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VMworld Session VCSA INF5975 & INF4528 available to public

09.08.2015 by William Lam // 1 Comment

I just found out this week after reading Eric Siebert blog post here, that a select number of VMworld 2015 US sessions have been made available to the general public on YouTube. I thought this was a very nice and pleasant surprise, especially for those who could not attend VMworld to be able to get a taste of some of the topics covered in last weeks conference. I personally have watched both the Cloud Native Apps and Future of NSX session, both of which I think are worth checking out not to mention the various demos in the NSX session!

For me personally, a hot topic that came up in almost every conversation when talking to our customers, field and partners at VMworld was the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). There were also plenty of sessions at the conference that covered the VCSA from basic introduction to performance to availability. Below are the two VCSA sessions that were selected to be made generally available to everyone, one of which I presented on. Hopefully you enjoy both videos and I would also like to thank everyone who attended my session last Monday. It was really great meeting many of my readers as well as customers looking to take advantage of the VCSA and some of the new features in our upcoming release. I also wrote a blog post here on the upcoming release of vSphere 6.0 Update 1 (GA sometime in Q3 2015) with respect to the VCSA in case you missed it.

INF5975 - vCenter Server Appliance as "First Choice" VC

INF4528 - vCenter Server Appliance Best Practices & Tips / Tricks

Categories // VCSA, VMworld Tags // psc, vami, vCenter Server, vcenter server appliance, VCSA, vcva, vSphere 6.0 Update 1

What's New in vSphere 6.0 Update 1 for VCSA?

09.01.2015 by William Lam // 31 Comments

One of the announcements at VMworld this week is the upcoming release of vSphere 6.0 Update 1 (GA sometime in Q3 2015) and in addition to bug fixes there are also several new enhancements that have been added. Here are some of the new capabilities specifically for the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).

  • New Deployment Targets - The VCSA now supports both vCenter Server (brownfield) as well as ESXi (greenfield) as a deployment targets.When using either the Guided UI or Scripted UI, you can now deploy to an existing vCenter Server which might serve as a management cluster for example. Previously, ESXi was the only supported deployment target.
  • Convert Embedded VCSA to External PSC - An Embedded VCSA deployment can now be re-configured or re-pointed to an External PSC using the new "reconfigure" and "repoint" option found in the /bin/cmsso-util utility. This allows customers to quickly get started using the simple Embedded VCSA deployment and as they get more comfortable and want to scale out to an External PSC for features like Enhanced Linked Mode, you can easily do so.

Screen Shot 2015-08-16 at 7.50.50 AM
Two of the most frequently asked questions that I have seen from customers since the release of the VCSA 6.0 is where did the VMware Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) and URL-based patching go? These were definitely two missed features that did not make it into VCSA 6.0 release and today I am pleased to announce that they have returned with some nice enhancements!

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-8

  • VAMI UI - The VAMI UI can be accessed in the familiar 5480 port by visiting the following URL of the VCSA: https://[VCSA]:5480 and requires a local OS account to login like the root user account. The VAMI itself has been completely re-written both on the backend as well as the frontend which is now an HTML5 interface. All VAMI functionality can be accessed both from the UI as well as using the appliancesh command-line interface.

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-4

  • URL-based patching - URL-based patching is also included in the new VAMI UI interface. By default it is configured to point back to VMware's online repository but you can also configure it to use an ISO or a custom repository as previous versions supported. All patching capabilities are also available using the appliancesh command-line interface.

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-7

  • PSC UI - In addition to new VAMI UI, there also now a new Platform Services Controller (PSC) UI which is also written in HTML5. The new UI is located at the following URL: https://[VCSA]/psc and requires an SSO Administrator account to login. This new UI actually uses the same backend as the PSC configurations found within the vSphere Web Client. The idea behind this UI is to provide customers with a way to configure SSO and other related configurations within the PSC for either a greenfield setup or when the vSphere Web Client is unavailable. This can come in handy for troubleshooting purposes. Lastly, with the new PSC UI, you will now be able to replace certificates from a UI standpoint where as previously this was only available in the CLI.

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-5

  • Build-2-Build upgrade support - In prior releases, both a "Major" and "U" (Update) release of the VCSA meant that you had to deploy the new VCSA to perform a migration based upgrade. In vSphere 6.0 Update 1, "U" releases (U1, U2, etc) can now be accomplished by an in-place upgrade or sometimes refer to as a build-2-build. There will be a VCSA 6.0 Update 1 ISO which can be mounted within your existing VCSA 6.0 appliance to perform the upgrade as seen in the screenshot below.

patching

  • appliancesh automation - The appliancesh interface in the VCSA 6.0 was primarily targeted for interactive usage and did not support any type of Automation. The feedback from customers was to provide a way to be able to call into the various appliancesh commands and in VCSA 6.0 Update 1, you can now execute a series of appliancesh commands within a file and re-directing that into an SSH session. VMware is also looking into providing a proper API for the appliancesh commands, if you have any feedback on this please leave a comment or reach out to Alan Renouf, who is the PM.

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-6
Below is the contents of the vcsa-commands.txt file which contains the following appliancesh commands to configure and enable NTP for the VCSA:

ntp.test --servers 0.pool.ntp.org,1.pool.ntp.org
ntp.server.add --server 0.pool.ntp.org,1.pool.ntp.org
timesync.set --mode NTP
ntp.get

Lastly, though this is not specific to the VCSA, I thought it was also worth mentioning that you can now access ALL capabilities of vSphere Update Manager (VUM) within the vSphere Web Client. VUM will still require a separate Windows system, but will fully inter-operate with both the Windows VC as well as the VCSA and you no longer need to rely on the vSphere C# Client to perform remediation or base-line creation and assignments.

vcsa-60u1-whatsnew-1
As you can see, there are a ton of enhancements in the latest vSphere 6.0 Update 1 release and if you have not taken vSphere 6.0 for a spin yet, I definitely recommend starting with this release.

Categories // VCSA, vSphere 6.0 Tags // vCenter Server, vcenter server appliance, VCSA, vcva, vSphere 6.0 Update 1

How to customize the new vSphere 6.0 Web Client login UI?

02.17.2015 by William Lam // 35 Comments

A common feature request that I hear from customers from time to time is the ability to customize the login screen for the vSphere Web Client. Going beyond just aesthetics such as adding an organizations logo or colors, it is often a mandatory requirement for some organizations to display a security or warning banner to the users prior to logging in. In prior releases of vSphere, the login page of the vSphere Web Client (which is actually from vCenter Single Sign-On service) was written in Flash which meant that it was impossible to change without recompiling the source code.

Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 6.15.52 PM
In vSphere 6.0 (yes, vSphere 6.0 is required), the vCenter Single Sign-On login page is now written using regular HTML and CSS. This means you can actually now customize the login page with your own logos, colors or text that you wish to display to your end users. Not only can you customize the login for vCenter Server but you can also do the same for vRealize Automation Center as long as you are using the latest version of the Platform Services Controller which now provides other services in addition to vCenter Single Sign-On.

UPDATE (07/14/16): For vSphere 6.0 Update 2 environments, please follow the instructions here as there have been some minor changes. This article is only applicable for vSphere 6.0 and vSphere 6.0 Update 1 environments.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by VMware, if you decide to enable this, please use at your own risk and ensure you backup all original files in case you need revert back to the original configurations.

There are two specific files that you will want to take a look at, the first is unpentry.jsp which controls the look and feel of the actual login page and the second is login.css which controls the stylesheet for the login page. If you wish to include your own images including gifs (which I did not expect would work), there is a img directory that you can reference. Below are the paths to these configuration files for both a Windows vCenter Server and the VCSA 6.0.

Windows vCenter Server 6.0 / 6.0u1

  • C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\runtime\VMwareSTSService\webapps\websso\WEB-INF\views\unpentry.jsp
  • C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\runtime\VMwareSTSService\webapps\websso\resources\css\login.css
  • C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\runtime\VMwareSTSService\webapps\websso\resources\img

VCSA 6.0 / 6.0u1

  • /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/webapps/websso/WEB-INF/views/unpentry.jsp
  • /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/webapps/websso/resources/css/login.css
  • /usr/lib/vmware-sso/vmware-sts/webapps/websso/resources/img

Note: It is highly recommended that you backup all original files before making edits so you can easily revert to the original configuration. If you are only updating the image to figure out layout and placement, you may notice changes are not reflected when you refresh the vSphere Web Client. The reason for this is that the image is only refreshed when the configuration files (.jsp) is updated. You can easily do this by simply opening it up and then saving it without making changes. I found this was the quickest way to force a reload of an updated image that has been uploaded.

I figure it might be cool to create a couple of vSphere Web Client "themes" for some of my buddies like Rawlinson Rivera, Duncan Epping, Alan Renouf, Mike Foley and Cormac Hogan. I hope Rawlinson likes his theme as I know how big of a fan he is 😉 I have also created a Github repo customize-vsphere-web-client-6.0 where you can find all the themes below. Feel free to create your own and contribute them back to the community.

Rawlinson Rivera Theme -
customize-vsphere-web-client6-ui-1
Duncan Epping Theme -
customize-vsphere-web-client6-ui-2
Alan Renouf Theme -
customize-vsphere-web-client6-ui-3
Mike Foley Theme -
customize-vsphere-web-client6-ui-4
Cormac Hogan Theme -
Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 8.54.01 PM
Here is an additional bonus theme as I could not leave out my good buddy CaptainVSAN!

customize-vsphere-web-client6-ui-5
I am looking forwarding to see what others come up with in terms of their own vSphere Web Client themes and be sure to share them back by either posting back here or better yet, contributing to the Github repository.

Image Sources:

  • http://www.twitterevolutions.com/bgs/justin-bieber-2.jpg
  • http://s1174.photobucket.com/user/D-A-C-20/media/Holland%20EUIV/Holland.png.html
  • http://www.chrisschofield.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/PowerCLIman.jpg
  • http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/2662404/you-didnt-say-the-magic-word-o.gif

Categories // VCSA, vSphere 6.0, vSphere Web Client Tags // unpentry.jsp, vSphere 6.0, vSphere 6.0 Update 1, vsphere web client

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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