VCDX – Enhanced Blueprint

Earlier this year RoundTower hosted the NPX Boot Camp in Cincinnati. During the three day boot camp one of the participants came up with a way to summarize requirements on a diagram during white-boarding which was very interesting.

Why am I blogging about it? One of the problems that I have always experienced as a consulting architect, is that the level of time and effort to produce VCDX-level designs for customers is actually cost-prohibitive and time-intensive. So how can I deliver sophisticated designs for customers on a budget with the minimum of risk?

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Turbonomic openSUSE to CentOS Appliance Migration

You may have heard the news, the Turbonomic appliance platform has changed from openSUSE to CentOS. If you want to upgrade your appliance to version 6.0, then you must migrate to the new CentOS platform. You can stay on your openSUSE appliance, but you will hit the version ceiling of 5.9.1.

This post covers the process of migrating from the Turbonomic openSUSE appliance (version 5.9.1) to the Turbonomic CentOS appliance (version 5.9.0, upgraded to version 5.9.1). I also cover the final step of upgrading to Turbonomic 6.0 to get your hands on all of the great new features. Assuming you have a working knowledge of Linux administration, this will take approximately 60 minutes to complete.

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vSphere 6.5 – PSC or vCSA Node not listed

This post is applicable to customers using VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.

Problem:

  1. Login to vSphere Web Client.
  2. Browse to Home, System Configuration and select Nodes on the top left-hand corner of the UI.
  3. One of your PSC appliances or vCSA instances does not appear in the node list. You may see this after you have upgraded your vCSA infrastructure from 6.0 to 6.5.
  4. Or, the instance is listed with the message “The appliance management service on <object> is not running.”

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Turbonomic 6.0 is live!

Turbonomic has announced the release of version 6.0 of their Automation Platform. The most exciting part for me, is the new HTML5 UI is now fully functional and you no longer need to use the Flash-based UI (the “Classic UI” will still be present in the near future for the purpose of user transitioning). There are also some very impressive features for Public Cloud and Hybrid Cloud use-cases, particularly around cost-control of OpEx spending.

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vSphere 6.5 – vCSA Update Root Password Expiry

This post is applicable to customers using VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.

Problem:

  1. You update your vCSA 6.5 instance to 6.5 U1a.
  2. After the update is completed successfully, the root Password Expiry Policy is enabled with 365 days, when it was previously disabled.
  3. This introduces operational risk to your environment where you could be locked out of the root account after a year has elapsed.

Update: As of 19 December 2017, this issue has been corrected in 6.5.0.13000.

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vSphere 6.5 – Unable to upload files to Datastore or deploy OVAs

This post is applicable to customers using VMware vCenter Server 6.5.

Problem:

  1. vCenter Server deployed with Self-Signed Certificates.
  2. Login to vSphere Web Client.
  3. Try to upload a file to a Datastore and receive the message: “The operation failed for an undetermined reason. Typically this problem occurs due to certificates that the browser does not trust. If you are using self-signed or custom certificates, open the URL in a new browser tab and accept the certificate, then retry the operation.”
  4. Try to deploy an OVA file and the deploy OVA task hangs at 0% and must be cancelled.

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