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VUM UMDS Docker Container for vSphere 6.5

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Early last week, I had published an article on how to automate the deployment of VUM's Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) in vSphere 6.5 for an Ubuntu 14.04 distribution. The interesting backstory to that script is that it started from a Docker Container that I had initially built for the VUM UMDS. I found that being able to quickly spin up UMDS instance using a Docker Container purely from a testing standpoint was much easier than needing to deploy a full VM, especially as I have Docker running on my desktop machines. Obviously, there are limitations with using a Docker Container, especially if you plan to use UMDS for a longer duration and need persistence. However, for quick lab purposes, it may just fit the bill and even with Docker Containers, you can use Docker Volumes to help persist the downloaded content.

You can find the Dockerfile and its respective scripts on my Github repo here: https://github.com/lamw/vum-umds-docker

Below are the instructions on how to use the VUM UMDS Docker Container.

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vCommunity "shorts" on their experiences w/the VCSA Migration

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The feedback from our customers on both the initial release of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Migration Tool (vSphere 6.0 Update 2m) as well as the updated version included in the release of vSphere 6.5 has just been absolutely fantastic! The feedback has not only been positive in terms of customers experience with using the Migration Tool to go from a Windows-based vCenter Server to the VCSA, but also with their experience with the VCSA itself which has come a long from when it was first released back with vSphere 5.0.

As with any customer feedback (good as well as the bad), I share this feedback directly with the Engineering/Product teams so that they know which areas customers have found useful and which areas we can still improve upon. One source of customer feedback which I see quite a bit of discussions on regarding the VCSA Migration Tool is on Twitter and being an active user myself, it is also makes it quite easy to collect and share this feedback internally. I even created the #migrate2vcsa hashtags a few years back to make it easy for customers to provide feedback for all things related to the VCSA Migration.

Most recently, I was looking for a better way to share as well as aggregate some of the feedback from Twitter regarding the VCSA Migration Tool. Instead of manually tracking individual tweet links via an email or document, I wanted to anyone to be able to get a quick glance at the overall feedback. I started to look around and came across an interesting SaaS solution called Storify which allows you to tell "stories" by using content from various Social Media sources such as blog posts, Youtube or Twitter for example.

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Automating the installation of VUM Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) for Linux in vSphere 6.5

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One of the most highly requested feature from customers with regards to the adoption of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is to have vSphere Update Manager (VUM) available as a Virtual Appliance. With the vSphere 6.5 release, this is now a reality as VUM is now embedded within the VCSA. The VUM service is also automatically enabled and associated with the vCenter Server instance which means from a customer standpoint, it is zero touch to get VUM up and running!

In addition to VUM being part of the VCSA 6.5, there is also the VUM Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) that can be installed on a separate Linux system. You can find the UMDS installer within the VCSA 6.5 ISO under the umds directory. To install UMDS, there are several pre-requisites that you must meet, some of which are documented here. The other requirements which are not documented are the additional OS package dependencies required to run the UMDS installer. While going through this by hand the first time, I found the following packages were required to install on an Ubuntu 14.04 distribution:

  • perl
  • tar
  • sed
  • psmisc
  • unixodbc
  • postgresql
  • postgresql-contrib
  • odbc-postgresql

For those of you who know me, if I have to perform something manually once, I might as well automate it for the future 🙂 I decided to create this quick shell script called install_umds65.sh which will allow you to easily deploy UMDS on an Ubuntu LTS 14.04 distribution. This can be useful for automated deployments or quickly standing up a lab environment.

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