Category: vCenter Server

Cloud Management, vCenter Server, VCF Operations

Re-registering & Upgrading the Aria Operations vSphere Remote plugin

sargonkhizeran

vSphere plugins have always been a touchy subject with engineers, as many plugins in the past might’ve impacted the performance of the vSphere UI. Local plugins are deprecated in vSphere 8.x and future releases at this time. You can read more about that in the VMware By Broadcom article; vSphere Client Local plugins are deprecated.

Recently it caught my eye that vSphere was not capturing the correct version of Aria Operations, the functionality of the plugin still works. I’ve upgraded my version of Aria Operations to 8.18.1, however the plugin shows an older version

From the vSphere Client >> Go to the stack menu >> VMware Aria Operations, from the drop-down menu in that interface for the instance, you should see a version number. In our case, we’re at 8.16.0.0

I’ve found no clear way of upgrading the client, when you go back to vSphere Client >> stack menu >> Administration >> Solutions — Plugins, you should see the ‘VMware Aria Operations’

We have options where we can click on the plug-in, select to Remove it and then re-deploy it using Aria Operations console.

An additional option is simply re-registering the plugin using Aria Operations. From Aria Operations Console go to Administration >> Integrations >> click on one of the vCenters

Scroll to the bottom of the vCenter integration settings and click ‘Manage Registrations’

You can select the box to use ‘Use collection credentials’ and click Register

You should receive the following message

vCenter will display the following banner

When you go back into Aria Operations within vSphere, you should see the new version

Home Lab, vCenter Server, vSphere

Upgrading to vSphere 8.0 U2c using Lifecycle Manager Cluster Image

sargonkhizeran

Suppose you’re running VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or any vSphere configuration today outside of VMware’s flagship VMware Cloud Foundation, there are still options to help ease the pain of lifecycle management of your ESXi hosts.

You can learn more about Lifecycle Manager and what I cover in this blog by checking out Creating and Managing vSphere Lifecycle Manager Clusters

To give background on my home lab, the following is a 3-node vSAN cluster running Center 8.0.2 Build 23929136 (8.0U2c). I also have Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager and NSX 4.1.x integrated with vCenter. This cluster has already been converted to Image-Based, I’m simply performing the upgrade.

Click ‘Edit’ and you will find if there are any available ESXi versions you can go to.

I selected 8.0 U2c 23825572 and clicked ‘Save’. Wait for Cluster task to complete. Once completed your Image should no longer be complaint and details will be provided.

Before kicking off Remediation, click on the option menu next to ‘Check Compliance’ and select ‘Edit Remediation Settings’

We still have options such as Remediate All or Stage All, today I will perform ‘Remediate All’

Review the Impact Report and if there are any other settings you want to modify

From the ‘Update’ section of the Cluster object, you can review the status, so far esxi03 is in Maintenance Mode and rebooting.

Be sure to check for any VM / Host Affinity rules on the cluster.

The remediation completed, all hosts are back online and the Image is compliant with the new version.

As a bonus…my hosts contain TPM 2.0 chips and there were no issues with host attestation with vCenter.

Home Lab, QuickTip, vCenter Server

[Video] – VMware VMSA-2023-0023 – vCenter Server Patching 7.O U3o

sargonkhizeran

For the everyday VI admin that is tasked or will be asked to ensure vCenter is patched when a VMware Security Advisory is released, I hope that you find the following video as a helpful guide to go through a vCenter patch process. Please coordinate with your in-house security teams, and proper maintenance windows, ensure snapshots are taken, try to achieve as much prep work as possible to make your change go smoother.

For multiple vCenters that are in Enhanced LinkedMode, ensure you take cold snapshots (VCSA Powered Off) of every vCenter. Also, in the event you have to revert back one of the vCenters, you must revert all of them at the same time.

Also, be aware if you are running any solutions that are provided by vendors that provide lifecycle automation that you coordinate with your support and account teams before going to the next version or patch.

VMware VMSA-2023-0023 Security Advisory – VMSA-2023-0023 (vmware.com)

vCenter 8.0 U2 – Download VMware vSphere – VMware Customer Connect

vCenter 7.0 U3o – Download VMware vSphere – VMware Customer Connect

vCenter 6.7 U3T – Download VMware vSphere – VMware Customer Connect

vCenter 6.5 U3v – Download VMware vSphere – VMware Customer Connect

Home Lab, vCenter Server, vSphere

Quick Tip – vCenter Server (MOTD) Message of the Day – Communication is Key!

sargonkhizeran

You’ve probably all heard it before; “communication is key”. This is one of those posts and quick tips, by leveraging the many tools IT organizations have to communicate change plans for any kind of planned or unplanned maintenance, your systems (not just vCenter) have internal users that rely on this. We have messages that are communicated via email, intranets, social media or even ITSM tools.

vCenter will display banner messages by default whenever there is an expiring license or account that is nearing expiration. You do have an option to create a customer MOTD.

From the inventory view with your vCenter selected >> Configure >> Message of the Day>> Click ‘Edit’ on the far right.

Populate the message you want to communicate

Click OK and you will find it now listed in the MOTD section

If you log out of vCenter and log back in, the following banner will appear.

There are no time settings when to expire, so it will require manually going in and clearing the message and saving.

Your internal customers should be thankful for being able to communicate changes.

vCenter Server, vSphere

VMware vCenter 8 Upgrade Step-by-Step – Part 1 – vCenter Upgrade

sargonkhizeran

First step will be to take a snapshot of the vCenter, if you are running Enhanced Linked Mode, ensure you power all vCenters off and take cold-snapshots from the Host UI.

Because the upgrade deploys a new vCenter appliance, we will be renaming our existing VM object from ‘vCenter’ to ‘vCenter_old’

Accessing good old fashioned ui-installer wizard, will be selecting ‘Upgrade’

This will be a various of steps, for Step 1. It will be ‘Deploy a vCenter’, this step is to begin the deployment of a new VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance)

After accepting EULA, the next step will be to ‘Connector to Source Appliance’ this would be the hostname of the VM (not the VM object name in vCenter)

I will then put in the landing vCenter I want to deploy the new appliance too.

For Step 5 you will select a Folder location for the VM, followed by Step 6 which is select a Compute Resource.

Step 7 will ask for the name of the new VM appliance and desired root password

For Step 8 you will select the deployment size of the new appliance. These in every environment will vary and always plan for anticipated future growth.

The next step will be to deploy a datastore, I will personally be deploying and will select a storage location, I will select storage and will enable ‘Thin Provisioning”

The next step to select the portgroup assigned to the desired network and a temporary IP address for the VCSA because at the end of the upgrade, all the network settings remain the same for the new appliance.

This is the final configuration for this part of the upgrade, it will be followed by confirmation and then waiting for installation to complete.

Once the installation is completed, you should receive the following confirmation, from here you can prompt, notice that you do have a temporary VAMI interface to the new vCenter in the event you have to do any troubleshooting. The installer should continue.

The beginning of the wizard should only prompt one option and that is the 2nd step. Click Continue.

These are the warnings that appeared in my environment, these should allow me to proceed

The next step is to select what information do you want copied over, I personally want to choose both, my environment is smaller. Click Next.

For the final steps, it will be the option to join CEIP followed by confirming you performed backup and then kicking off process.

During the process you will lose connectivity to your vCenter, you can always look for one of the hosts the vCenter is residing in and monitor from console.

And just like that…we upgraded to 8 successfully.

For future blogs I will try and dive into vSphere 8 features more in depth.