 2: Deployment Options

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Now you understand what vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) provides, as you start to design or upgrade to your vSphere 5.1 environment, particular attention needs to be given in the planning stages around the placement and configuration of the SSO server. This will always be the first component to be installed; regardless of fresh install or upgrading from a previous version. The SSO server can be deployed in a number of configurations and I will explain these options and too why you may use each option.

During the installation process you will be presented with the below screen which is a key decision on which deployment method of SSO you would like to deploy. It is very important that you have planned your SSO deployment as changing this configuration later is possible but not an easy achievement. Continue reading →

vSphere 5.1 – VDS New Features – Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

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After the holiday break I am happy to be back and want to continue where I left off in terms of blog posts. Before I do that let me first wish you all a Happy New Year!!! End of the last year, I did couple of posts providing some technical details on the new vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) features released as part of vSphere 5.1. In this post I will discuss the new Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) feature. While discussing this feature, I will also talk about its configuration parameters and scenarios in which this teaming option will provide you better throughput and better utilization of uplinks (physical NICs).

Link aggregation allows you to combine two or more physical NICs together and provide higher bandwidth and redundancy between a host and a switch or between two switches. Whenever you want to create a bigger pipe to carry any traffic or you want to provide higher reliability you can make use of this feature. However, it is important to note that the increase in bandwidth by clubbing the physical NICs depends on type of workloads you are running and type of hashing algorithm used to distribute the traffic across the aggregated NICs.

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