WilliamLam.com

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 6: Customizing VCSA's DCUI

by // Leave a Comment

For those of you who have deployed the latest VCSA 6.0, you may have noticed that it now includes a DCUI interface similar to that of ESXi. Just like ESXi, it provides some basic functionality such as network configuration, restarting of the management interface, enabling SSH/Shell access and viewing support logs. For some customers, there is a mandatory requirement in terms of compliance to be able to display a security or warning banner prior to logging into a system which can also include interactive console UI's like the DCUI.

With ESXi, it was possible to customize the DCUI as seen in the screenshot below (more serious customizations are used in customer environments of course). For more details, please take a look at this blog post here.

dcui4
Luckily, with the VCSA 6.0, it is also now possible to customize some of the text on the DCUI interface. However, you will not have complete free range like you did with the ESXi's DCUI interface but will be specific part of the screen. Here is an example of what can be added to the VCSA's DCUI screen:

customizing-vcsa-dcui
There is a section before the IP Address and a section after the IP Address which you can append custom text. This is controlled by the following configuration file located in: /etc/vmware/appliance/dcui.cfg and specifically with the following two variables: CONNECTION_MESSAGE which is the message before the IP Address and CONNECTION_MESSAGE_AFTER_IP for the message after the IP Address.

Here is an example of what the above customization looks like:

{
    "PRODUCT_NAME": "VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE_BEFORE_IP": "https://",
    "CONNECTION_PORT": "443",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE": "\n\t### Message BEFORE IP ###\n",
    "CONNECTION_MESSAGE_AFTER_IP": "\n\n\t### Message AFTER IP ###\n"
}

For the changes to take affect, you will need to reload the DCUI interface which you can do by running the following command:

kill $(ps -ef | grep dcui.py | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}')

Collection of VMware Project Photon & Lightwave Resources/Links

by // 1 Comment

Today is a very exciting day for VMware and later this morning, the new Cloud Native Apps team under Kit Colbert will be hosting an online event (replayed of the event will be posted here) to talk more about Next-Generation Apps on VMware as well as diving into more details on two specific initiatives that have recently been open sourced: Project Photon and Lightwave. In anticipation of the flood of information, I thought it would be useful to aggregate all the resources, links and articles in a single place for ease of consumption. This page will be updated through out the day, let me know if there is anything I am missing.

Cloud Native Apps Team

 Photon

vmware-photon
Photon is an open-source lightweight Linux container host runtime optimized for running containers optimized for VMware’s hypervisor.

 Lightwave

vmware-lightwave
Lightwave is an open-source container identity and access control solution.

Partner Integration News:

Community Blog Articles

vCenter Server 6.0 Tidbits Part 5: New method of patching the VCSA/PSC

by // 9 Comments

In previous releases of the VCSA, patching and updating of the VCSA was performed through what was known as the VAMI interface which provided both a UI as well as a command-line which I have blogged about here. The simplest and easiest method was of course using the UI which just required opening a browser to https://[VCSA]:5480 as seen in the screenshot below.

UPDATE (09/04/15) - In vSphere 6.0 Update 1, URL based patching is now available. You can find more details here.

patching-vcsa-6.0-0
In the VCSA 6.0, the old VAMI UI interface no longer exists and to update/patch the VCSA you will need to use the appliancesh command-line interface. There is a command called "software-packages" which is used to update/patch the software on the VCSA. This information is also documented here.

patching-vcsa-6.0-2
VMware just recently released a patch update to vSphere 6.0 and one of the updates is applicable to VCSA (Embedded) and VC/PSC (External) as noted in this VMware KB 211640. There are two patches (Third Party & Bug/Security Fix) which are available as an ISO which can be downloaded from here.

patching-vcsa-6.0-1
Before you can apply the patch/update, you will need to mount the patch ISO to your VCSA/PSC using either the vSphere C#/Web Client as you would with any other ISO. The second step is to login to the VCSA/PSC and if you have disable the appliancesh, you just need to type "appliancesh" and you will be prompted to login with your root credentials.

Once logged into the applianesh, the software-packages supports two options:

  • Stage patches from ISO and then install
  • Stage patches from ISO and install at a later time

If you wish to perform the update/patch in a single step by staging and installing, you can run the following command:

software-packages install --iso --acceptEulas

patching-vcsa-6.0-3
If you wish to only stage the patches but not install, you can do so by running the following command:

software-packages stage --iso --acceptEulas

Once you are ready to install the staged patches, you will need to run the following command:

software-packages install --staged