A few weeks ago Feidhlim O’Leary (one of our Technical Support Training Specialists who trains VMware’s technical staff) delivered a free webcast on VMware vSphere 6.5 Top Issues & Troubleshooting and the audience questions were great as always.
We pulled a few of them below, but you can read the entire list and listen to the recording on your schedule.
————————————————————————
What is the best approach to check the VM performance? Is it from VM task manger or from vCenter performance graph?
It would depend on the performance issue / monitoring. Task manager will only show metrics within the Guest OS, the vCenter Performance Graphs can report both in-guest metrics and the hypervisor layer metrics.
Can we have a mixed environment (v6 and v6.5) or do we need to upgrade all the hosts at the same time?
No you do not need to upgrade all ESXi hosts at the same. It is however, best practice to maintain the same versions of ESXi within the same ESXi Cluster but it is not a requirement.
Do we need to upgrade the VCenter before upgrading the hosts?
Yes, the vCenter will always need to be at the same release level or higher than your hosts.
Do you have Best Practice guides for upgrade from 5.5 to 6.0 to 6.5?
Please refer to the following documentation.
Does v6.5 take care of failover of PSC automatically now?
If the load balance is configured, Failover will happen automatically otherwise you have to manually repoint the PSC.
How do you get the “Use Windows session authentication” for Single Sign-on to vCenter to work?
Ensure you have joined the vCenter Server and PSC (if external) to the Active Directory domain. Ensure you have added a valid AD Identity Source and that you have installed the Web Client Plugin.
I upgraded vCenter 6.0 Windows to vCenter 6.5 appliance. All went well, except I cannot log in to the appliance because I don’t know the root password. It has never been set. How can I login to the vCenter appliance?
You can reset the VCSA 6.5 Root password following this KB article.
Is it possible to install vSphere without DNS?
Yes, as long as you use only IP Addresses everyone and no FQDN
What happens to the distributed switch when upgrading and migrating from Win OS to appliance?
The Distributed Switch Information, as well as everything that makes vCenter a vCenter, will be migrated.
What is the recommended software for backing up Esxi hosts?
You can backup the ESXi Host Config using this KB article. Also you can use Host Profiles to capture host configurations.
When can use VSwitch/dvSwtich?
It really depends on your environment but the KB article “Overview of vNetwork Distributed Switch concepts (1010555)” might help with the decision.
Which is preferred? vCenter Server or vCenter Appliance?
We support both platforms – however you might have noticed that the vCenter Server Appliance has some exclusive new features like vCenter HA.
