Hi everyone and welcome to a very short post. This post is going to cover something that I was asked today. The question I have received was “Do you know the upgrade history of our VMware Cloud Director enviroment?”
Note: The following steps apply only for the appliance deployment.
To troubleshoot the upgrade, there is a file you can check to monitor the upgrade process.
/opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log
In the file you can find the following information that shows from which version you are upgrading and the destination version.
Said that, I have created a single liner
more /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/updatecli.log | grep "to version"
The result of that one liner is the complete upgrade history. Keep in mind that if you delete this file or you redeploy a cell for any reason, that information won’t be available.
I hope you enjoyed this rush post.
If your are interested in a specific topic, let me know in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to write a new post about it.
I know it’s been a while since my last post, so I’m very happy to be again on the road.
Last week I had some issues in a VMware Cloud Director enviroment that ended up opening a support request with VMware. During the case development, the support team requested me to create a log bundle, but I wasn’t even able to generate it, so that’s where this story begins. Please note that the modifications I’ve done might not be supported by VMware.
General message showing the general error messageSome Cells where showing a FAIL status. In this image just one but most of them where showing the same status
The first step to troubleshoot this situation was to identify which cells were the ones with a FAIL status. The CELLID can be obtained with the following command
more /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/etc/global.properties | grep cell.uuid
To troubleshoot the bundle generation process there are two log files located under /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs
vmware-vcd-log-collection-agent.log
This first log file shows if the cell detects the marker file that indicates the cell to start generating a lod bundle. On a regular situation it should look like the following
This means that the cell has detected a marker fileThis is the marker file located in /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/data/transfer/vmware-vcd-support/log-collector
From that side everything was looking perfect, so I went into the other file to understand what was happening.
vmware-vcd-log-publisher.log
Normal log file situation. Started and completed
Analyzing the logs I found two different errors. The first one, that a log collection process was still running. The way I managed to fix this, was to shutdown the cell services and start them again.
Abnormal situation, a log collection process was still running
The second error was just a timeout. I wondered where that timeout could be configured to extend it.
Abnoral situation. Timeout reached and marker has been removed
After I realized about that, I started digging deeper into the support bundle generation script.
I’m not going to cover the complete script because it’s not the central topic of the post. In that file I found the some variables that pointed me into the multi-cell-log collection script, so it was time to check that file also.
vmware-vcd-support script variables
I opened the file with the following command and founded that there was a timeout variable that I could modify.
vi ${VCLOUD_HOME}/bin/vmware-vcd-multi-cell-log-collector
Timeout variable without modifications
So I decided to modify that value and try again. It’s not a value that will wait until it expires, it’s just a maximum timeout. If the cell bundle generation ends earlier, the script will continue.
Modified timeout value
After modifying that timeout everything was working again so I returned to the vmware-vcd-log-publisher.log to analyze how much time was taking, just out of curiosity. It was taking between 8-9 minutes, a little more than the default.
I ended up doing a cleanup of old logs, and the process was smooth again in less than 7 minutes.
Hi! Thanks for joining me back at this new post. We will be talking about what to do if you came up with the Flash Player End of Life and you are not ready for upgrading your infrastructure. If you are ready for upgrade, I have wrote down some tips on how to check VMware products upgrade path and compatibility matrix.
Most of you might noticed that when accesing some VMware mangement consoles (eg: vCenter, Horizon View, etc) that uses Flash, an icon like the one below will be shown because of Flash EOL on January 12, 2021 https://www.adobe.com/la/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html
Internet Explorer:
Google Chrome:
What can we do to address this?
First and foremost, do not panic, it only affects your management console but not your virtual machines or services like Horizon. Everything will keep on working as it was before.
I have tested it on Internet Explorer and it worked like a charm.
Original file:
Modified file:
Gained acces again, Woho!
If you are not on a critical situation, plan you upgrade, check the product interoperability matrix and the upgrade path of each product you have on the same situation, or products related to the ones that you will need to upgrade.
The product interoperatibility matrix will tell you if a product is compatible with another one (eg: vCenter with Horizon, vCenter with NSX, etc).
The upgrade path will tell you which upgrades from version to version are supported, so you can plan if multiple upgrades are required to reach the desired state. Let’s suppose going from Horizon 6.2.9 to Horizon 8 (2012) you will need an intermediate upgrade to Horizon 7.13, and then Horizon 8 (2012)
How to use Product Interoperatibilit Matrix? It’s very easy. Just select at least two products (you can select more than one at “2. Add Platform/Solution”) and It will display if they are compatible or not.
If the products selected have a green check, good to go, plan the upgrade (check the upgrade path section too, it’s very important) and also plan a rollback just in case is needed (eg: backup, snapshots, etc). If you got into a failure open a support case with VMware https://www.vmware.com/support/file-sr.html *You must have your support up to date to have support.Contact VMware or your Partner to renew it.
If a red line is displayed, do not try that combination of versions, its incompatible and the product might work in an unexpected and unsupported way.
If a grey line is displayed, they are not supported. You will have to find a combination that might work for you and the corresponding upgrade path if the products are linked in some way. A situation like this might be upgrading vCenter from 6.5 U2 to 7.0 U1 and NSX-V from 6.3.7 to 6.4.9. You will need to upgrade first NSX-V from 6.3.7 to 6.4.6, then vCenter from 6.5 U2 to 6.7 U3 (you can not jump directly to 7.0 U1 because NSX-V would not support it based on product interoperatibility matrix), then NSX-V from 6.4.6 to 6.4.9 and again vCentr from 6.7 U3 to 7.0 U1.
If you want me to write a more detailed post on how to plan a VMware upgrade just type in the comments section below.
By the time of this post, there are 6 tracks alligned with different VMware products. Some of them are going to have certification and digital badges. There are 4 certification levels, VCTA, VCP, VCAP and VCDX. Keep in mind not all tracks include all the levels VCTA, VCP, VCAP and VCDX.
Once you’ve decided the track that you’re going to be evaluated on, you have to click on the selected track and then on the specific exam.
Once you click on the selected exam, you will be redirected to a web page where you will see the exam details like duration, number of questions, passing score and format.
Now that we know a few basics about the exams, we will step forward to the following tips.
Before the exam:
Check the exam code and download the blueprint from the exams detail webpage.
Check the blueprint sections and objectives. This is everything that you will need to cover before the exam. Start studying the objectives where you are sure that it’s a weak or unknown spot. That will give you more confidence that you will be ready because on strong spots you might need less time to study and if the exam date comes up close, you can give it your best shot.
To prepare each objective/section you will have a list of reference documents to read and learn.
Check the blueprint if there are any recommended courses because I have found some of them to be extremely useful (eg: VMware vSAN: Production Operations [V6.7])
If you do not have a lab to do some tests or preparation you can use the VMware HOL Labs https://labs.hol.vmware.com
If you do not know the answer, mark the question and keep going. At the end, you will have the oportunity to review the marked questions. Do not rush to skip it, but do not take too much time to decide, you have a limited time to do the exam.
If you are taking a VCAP Deploy exam, check on the time frequently, time is your number one enemy. Think if the task is a long one (eg: feature enablement, component deployment, etc) and keep going with the next task after having the task running. Do not lose time waiting for it to finish.
For all exams, if time has ended, the exam will be saved. I thinks that you will not lose points for the questions answered (I suppose, not sure 100%).
After the exam:
If you passed it, congratulate yourself and start preparing for the next one.
If you took a VCAP Deploy exam, relax because it might take 1 or 2 weeks to have the results because they are not shown immediately when finished. You will receive an email like the following.
If you have failed it, check the score report so you can make focus at weak spots for the next time. It’s not the end of the world, a failure is an opportunity to learn more.
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