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How to Update vSphere Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) After Changing vCenter Server IP Address

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If vSphere Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) is deployed in your environment and you change the IP Address of the vCenter Server, VIN will no longer function even after a reboot. The reason for this is that when VIN first registers with the vCenter Server, information is generated and stored within VIN such as the IP Address as well as security thumbprint. Since the IP Address of the vCenter Server has changed, we simply just need to re-register VIN with the vCenter Extension vService.

In my lab I have VIN deployed and connected to a vCenter Server (note the IP Address 172.30.0.229):

I then update the vCenter Server's IP Address to 172.30.0.230 which will break communication with VIN. To resolve this, start off by shutting down the VIN appliance. Once it is shutdown, edit the settings and click on "Manage->vServices" and at the bottom click on the Edit button. Next change the Provider drop down to "No Provider" and then click OK.

Now we will reset the Provider back to the vCenter Extension vService by going through the same workflow again but now selecting "vCenter Extension vService" as the provider.

You will also notice at the bottom there is a validation message and you should also see the new IP Address of your vCenter Server. Once you are done, click OK to save the settings and then power back on your VIN appliance. Once VIN is up, connect to the vSphere Web Client and you should be able to see your VIN data again!

Automate vCenter Orchestrator Configuration Backups

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Last year I wrote an article on how to quickly configure a new vCenter Orchestrator 5.1 appliance which automatically goes through the necessary steps of configuring your vCO appliance and enabling the vCenter Server plugin and associating it with your vCenter Server. These steps are usually performed manually, but when you are looking at deploying multiple vCO instances or even quickly spinning up vCO appliance for testing, this will definitely help speed up your deployment.
Something that I did not consider after completing the vCO setup was backups. Fortunately, this was something that was shared with me recently from a customer who had this exact workflow on backing up their vCO configuration after their initial deployment. This may not be a very well known feature, but vCO provides a very simple mechanism to export your vCO configurations and allows you to restore the configuration in case of a miss-configuration or even deploying a similar configuration to another vCO instance.
Using the same HTTP request trick, to export the vCO configuration you would need to make a request to the following URL:

https://${VCO_IP_ADDRESS}:8283/config_general/ExportConfig_export.action

Similar to the vCO UI, the backup will be stored on the vCO appliance itself and the path will be provided back to you in the message response. To help demonstrate this, I created a simple shell script called backupVCO51.sh which is similar to the setup script in my previous blog article. You can easily take the few lines of code and integrate that with the setup script.

Here is a screenshot of running the backup script:

From the output we can see where the backup configuration is stored on the vCO appliance and you can easily copy the backup to an external system using SCP.

Whether or not you are automating your vCO setup, you should definitely consider performing periodic backups of your vCO configuration, especially before making any changes to your vCO Server.

Thank You For Your Vote & Support!

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The results for the Top 25 Virtualization Blogs was just posted a few days ago by Eric Siebert of vSphere-Land.com and I am very proud and honored to announce that virtuallyGhetto has moved up from last year's #8 spot to the #6 spot on the list! I am also very honored that virtuallyGhetto was also voted as the #1 scripting blog! This was quite a surprise to me especially when you are up against guys like Alan Renouf and Luc Dekens.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Eric for all of the time and effort he has put into setting up the site and tallying up all the votes, this is not an easy task. I would also like to thank all of my readers for voting and for your continued support. Finally, I would like to congratulate all the bloggers and give a special shout out to some of the new guys who made the top 25 this year like Michael Webster, Chris Wahl and of course the Storage Guru himself and my good colleague Cormac Hogan! Congratulations guys! I am really humbled to be part of such a talented and passionate community, there is no other like it!

I do not want to spoil the results, so be sure to watch the special vChat results episode and visits Eric's site for the full list.