A Few Gotchas With vSphere 4.1! Updated

Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

Since everyone else in the world is heralding the release of vSphere 4.1, I figured I would post some bad news. The stuff you may want to know BEFORE you jump into upgrading to vSphere 4.1. Before I start, I want to make it clear that vSphere 4.1 is a great product overall. And I have already been leaning to ESXi, so the announcement that this will be the last release with the “traditional” ESX has been expected. I will talk about ESXi and its improvements in a later post. I just want you to be aware of these rather significant Gotchas.

Gotcha #1 – Read Only Role allows members to add VMKernel NICs

From the release notes (You actually READ these, right?):

• Newly added users with read-only role can add VMkernel NICs to ESX/ESXi hosts
  Newly added users with a read-only role cannot make changes to the ESX/ESXi host setup with the exception of adding VMkernel NICs, which is currently possible.Workaround: None. Do not rely on this behavior because read-only users will not be able to add VMkernel NICs in the future.

This is a fairly big security issue. I just LOVE the workaround notes. To be fair, I have found only one installation in my experience that uses the Read-Only Role. In my opinion, if they don’t have access to the physical data center, they don’t need any access to vCenter. But this is just something that should have been corrected before release.

Gotcha #2 – ESX/ESXi installations on HP systems require the HP NMI driver

• ESX installations on HP systems require the HP NMI driver
  ESX 4.1 instances on HP systems require the HP NMI driver to ensure proper handling of non-maskable interrupts (NMIs). The NMI driver ensures that NMIs are properly detected and logged. Without this driver, NMIs, which signal hardware faults, are ignored on HP systems with ESX.CAUTION: Failure to install this driver might result in silent data corruption.

  Workaround: Download and install the NMI driver. The driver is available as an offline bundle from the HP Web site. Also, see KB 1021609.

It seems that every time HP releases a new set of SIM agents for ESX, something breaks. Is this VMware’s way of putting it on HP? Or was this an “OOPS”? If you search for “HP VMware NMI Driver” you come up with nothing. No download. It was no where to be found on Monday, but I did find it today on the HP support site.

Gotcha #3 – VMware View Composer 2.0.x is not supported in a vSphere vCenter Server 4.1 managed environment

The basic issue here is that vCenter 4.1 only works on a 64-bit system. View Composer only works on a 32-bit system. From the KB Article:

Don’t these guys talk to each other? Didn’t they learn their lesson with the PCoIP issues? And why can’t you just admit it in the release notes instead of putting a link to the KB article? I completely missed this Monday morning.

Gotcha #4 – vCenter Installer SILENTLY Changes SQL Server Settings to Allow Named Pipes

• vCenter Server installation or upgrade silently changes Microsoft SQL Server settings to enable named pipes
  When you install vCenter Server 4.1 or upgrade vCenter Server 4.0.x to vCenter Server 4.1 on a host that uses Microsoft SQL Server with a setting of “Using TCP/IP only,” the installer changes that setting to “Using TCP/IP and named pipes” and does not present a notification of the change.Workaround: The change in setting to “Using TCP/IP and named pipes” does not interfere with the correct operation of vCenter Server. However, you can use the following steps to restore the setting to the default of “Using TCP/IP only.”

1. Select Start > Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2005 > Configuration Tools > SQL Server Surface Area Configuration.
2. Select Surface Area Configuration for Services and Connections.
3. Under the SQL Server instance you are using for vCenter Server, select Remote Connections.
4. Change the option under Local and Remote Connections and click Apply.

Can you hear the DBAs pissing and moaning?

Gotcha #4a – SQL Database is changed to Bulk Recovery Model (updated 10/27)

This on is funny. I just found out about it on 10/27/2010. When is comes to SQL for the vCenter database, VMware recommends using a simple recovery model. So, with their attention to detail, the upgrade process changes the database to a bulk recovery model. Inn this model, the logs keep growing until a backup purges it. No good.

Transaction log for vCenter Server database grows large after upgrading to vCenter Server 4.1 – http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1026430

Conclusion

Again vSphere 4.1 brings some great improvements and some welcome changes. As the product matures and more vendors work with the APIs, we will see some nice features that will help you in your journey to the private cloud. The Gotchas listed above may not exist if quality assurance is tightened. I think I would rather hear that a release is delayed because of pending bug fixes. How long will we need to wait to fix these? In any case, if the Read-Only Role or the View Composer gotchas don’t apply, then jump right in and install or upgrade to vSphere 4.1. Just make sure you install the NMI drivers and fix the SQL settings.

Update 2010-07-16

I got a tweet from William Lam last night. It looks like versions are hard-coded in Capacity-IQ making it incompatible with vSphere 4.1. Will also explains two ways to make it work.