Release vcommander Release Notes

Transcription

1 Documentation Release vcommander Release Notes

2 2 Contents System Requirements 3 What's New in This Release 10 Upgrade Notes 27 Resolved Issues 30 Known Issues 36 Help and Support 38

3 3 System Requirements This section provides information on software, hardware and port requirements as well as supported third-party integrations. Software requirements Virtualization Platforms Supported VMware vsphere 6.0, 5.5, 5.1, 5.0, 4.1, 4.0 VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 R2 Amazon Web Services Microsoft Azure Operating Systems Supported for vcommander Installation Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher Languages Supported English Recommended Databases Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Default Database PostgreSQL is included with vcommander for evaluation environments Browser Recommended Mozilla Firefox 49 Browsers Supported Mozilla Firefox 49, 48 Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, 10 Google Chrome 54, 53 Microsoft Edge (experimental) Adobe Flash Player Required Version or later Network Gigabit Ethernet Minimum Licensing For more information about licensing, please refer to the terms in your license agreement or contact your Embotics representative. System Requirements

4 4 Hardware requirements The following table provides vcommander deployment tiers based on typical use. See "Scaling vcommander Hardware Requirements" in the vcommander Installation Guide for more details. You can also contact Embotics Support to discuss requirements further, should you have any questions or unique configurations. Profile Description Base Requirements Evaluation A single-vcpu deployment used to evaluate vcommander's feature set. Will not grow significantly beyond original occupancy and is not expected to be upgraded to production. Small A single-vcpu production deployment for static environments of fewer than 500 VMs, supporting fewer than 10 concurrent users, with infrequent reporting. Medium A dual-vcpu production deployment for dynamic environments with fewer than 1500 VMs, supporting fewer than 30 concurrent users, with frequent reporting. Enterprise A dual-vcpu production deployment for dynamic environments with more than 1500 VMs, supporting more than 30 concurrent users, with frequent reporting. 1 vcpu / 2.0 GHz dual core 4.0 GB Memory 2.0 GB disk space Default Postgres database 2 vcpu / 2.0 GHz quad core 4.0 GB Memory 1.0 GB disk space (installation) 4.0 GB disk space (data partition) Dedicated application server Microsoft SQL Database 2 vcpu / 2.0 GHz quad core 6.0 GB Memory 1.0 GB disk space (installation) 10.0 GB disk space (data partition) Dedicated application server Separate Microsoft SQL Database DB data file (mdf) and log file (ldf) stored on separate disks 2 vcpu / 2.0 GHz quad core 6.0 GB Memory 1.0 GB disk space (installation) 10.0 GB disk space (data partition) JVM memory increased to 6 GB Dedicated application server Separate Microsoft SQL Database SAN backing for database files vcommander VM Access Proxy Hardware Requirements Minimum requirements: 2 CPUs Note that the higher the number of CPUs available, the more concurrent connections the VM Access Proxy can handle. 2 GB Memory 7 GB disk space The template archive size is approximately 2.5 GB. System Requirements

5 5 Required ports The following ports are used by the various vcommander components. You configure some of these ports during installation, and you can also configure ports after installation using the vcommander Control Panel. Certain ports can be configured only through a system property; for more information, contact Embotics Technical Support. Where the direction is outbound, this implies a corresponding inbound connection to the target. Table: Network Requirements - Basic Operations Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description vcommander Webserver 443 Inbound Access to vcommander admin console, Service Portal and REST API vcommander Microsoft SQL Server 1433 Outbound Access to the vcommander database. Additional ports may be required depending on the configuration of your SQL server vcenter 443 Outbound Communications with individual vcenters or their external Platform Services Controllers Amazon Web Services 443 Outbound Communications with Amazon Web Services API Microsoft Azure 443 Outbound Communications with Microsoft Azure API Windows Guest OS 135 Features Outbound Access to Windows VMs for issuing WMI commands and file copy operations Linux Guest OS Features Outbound Access to Linux VMs for issuing SSH commands Outbound Access to VMware hosts through HTTPS to collect file layout 22 Datastore Scanning 443 System Requirements

6 6 Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description Legacy Datastore Scanning 22 Outbound Access to VMware hosts through SSH to collect file layout. Only used when HTTPS access is not available Table: Network Requirements - Authentication Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description Kerberos Key Distribution Center 88 Outbound Access to authenticate against an Active Directory or LDAP server Active Directory Domain Controller for Remote LDAP Traffic 389 UDP Outbound Access to authenticate against an Active Directory or LDAP server Active Directory Domain Controller for Remote Global Catalog Traffic 3268 Outbound Access to query the global catalog of an Active Directory or LDAP server Active Directory Domain Controller for Remote Secure LDAP Traffic 686 Outbound Access to authenticate against a secure Active Directory or a secure LDAP server Active Directory Domain Controller for Remote Secure Global Catalog Traffic 3269 Outbound Access to query the global catalog of a secure Active Directory or secure LDAP server Table: Network Requirements - Optional Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description Splunk Server 8089 Outbound Communications with Splunk server for retrieval of guest OS performance metrics System Requirements

7 7 Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description BlueCat Server 80 Outbound Communications with BlueCat IP address management server for addressing assignments Table: Network Requirements - Client Connections All of these connections go from the client browser to the respective servers. Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description VM Access (Remote 3389 Desktop) Inbound Access to remote control VMs using RDP VM Access (Virtual Network Computing) 5900 Inbound Access to remote control VMs using VNC VMware Console WebMKS (HTML5) 9443 (vcenter 6.0) 7343 (vcenter 5.5) Inbound Access to remote control VMs using WebMKS Console VMware Console Plug-in 443 (vcenter) 902 (ESX) Inbound Access to remote control VMs using VMware Remote Console (VMRC) Plug-in Table: Network Requirements Advanced Configuration Connection Ports Protocol Direction Description VM Access Proxy Appliances Web Server 443 Inbound Publishing listener for WebMKS open console sessions VM Access Proxy Appliances Web Server 8443 Inbound Publishing listener for RDP, VNC, SSH and plug-in-based open console sessions Service Portal Appliances Database Connection 1433 Outbound Access to the vcommander database. Additional ports may be required depending on the configuration of your SQL server Highly Available vcommander Heartbeat 443 Bidirectional Passive node access to check health of active node System Requirements

8 8 Connection Ports VM Access (Hyper-V 2179 Console) Protocol Direction Description Outbound Access to remote control VMs using the Hyper-V console Guest OS Scanning Port Requirements Guest OS scanning of Windows VMs also requires firewall rules to handle a dynamic range of ports opened for the response when vcommander queries the VMs on port 135. To avoid opening a large range of high ports, please refer to the following Knowledge Base articles for instructions on how to configure the Windows Firewall to enable these ports: Configuring Windows for Guest OS Scans Using Group Policy Configuring Windows for Guest OS Scans System Requirements

9 9 Third-party integrations The following table provides a list of third-party software that can be integrated with vcommander, including supported versions where applicable. Table: Third-Party Integrations Integration Category Supported Systems and Protocols Integration Type Authentication Active Directory Bundled LDAP Bundled SAML2 WebSSO Bundled Windows SSO Bundled Chef 12.1, 12.0 Bundled Puppet Enterprise Bundled SCCM 2012 R2 Scripted Jenkins CI with PowerShell plugin Scripted ServiceNow or ServiceNow Express, with REST API access Scripted Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) Replication 4.5u1 (vcenter only) Scripted Docker Scripted vcommander REST API plus Windows Task Scheduler (and similar) Scripted vcenter metadata synchronization, for all vcenter versions supported by vcommander Scripted IPAM BlueCat IPAM 4.1, 4.0 Bundled Application Monitoring Splunk 6.2, 6.1 (with HTTPS protocol) Bundled Notification SNMP 2 Bundled SMTP Bundled Backup Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0 Additional download required Workflow Automation vcommander REST API client for PowerShell 4, 3 with.net Framework 4.5 or higher Additional download required Configuration Management and Application Deployment / Automation System Requirements

10 10 What's New in This Release You asked for it, and we delivered. This release of vcommander is packed with features requested by our customers. If you're upgrading, see also Upgrade Notes and Resolved Issues. In this topic Workflow automation Capacity and resource management VM Access Proxy support for newer browsers Reporting enhancements User experience enhancements REST API enhancements Workflow automation Configure relationships between custom attributes to create form choice decision trees You can now create parent-child relationships between list-type custom attributes, to prevent requesters from making invalid choices on request forms. When a user chooses a value for the parent custom attribute, the values for one or more sublist attributes are filtered to relevant values. You can configure multiple levels of dependency. For example, let's say you want requesters to specify whether they need a database server or web server, then the application and the application version. You configure a custom attribute for each, using the new Sublist attribute type. Here, we're creating a custom attribute for Application, as a sublist of Machine Role. What's New in This Release

11 11 If a requester chooses Database Server for Machine Role, the second level of custom attribute could prompt them to choose a database application (Microsoft SQL or Postgres). If they choose Microsoft SQL, the next level of custom attribute could prompt them to choose from database versions applicable to the database chosen. Here's how it looks on the new service request form: To see an end-to-end example, see "Creating Relationships Between Custom Attributes" in the vcommander User Guide. What's New in This Release

12 12 blank Configure an ordered list of Chef recipes and roles to improve Chef deployment success When you integrate Chef with vcommander, you can now configure a Chef run-list in the service catalog blueprint, so that Chef roles and recipes are applied in a set order. You can also allow users to configure a run-list on the request form. Depending on how you configure the Chef Run-List form element, users can create their own run-list from scratch, override the default run list you configure, or add to a default run-list you configure. To learn more, see "Integrating Chef with vcommander " in the vcommander User Guide. If you're upgrading, see also Changes Affecting Upgrading Users. What's New in This Release

13 13 Use logical operators to create more complex conditional workflow steps You can now create more complex workflow step conditions using the Boolean operators and, or and not. For example, you can use a Send Approval to notify admins to create an Active Directory computer account before the workflow continues, but only if the previous Execute Approval Script step completed successfully, and the requested service is a Windows VM. To do this, make the Send Approval step conditional, using the following condition: To learn more, see "Making Workflow Steps Conditional" in the vcommander User Guide. Disable DRS during provisioning to prevent interference with guest OS customization If the Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) automation level for a cluster is set to Fully Automated and VM-level DRS control is allowed, vcommander now temporarily disables DRS during post-deployment configuration for new VMs deployed into the cluster. Disabling DRS ensures that vsphere will not migrate a newly provisioned VM before customization is complete. DRS is re-enabled once the service is completed or the request is rejected. A vcommander event is generated for the cluster when DRS is disabled, and again when it's re-enabled. This feature is supported for VMware 4.0 and higher. Maintenance windows now apply to all service types Previously, only VMs could be assigned to a maintenance group, and the Schedule form control on service change request forms applied only to VM components. Now, all service types including virtual services, stacks, databases and load balancers can be assigned a maintenance window. For example, a user can request a database backup, and the approval workflow for this change request form can be configured to fulfill requests during the maintenance window. Requesters can now use the Schedule form control to schedule change requests for all service types. For example, a user who submits a request to decommission a virtual service can request that the decommissioning should occur at a specific time. What's New in This Release

14 14 The maintenance group can be set for non-vm services in the service catalog blueprint, during manual provisioning, with the Default Attributes policy, with the Set Groups workflow step, and manually with the Set Maintenance Group command. To learn more, see "Configuring Maintenance Windows" in the vcommander User Guide. Save the memory state when sharing a VM When sharing a VM, you can now save the VM's memory state. Saving the memory state is useful for debugging memory-specific problems. The VM must be running or suspended, and the vsphere version must be 5.5 or higher. There's a new option in the Share VM dialog called Save memory state: What's New in This Release

15 15 The resultant service catalog entry details indicate whether the memory state was saved: Note that sharing a VM with the memory state takes longer than without the memory state. To learn more, see "Sharing VMs with Other Users" in the vcommander User Guide. Auto Scaling Groups join the long list of AWS services that are supported by vcommander In previous releases, vcommander supported the deployment of Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Groups through CloudFormation templates. Now, you can fully manage the Auto Scaling Group lifecycle and set and enforce metadata, either manually or through service request and policy automation, allowing you to better control public cloud costs. vcommander displays Auto Scaling Groups in the Operational tree, with instances in the group as children. The full range of commands is supported: set metadata such as ownership, custom attributes, and expiry information; assign expiry group and maintenance group; submit change requests for metadata changes or decommissioning; and run command workflows. Approval and completion workflows are supported, and you can configure command workflows to target Auto Scaling Groups as well. What's New in This Release

16 16 For easier management, the Stack Resources tab allows you to navigate to Auto Scaling Groups in the stack. To learn more, see "Managing Amazon Web Services with vcommander " in the vcommander User Guide. Clean up rejected or stalled requests If a completion workflow step fails due to misconfiguration, and the service request is stalled, you can now run a command workflow when you reject the request, allowing you to clean up the deployed components. For example, if you deployed a Chef service with defects in the Chef recipe so that the Chef client cannot run on the deployed component, you can configure a decommissioning workflow and run it when you reject the failed service request. We've also added the ability to multi-select requests and reject all of them at once. What's New in This Release

17 17 To learn more, see "Approving or Rejecting Service Requests" in the vcommander User Guide. Zerto integration You can now integrate vcommander with Zerto's disaster recovery solution. Our integration with Zerto allows you to provide optional DR services when customers requests VMs. To find out more, and to download the scripts, see the knowledge base article vcommander Zerto Integration. Capacity and resource management Cluster capacity calculations take VMware HA reserved capacity into account vcommander now takes HA reserved capacity into account when calculating available capacity for a VMware cluster. As a result, the Cluster Capacity Report can more accurately indicate when cluster resource consumption reaches a critical level. We've added several cluster properties to provide information on HA reserved capacity. The Cluster Capacity report takes HA reserved capacity into account as well. If you're upgrading from a previous release, see Changes Affecting Upgrading Users for important information. To learn more, see "Managing Host and Cluster Capacity" and "Cluster Capacity Report" in the vcommander User Guide. What's New in This Release

18 18 Automatic calculation of average VM workload In previous releases, you could set global and per-cluster values for the typical VM workload the CPU, memory and storage resources for a VM. vcommander can now automatically calculate the average VM workload for a customizable sample period. Over a seven-day period, VM workloads may spike and experience non-typical values. Using a longer sample period means that these non-typical spikes have a smaller impact on the calculated average workload. The more accurate your VM workload values are, the more accurate vcommander's capacity calculations will be. When configured to auto-calculate, vcommander calculates the average VM workload for each cluster whenever the manual Update Performance and Capacity command is run on a particular cluster, as well as during the nightly capacity update. This ensures that capacity calculations are always based on the latest workload values. In new installations, vcommander automatically calculates the average VM workload by default. If you upgrade to this release and want to take advantage of this feature, you must configure automatic workload calculation. You can still override the default behavior for individual clusters and standalone hosts. To learn more, see see "Managing Host and Cluster Capacity" in the vcommander User Guide. What's New in This Release

19 19 blank Set aside additional capacity for performance and growth You can now reserve additional capacity for VM growth and performance, to be excluded from vcommander's capacity calculations. These additional reserves allow you to better project when more resources are required to ensure the health of your virtualized environment. You can set a default reserve, and you can also override the default for individual clusters and standalone hosts. Note that the additional reserve is calculated as a percentage of total capacity after HA reserves have been excluded. What's New in This Release

20 20 The Cluster Capacity report takes additional reserved capacity into account as well. To learn more, see "Managing Host and Cluster Capacity" in the vcommander User Guide. What's New in This Release

21 21 Downsizing recommendations can now persist after VM migration Downsizing recommendations now persist by default after VM migration, while upsizing recommendations are rescinded after VM migration. Since downsizing recommendations don't depend on any attributes of the host system, you can typically ignore vmotions with respect to downsizing. However, you can change the default behavior with two new options in the Rightsizing Group wizard: Upsizing recommendations persist and Downsizing recommendations persist. To learn more, see "Configuring Rules for VM Rightsizing" in the vcommander User Guide. VM Access Proxy support for newer browsers WebMKS support allows secure VM console connections using recent browsers and on Mac OSX Version 2.5 of the VM Access Proxy allows users to open a secure console connection from newer browsers (such as Internet Explorer 11, Google Chrome or Mac OSX) using WebMKS, which requires no plug-in installation. What's New in This Release

22 22 To learn more, see "Configuring the vcommander VM Access Proxy for Secure VM Connections" in the vcommander User Guide. If you're upgrading, see also Changes Affecting Upgrading Users. Reporting enhancements VM Comparative Economics Report now supports Term and Regional pricing for IBM SoftLayer When using the VM Comparative Economics report to assess the benefit of moving your infrastructure to IBM SoftLayer, you can now choose from three regions: Central US (Dallas DAL01), Europe (Amsterdam - AMS01), and Asia (Hong Kong - HKG02). What's New in This Release

23 23 For ease of use, we've created several predefined instance types so that your existing services can be mapped to SoftLayer's resource configuration. To learn more, see "VM Comparative Economics Report" and "Configuring Cost Models" in the vcommander User Guide. User experience enhancements Guest OS Disk Usage Report now provides direct links to VMs The new VM Links option for the Guest OS Disk Usage Report allows users to quickly navigate to VMs that require attention. When you include links, each VM name in the list is hyperlinked to the VM in the Service Portal (or to vcommander, if you choose that option). A user who clicks on a VM name in the report will be taken to the VM's Summary tab. If not already logged in, the user is prompted to log in. Existing permissions are respected, so that if a user does not have permission to view the VM, the VM is not displayed. VM links are added to the HTML report, as well as ed reports and exported PDF reports. What's New in This Release

24 24 To learn more, see "Guest OS Disk Usage Report" in the vcommander User Guide. Users can see which of their VMs are consuming quota on a particular storage tier Service Portal users can now double-click the green area in the Storage Tier quota graphs on the Dashboard to see what VMs are consuming quota on a particular storage tier. Double-clicking displays a table of VMs with a new Tier Usage column, showing how much storage is used on that tier by each VM in the list. The new Tier Usage properties are also available for vcommander users who want to monitor per-tier storage consumption. To learn more, see "Setting Quotas for vcommander Multi-tenancy" in the vcommander User Guide. Set the default cost period for initial Service Portal login On the Service Portal dashboard, the default period for the Costs pie chart is Daily. Now you can change the period displayed on initial login to yearly, quarterly, monthly or weekly. Note that users can still change the cost period, and their change is persisted after logout. To change the default cost period, set the advanced system property embotics.default.costperiod.portal. See "Advanced Configuration through System Properties" in the vcommander User Guide to learn how. Organization search filter now allows "contains/not contains" Previously, when using Organization Name to filter searches and reports, you could only use a drop-down list to select an organization. Now this search filter supports "contains", "doesn't contain", "equals" and "doesn't equal" operators. What's New in This Release

25 25 These operators are also available in any report with Organization Name as an advanced filter. REST API enhancements For more information on the REST API, see the vcommander REST API Getting Started Guide (included with the REST API package). You can also access the built-in reference information here: hostname or IP address>:<port>/apihelp/ You can download the REST API PowerShell client here: See also Resolved Issues and Enhancements for issues fixed in this release. Changes in REST API (PowerShell client v2.7.2) The vcommander REST API PowerShell client version is compatible with vcommander and higher. Changes in this version: All basic REST API authentication requests now log out and invalidate the session after method invocation. A new API, webservices/services/rest/v2/security/sessions/count, returns the number of webservices, Service Portal and vcommander sessions active on the system. The -orgname parameter was added to the Get-Vms API to filter results by organization. Changes in REST API (PowerShell Client v2.7.1) The vcommander REST API PowerShell client version is compatible with vcommander and higher. This version includes the ability to view and clear quota reservation. What's New in This Release

26 26 Changes in REST API Release GA RC (PowerShell Client v2.7.0) The vcommander REST API PowerShell client version is compatible with vcommander and higher. It includes support for all of the new features in vcommander Release GA, as well as the following enhancements: Ability to perform actions as a Service Portal user. Requesting VMs under the context of an organization, for example, allows an API user to take advantage of vcommander features such as quotas, as well as owner- and organization-based visibility for VMs, services, workflows and forms. A REST API user with a Service Portal role can: o retrieve services assigned to the organization o request a service o view service requests o submit a change request for a VM o manage VM snapshots o retrieve quota information for an organization and its members (including quota usage) o share a VM o execute a command workflow on a VM Note that when using the REST API PowerShell client with a Service Portal account, you must call the new command Connect-Client2, rather than Connect-Client, to log in. The ConnectClient2 method provides all of the functionality that Connect-Client does, with the additional support for connecting as a Service Portal user. We recommend using Connect-Client2 for all connections to the REST API. It's now easier to create a service catalog entry and link it to an existing completion workflow Ability to clear the managed object cache Ability to monitor the event queue depth Support for limiting the results of the Get-ServiceRequest method through a query syntax The new Offset parameter allows iteration over all VMs, VM references and organizations in the system To create a global policy, you must set the global variable on the policy object to true Workflow step output is now unlimited. Note that only the last 1024 characters of a workflow comment are visible in the vcommander user interface. What's New in This Release

27 27 Upgrade Notes Supported upgrade paths Consult the following table to see whether a direct upgrade from your currently installed version is supported: Current installed version Upgrade supported to Release GA 5.7.x Yes 5.6.x Yes 5.5.x and earlier versions No; see the Knowledge Base article What Upgrade Paths are Supported? for instructions on how to upgrade from earlier versions See "Upgrading from a previous version of vcommander" in the vcommander Installation Guide for important steps to carry out before upgrading. Changes affecting upgrading users Changes to Chef integration With the introduction of support for Chef run-lists, the Roles and Recipes fields on the Chef tab of the service catalog blueprint are converted during upgrade to a Chef run-list, with roles first, followed by recipes. Edit the run-list to make sure roles and recipes are applied in the desired order. To reduce confusion for requesters, the Override Default Values option has been removed from the Chef Roles and Chef Recipes form elements. The new Chef Run-List form element (which cannot co-exist on the form with either the Roles or Recipes element) allows requesters to override default values, so if you need your users to be able to override default values, switch to the Chef Run-List element. See "Integrating Chef with vcommander " in the vcommander User Guide to learn more. Changes to VM Access Proxy With the introduction of WebMKS support for secure vcenter VM console connections using the VM Access Proxy, we have removed the configuration of the preferred connection method from the vcommander user interface. WebMKS is the recommended method for all console connections, because it works in all recent browsers and requires no plug-in or application installations. You can use the following advanced system properties to set the preferred method for direct and secure console connections, respectively: embotics.console.prefer.webmks embotics.console.secure.prefer.webmks Set both of these properties to false if you want VMRC to be the preferred method. If you had set the preferred method to VMRC before upgrade, both of these properties are set to false after upgrade. See "Configuring the vcommander VM Access Proxy for Secure VM Connections" in the vcommander User Guide to learn more. Upgrade Notes

28 28 Changes to capacity calculations By default, after upgrading, cluster capacity calculations work as they did in previous releases. If you want to take advantage of the new ability to exclude HA reserves from capacity calculations, you must set the advanced system property embotics.capacity.cluster.hareserves.ignore to false. See "Advanced Configuration through System Properties" in the vcommander User Guide to learn how. Note that after you change this system property, the Cluster Capacity Report still relies on capacity values that have already been calculated and stored in the database. Because past values did not account for HA reserves, there will be a discontinuity between past and current calculations. Changes to Set VM Workload command for specific clusters As part of the improvements to capacity calculations in this release, the Set VM Workload command for specific clusters is no longer visible as a cluster-level command; instead, to override the default VM workload settings, use the Set Capacity Defaults command. The new Cluster Capacity dialog allows you to override the default VM workload as well as the default additional reserved capacity. The Set VM Workload command for standalone hosts, however, is still available. See "Managing Host and Cluster Capacity" in the vcommander User Guide for more information. Upgrade Notes

29 29 Changes to Guest OS Disk Usage Report The Guest OS Disk Usage report now allows you to link VMs in the report to the Service Portal or to vcommander. If you had saved a template for this report, after upgrade, when the report is generated from the template, it does not include VM links to the Service Portal. If you want to include links, you must recreate the report template. See "Guest OS Disk Usage Report" and "Running and Scheduling Reports" in the vcommander User Guide for more information. DRS now disabled during provisioning to prevent interference with guest OS customization If the Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) automation level for a cluster is set to Fully Automated and VM-level DRS control is allowed, vcommander now temporarily disables DRS during post-deployment configuration for new VMs deployed into the cluster. Disabling DRS ensures that vsphere will not migrate a newly provisioned VM before customization is complete. DRS is re-enabled once the service is completed or the request is rejected. A vcommander event is generated for the cluster when DRS is disabled, and again when it's re-enabled. This feature is supported for VMware 4.0 and higher. Upgrade Notes

30 30 Resolved Issues Issues resolved in Release GA Issue Description and Solution Guest OS workflow steps may time out if target VM is restarted If the target VM is restarted, so that the process information is no longer available, Guest OS workflow steps (such as the Run Program workflow step) no longer time out Switching organizations in Service Portal and closing browser without logging out may prevent session timeout Previously, when a Service Portal user switched to a different organization and then closed the browser without logging out, the session could fail to time out, eventually preventing user login. Sessions now time out properly in this situation Disk added through change request may not be placed on proper deployment destination When a user requests a new disk through a VM change request, automatic fulfillment now ensures that it is placed on the deployment destination assigned to the user's organization. Issues resolved in previous 5.7.x releases Issue Description and Solution Policy system may deadlock during policy simulation on very busy system The policy system no longer deadlocks during policy simulation on very busy systems Character limit for text-type custom attribute in vcommander UI does not permit upload of response files The vcommander UI now allows text-type custom attributes values of up to 100,000 characters in size Deploying shared VMs may fail if source VM is on a local datastore Linked clone deployments on local datastores are now placed as expected Possible Service Portal performance issues for users belonging to many organizations Service Portal performance issues for users who belong to a large number of organizations have been addressed Changing session timeouts and limits requires a server restart Changing the value for the following advanced system properties no longer requires restarting the vcommander service: embotics.session.orphantimeout embotics.session.portalcount embotics.session.vlmguicount embotics.session.wsm Resolved Issues

31 31 Issue Description and Solution REST API: Basic authentication should not return 401 when maximum sessions are reached When accessing the REST API using basic authentication, the REST API no longer returns a 401 error when the maximum number of sessions is reached, and no longer prompts for credentials in this situation REST API: Not possible to log out of session when using basic authentication All basic REST API authentication requests now log out and invalidate the session after method invocation REST API: Not possible to get a list of VMs by organization The -orgname parameter was added to the Get-Vms API to filter results by organization Existing aggressive downsizing recommendations do not reflect new VM performance information When downsizing is configured to be aggressive, values in existing recommendations are now updated when VM performance information changes Portgroup appears in multiple vcenter managed systems vcommander now displays a portgroup in the proper vcenter if the portgroup's remote ID matches that of a portgroup in another vcenter Adding or editing a deployment destination may cause server error if session has expired An expired session no longer causes a server error when adding or editing a deployment destination REST API: Unable to set list-type custom attribute value on VM It's now possible to set a list-type custom attribute value on a VM using the REST API Unable to store large pieces of data as custom attribute values Text-type custom attributes now accept values of up to 4096 characters, allowing you to use them to store values such as public-key-encrypted passwords REST API: Using -query parameter with Get-ServiceRequests results in error Get-ServiceRequests with the -query parameter now works as expected. Note that this fix does not require an upgrade of the REST PowerShell client REST API: Session timeout is too short A new advanced system property, embotics.session.wsm.timeout, controls the REST API session timeout. The default value is 15 minutes. To learn how to set system properties, see "Advanced Configuration through System Properties" in the vcommander User Guide Ownership change by Service Portal user removes organizational assignment When a Service Portal user assigns ownership of a VM, the organizational assignment of the VM is preserved Run Program workflow step may fail when vcenter performance issues cause communication errors with VMware Tools The Run Program workflow step now waits for communication to be restored with VMware Tools, rather than failing the workflow step. Resolved Issues

32 32 Issue Description and Solution REST API: Expiry not set for new VM when Expiry Date element appears on Service form When the Expiry Date element appears on the Service form, the VM is now deployed with the expected expiry information Submitted By column in Service Requests list blank after upgrade After upgrade, the Submitted By column now properly contains the ID of the user who requested the service Update VM Performance scheduled task cannot be canceled It's now possible to cancel the Update VM Performance task while it's running Managed system appeared to be disconnected after scheduled global datastore scan task was interrupted Previously, if the global scheduled datastore scan task was interrupted due to a network error, after the managed system reconnected, it appeared to be disconnected. vcommander now waits for the managed system to reconnect and then restarts the datastore scan task Automatic deployment of Azure service into existing cloud service under a network uses incorrect subnet When the deployment destination targets an existing cloud service under a network, vcommander now uses the subnet configured in the deployment destination Selection of old request in large Service Requests list may impact performance Previously, when a user had selected an older service request in a large list of service requests, and a new event caused the Service Requests list to refresh, vcommander performance could be negatively affected. This issue has been fixed Service request notification s not sent Service request notification s are now sent as configured under Configuration > Service Request Configuration > Notification Cluster Capacity issues with large number of hosts Cluster Capacity report graph inaccuracies, as well as issue in which hosts were incorrectly excluded from capacity calculations, have been resolved for systems with a large number of hosts Cannot establish secure console connection to vcenter VM using VM Access Proxy version 2.2 or 2.3 It's now possible to establish a secure console connection using vcommander Release GA with the VM Access Proxy version 2.2 or REST API: Unable to submit service request as Active Directory Service Portal user when form includes Primary Owner element It's now possible to submit a service request through the REST API as a Service Portal user with Active Directory membership when the Primary Owner element is included on the request form VMs created during a managed system quiet reconnection may not be visible in vcommander If a VM is created while vcommander is recovering from a momentary interruption in its connection to the managed system, the VM will appear in vcommander as expected. Resolved Issues

33 33 Issue Description and Solution Reserved quota not cleared for rejected service request vcommander now cleans up any reserved quota that's linked to completed requests. In addition, it's now possible to view and clear quota reservations with the vcommander REST API For VM with a number of CPUs that isn't a power of 2, unable to request clone or add to catalog It's now possible to request a clone of a VM with a number of CPUs that isn't a power of 2 (for example, 3, 5, or 6); it's also possible to configure a component in the service catalog blueprint with a number of CPUs that isn't a power of Policy update or deletion may fail in very busy system, preventing other transactions from proceeding In a busy system, updating or deleting a policy no longer blocks other transactions Managing workflows from Workflow Status page may cause vcommander to exit Navigating to the next page in the list of workflows on the Workflow Status page, and skipping a workflow from the Workflow Status page, now behaves as expected VM Access Proxy: WebMKS sessions may disconnect, particularly over higher-latency links When accessing VMs through the VM Access Proxy using WebMKS, connections are no longer dropped when connecting over higher-latency links REST API: Policy creation can delete all other policies of the same type If a REST API call to create a policy fails to find a target folder due to a typographical error, the policy is no longer created as a global policy. Creating a global policy with the WSPolicy object now requires specifying a global member. In addition, attempting to create a policy that deletes other policies now results in an error No warning when creating global Default Ownership policy that will result in deletion of all child policies When you create a Default Ownership policy that will result in the deletion of other policies, a warning now appears on the Summary page of the policy wizard Parts of Operational view and Service Portal tree may be grayed out after successful reconnection of managed system After a managed system reconnects, the Operational view and the Service Portal tree are displayed properly without synchronizing the managed system inventory or restarting the vcommander service Unable to create new custom attribute using hyperlink in Multi-Select form element It's now possible to create a new custom attribute using the Create New Attribute hyperlink in the Multi-Select form element Unable to clone SCVMM Generation 2 VMs vcommander now supports deploying SCVMM Generation 2 templates and cloning Generation 2 VMs REST API: Error when calling 'get-roles' method when Service Portal role has Schedule Maintenance Tasks permission It's now possible to retrieve a list of roles when the account used to log in to the REST API is a Service Portal role with the Schedule Maintenance Tasks permission. Resolved Issues

34 34 Issue Description and Solution Unable to change destination on copied service request When a service request is copied and the Destination form element is on the request form, it's now possible to change the target destination Service Portal user unable to approve or reject service request from Service Requests page A Service Portal user with permission to approve service requests can now approve or reject a request from the Service Requests page as expected Managed system may disconnect with Violation of Primary Key Constraint error when deploying from template with multiple ancestors vcommander no longer disconnects from the managed system with this error when deploying from a template with multiple ancestors Events generated for swap datastore status change from vsphere 6.0 In some cases, vcenter will generate spurious change events for a VM's datastores, leading to a large number of events in vcommander. If these events are unimportant, you can hide them by setting the new advanced system property embotics.vmdatastores.disable.change.event to true. To learn how, see "Advanced Configuration through System Properties" in the vcommander User Guide Unable to edit workflow step because working vcommander variable will not validate The documented variable #{request.service.components['<component_name>'].id} and the undocumented variable #{request.service.components['<component_name>'].deployedcomponent.target.id} are now accepted as valid workflow variables Spurious managed system disconnections from vcenter If vcommander is able to reconnect to vcenter immediately after a disconnection occurs, it will do so without making the disconnection visible in the UI. Tasks running on the vcenter will not be interrupted White space in MAC address disconnects managed system VMs with NICs that have MAC addresses containing white space no longer cause managed system disconnection Service catalog UI unresponsive when template has disk whose size is not a whole number When creating a service catalog entry for a template with a disk whose size is not a whole number, validation is successful Media library fails to reconnect when managed system reconnects If a managed system becomes disconnected and reconnects on its own, the media library also reconnects Multiple networks with same name but different cases causes automated deployment failure vcommander now performs case-sensitive recognition of network names Managed system disconnects when two vlan IDs share same name with different cases Two vlan IDs sharing the same name, but with different cases, no longer results in managed system disconnection. Resolved Issues

35 35 Issue Description and Solution IP address not assigned from pool if NIC references portgroupkey that doesn't match any network If a NIC references a portgroupkey that doesn't match any network, an IP address can still be assigned to a VM as expected Nightly performance and capacity update may fail with large number of hosts The update of performance and capacity metrics is now batched to avoid overloading the system Keystore password on VM Access Proxy cannot be changed The keystore password for the VM Access Proxy can now be changed. See "Configuring the vcommander VM Access Proxy for Secure VM Connections" in the vcommander User Guide to learn how Service Portal Message of the Day input box allows improper resizing in Chrome and Firefox The input box for entering a Service Portal Message of the Day is no longer resizable REST API: New-ServiceRequest doesn't handle disks added to blueprint The New-ServiceRequest method now handles services where disks were added to the blueprint Datastore moved to a cluster may not inherit correct storage tier until inventory is synchronized When a datastore is moved into a cluster, or moved to a different cluster, it now immediately inherits the storage tier set for the cluster All media folders appear as disconnected after upgrade After an upgrade of vcommander, media folders are now automatically reconnected as expected. Media folders are now verified nightly and when they are re-saved #{target.parent.name} variable returns the source template folder, not the folder of the deployed VM The variable #{target.parent.name} now returns the folder of the deployed VM, not the folder of the source template Workflow step fails if timeout occurs When a Guest OS workflow script step encounters an error and is configured to proceed to the next step on failure, vcommander now proceeds to the next step as expected Workflow step fails if timeout occurs When a Guest OS workflow script step times out and is configured to proceed to the next step on failure, vcommander now proceeds to the next step as expected Unable to delete out-of inventory VM Attempting to delete an out-of-inventory VM no longer fails with the error "VM has already been deleted, or is in the process of deletion". Resolved Issues

36 36 Known Issues Issue Description and Solution Error when generating metadata for SAML SSO with non-default keystore password If you have set a non-default keystore password, attempting to generate vcommander metadata during SAML 2.0 SSO configuration will fail. Change the keystore password back to the default, and generate metadata again Performance metrics may not be available immediately after upgrade to vsphere 6 Attempting to run the Update Performance and Capacity command for a cluster immediately after upgrading to vsphere 6 may fail, because performance metrics are not yet available to vcommander. Wait about an hour for vsphere to make performance metrics available, and run the command again Mouse pointer may not be visible when opening VM console using IE 11 or 10 When the WebMKS console connection method is configured, Internet Explorer 11 or 10 users may be unable to see the mouse pointer in the console session. To open a console to a Windows VM from Internet Explorer 11 or 10 when using WebMKS, try enabling mouse trails with the shortest option. Or, use the VMRC plug-in method instead of the WebMKS method. For Linux VMs, use the VMRC plug-in connection method. Note that if your users install the VMRC plug-in from a version 5.5 update 2 vcenter, they will be able to open a console for a VM in any version 5.x vcenter. See "Prerequisites for Opening a Console Session on vcenter" in the vcommander User Guide to learn how to change the console connection method for HTML5 browsers Multiple connections in same browser not supported vcommander and the Service Portal do not support multiple connections in the same browser. For example, you can connect to vcommander in both Firefox and Chrome at the same time, but you cannot connect to vcommander in two instances of Firefox at the same time. Use a different browser to open another session Caps Lock key may cause duplicate characters in a secure RDP session In a secure RDP session, if Caps Lock is enabled, duplicate characters may be printed for the characters c, x, and v. Use the Shift key instead of enabling Caps Lock VM console connection does not time out if connection cannot be established If a console connection to a VM cannot be established, a "Connecting" message is displayed indefinitely Evaluation Exception when running a Compare Drift command on a VM after upgrading vcommander When running the Compare Drift command, an Evaluation Exception error occurs. This issue disappears once the scheduled Database Maintenance task runs. This task is scheduled for Saturday night at 2 a.m. following the upgrade. If you want to run this scheduled task earlier, go to Tools > Scheduled Tasks, select the Database Maintenance task, and click Run Now. Known Issues