For those of you that have been wondering about the capabilities of the vCenter Orchestrator (vCO), that one component that gets installed under the hood with vCenter Server 4.o. Well now you don’t have to wonder about it anymore really…the vCenter Orchestrator Team is now sharing their knowledge, skills, and resources on the web. I was fortunate enough to collaborate with Burke Azbill on an engagement for vCenter Orchestrator, and VMware Lifecycle Manager recently, when he told me about the site. just to give you everyone a bit of info o the person I’m referring to here, Burke Azbill is a VMware Senior Consultant, and one of the experts of vCenter Orchestrator, and VMware Lifecycle Manager, and also the master mind behind the vCO Team Site. Some of the ways on which VMware is going to be using the vCenter Orchestrator, I can’t really talk about yet, but vCO it’s definitely going to be another one of really awesome plugable applications that will integrate deeply into the rest of the vSphere, and future platforms. I’ll say this… the vCenter Orchestrator is not just limited to the virtual infrastructure, or just VMware related products. There are just so many things that this application can be used for, and it’s pretty cool. Check out the site and contribute if you can, ask questions, make request. I know there are a lot of people out there wondering how to configure that service they see in Windows Services after the vCenter server is installed. You can watch videos of configuration, and installations and much more there. Everyone will be amazed by what this product will bring to the internal and external cloud in the very near future. vCenter Orchestrator is one of my favorite products so check it!
Recently I’ve been getting questions about upgrading the operating system on the server where vCenter server is installed. For the most part, I’ve gathered information from a group of folks who are somewhat confused and misled on this procedure. So far I’ve heard all types of misinformation on what’s needed and what steps are required. I want to particularly address one of those false statements, that you must create a new vCenter database when upgrading to a new version of windows. I want to make it perfectly clear that you do not have to create a new database.
Now let me help out a bit by clearing things up and providing some substance. Upgrading the Windows operating system where vCenter server is installed from an older version of Windows OS (Windows Server 2003) to a newer version (Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2), doesn’t require a new vCenter Server database. regardless of what the reason may be for the upgrade (whether it’s based on going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture of the OS or for an increase of management capacity for vCenter). The assumption is not accurate that in order to perform this type of upgrade a new database is required, or even going as far as to thinking that it may even be a best approach is incorrect as well.
The creation of a new vCenter database may be acceptable for environments that intend on getting a fresh start, but definitely not something larger environments consider when planning an upgrade of any sort. A new vCenter Server database is a new virtual infrastructure inventory. That means reconfiguration of the logical architecture, adding, and reconfiguring all of the settings of the virtual infrastructure like:
- Host
- Clusters
- Resource Pool
- Alarms
- Access Permissions
- and more
Upgrading the operating system on which vCenter server is installed is something that can be done without the need of creating a new database, and it can also be done in a couple of different ways. In order to upgrade the Windows operating system you should follow Microsoft’s recommendations, but when doing an in-place upgrade all services related to vCenter should be stopped before proceeding.
vCenter Server Services
Another approach to this upgrade would be to simply install vCenter Server in a newly provision system with the current and desired version of Windows. Now in order to do this effectively perform the following steps before installing vCenter Server:
- Stop vCenter related services in the Windows Services snap-in (services.msc) of the running server
- Create a new System DSN pointing the new server to the database location
- Import the SSL keys from the running server
SSL Keys Location
- Install vCenter Server on the newly provisioned system and DO NOT reinitialized the database
- Copy the SSL certificates to it’s default location on the new system
The vCenter Server SSL directory under Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is located under a hidden directory called ProgramData located in the root drive.
vCenter Server SSL directory under Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2
I hope this helps those of you looking into performing OS upgrades where the vCenter Server is involved. Let me know if there are any questions or issues. Windows Server 2008 R2 is not currently supported by VMware for vCenter 4.0, but Windows Server 2008 is officially supported. : )
Here is a topic that many VMware customers often ask about, “How do you I delete old data from the vCenter Server database”. It’s no secret the vCenter database grows on a day to day basis and overtime some of the stored information becomes outdated. That doesn’t mean the old information is useless, as it may need to be available for auditing purposes. The vCenter database is capable of reaching some significantly large sizes, depending on the size of the managed environments. That can have an impact on the performance of the vCenter Server. When the data stored in the database is no longer relevant to the state of the environment, removing the old data can do some good. The procedure on how to properly remove data from the vCenter database was published by VMware in a KB article that is publicly accessible on the company’s site. The procedure is not something that any administrator could perform or should normally perform as not every virtualization administrator poses DBA skills. The KB article is intended for experience DBA’s, as it deals with working with a third party relational database management system and not a VMware oriented product. The awesome fact here is that VMware has put together a video of the procedure, which makes the procedure very easy to follow and execute by pretty much anyone with the the right access to the systems involved in the procedure, including virtualization administrators without DBA skills. The video is an excellent addition to the step by step KB article.
Watch the video listed below, and if you find it useful, subscribe to VMware KBTV channel on You Tube for many more KB based video. Enjoy!
Purging Old Data from vCenter Server Database Procedure
