VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘upgrade’

I haven’t always covered all the vCenter, VirtualCenter, and ESX/ESXi updates in the past. Several updates have been released since the last time I did. VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6’s announcement caught my attention because of a fix to uploading files with the datastore browser. This issue has been reported in one of the longest comment threads here at VM /ETC. More on that later in this post, but I received the following email notification that VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 was released:

VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 is Generally Available

We are pleased to inform you that VMware VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 (English and localized) is generally available as of late night January 29, 2010.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 provides the following improvements:

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements
• Support for Firefox 3.x Browsers with VirtualCenter Web Access
• Bug and security fixes

For details regarding the new fixes and improvements, please refer to the release notes.

VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 6 is available for download.

For details regarding compatibility, please view vSphere Compatibility Matrixes.

Thanks,
VMware Infrastructure Product Management Team

Some of the highlights for me when reading the Release Notes are:

Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has published a vSphere Pre-requisites Checklist PDF that will be very handy document to have when planning for the upgrade of a current VMware Infrastructure. The following is part of the document’s introduction and explains it’s purpose:

“This Pre-requisites Checklist is intended for those involved in planning, designing, and upgrading an existing VMware Infrastructure to VMware vSphere. The intended audience includes the roles listed below:

• Solution Architects responsible for driving architecture-level decisions
• Consultants, Partners, and IT personnel, who require knowledge for deploying and upgrading the vSphere infrastructure

it is assumed that they have knowledge and familiarity with VMware Infrastructure and have access to the VMware Infrastructure and VMware vSphere product documentation for reference.”

The document is considered a draft version, and will be updated when vSphere is generally available (GA) later this Quarter (Late May?). Even in it’s current state, the PDF walks administrators and architects through all possible planning and upgrade scenarios of both vCenter and ESX  hosts and points out a lot of the potential gotchas of a vSphere 4 migration.

I’m sure I will use this document regularly over then next 12 months. I might as well have it laminated once it’s finalized after GA!

updated 12.14.08 – VM /ETC was successfully updated to Wordpress 2.7! If you notice anything stranger than normal or broken please leave me a comment or send me an email. Thanks, Rich

My Change Control Request to take VM /ETC down for maintenance on 12.13.08 (today) in order to upgrade to Wordpress version 2.7 has been reluctantly approved by the Change Control Board. It was not an easy task convincing the Board to allow this upgrade. The Change Control Board is just me, of course!

VM /ETC will experience periods of temporary unavailability from 10 pm to 11 pm EST tonight. Thanks for your patience during this time period, and thanks for reading VM /ETC.

Some VM /ETC readers may remember a weekly series of posts I was doing earlier this year – “things that make you go hmmm“. Well, the August 12 ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 BUG definitely deserves a resurrection of that series and a post all to itself. Although this topic is still a little too sensitive to be humorous today, I’ve included a mix of comic and serious links. Hopefully we can all look back and at least chuckle about these events sometime in the future. So, here is a sampling of of the various reactions and opinions on the VMware time bomb bug from around the internet. Laugh if you can. After all, it’s Friday … Read the rest of this entry »

Being that it is the end of the week and I have fallen a day or so behind in keeping up with the VMware updates for the August 12 time bomb bug, I decided that I would post the remaining emails I received from VMware. I’m also including an update from John Troyer from the VMTN Blog providing some clarity on version number information differences between the install media and the express patched ESX/ESXi 3.5 versions. Read the rest of this entry »

The product expiration time bomb that was mistakenly left in the first versions of the ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 Update 2 download media is no doubt an embarrassing and horrible mistake by VMware. The timing of this disaster couldn’t be worse with Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and others starting to be considered as an alternative virtual infrastructure platform for companies just beginning to explore the benefits of virtualization. How could this have happened and what are some lessons to be learned, not just for VMware, but for VI administrators around the world? Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, this post uses another movie reference.

In the film 28 Days Later the Rage virus infects the Island of Great Britain turning all but a few survivors into zombie-like monsters called “The Infected”. The virus was unleashed when animal activists released medical research chimpanzees which ended up attacking the activists and scientists. This post is about what could cause a similar rage 730 days after installing VirtualCenter, potentially causing VI administrators to become lifeless, rabid, and insane.

After installing VirtualCenter (VC), you should check the installed SSL certificate used by the VI Client because you will most likely need to manually replace it. After a fresh installation the default certifcate expires in 730 days (or 2 years). If the certificate expires you will be unable to log in to the VirtualCenter Management Server using either the VI Client or the web administration interface.

Unfortunately, it is unclear to me at this writing if upgrading the VC Server within the 730 day period updates the certificate store. Read the rest of this entry »