VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 | 23 NOV 2023 | Build 22817906 (Product version: 4.7.0.8400987-96215f032c)

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's new

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 supports the following new functionality:

  • Storage policy reassignment during workload recovery - now you can activate Change storage placement, then select a different datastore than the selected one in the existing replication, resulting in move of the data after the performed failover or migrate operation completes. All the disks and the vmdk files move to the newly selected storage. For example, the tenants can initially send the replica files to a cheaper and slower storage, where the vmdk gets constructed, then once failed over, the workload moves to expensive and fast storage. For information about changing the storage placement during recovery, see Migrate and Failover.

  • Security tags - now, the NSX security tags can be replicated between cloud sites, both running VMware Cloud Director 10.3 and later and VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7. The security tags apply during the recovery of virtual machine, vApp, and vApp template replications. For information about copying the security tags to the destination, see Migrate, Failover, and Test Failover.

  • VDC VM policies pre-selected - now, when creating a replication to a Cloud Director site as a destination, when a VM placement or a VM sizing policy with the same name already applies on the source workload, the matching VDC policy becomes pre-selected, allowing to finish the new replication wizard quicker. For information about using the selected VDC policies in the new replication wizard, see Create a protection and Create a migration.

  • Recovery plans health validation - now, after creating a recovery plan, on the Health tab you see a validation of the infrastructure and the data for the replications in the plan to check whether the plan execution might fail on some steps. The validation can show a warning when the observed issues cannot prevent the recovery process, or an error when the issues prevent the recovery process, for example, when the destination storage policy is disabled. For information about the health validations, see Recovery plans.

  • Flexible storage profile assignment - now allows replicating one virtual machine to multiple datastores. For example, place one of its disks on a separate datastore, or split some disks from the .vmx file. For information about activating Advanced Datastore Settings and how to use flexible storage profile assignment in the New Replication wizard, see Create a protection and Create a migration.

  • Pairing sites filtering - now the providers can hide some peer sites for certain organizations to prevent every tenant from seeing all paired sites for convenience. The restricted tenants can continue to manage existing incoming replications, but not start new ones as the source site is not visible and cannot see the outgoing replications as they are filtered by site. For information about filtering the peer sites, see Control the paired sites organization access.

  • Cloud Director authentication model compliance - now prepares VMware Cloud Director Availability for the future deprecation of local users in VMware Cloud Director. For information about this depreciation, see VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 Release Notes. API token pairing - now also supports pairing an on-premises site to a Cloud Director site by using a one-time access token, see Generate an API access token from VMware Cloud Director. Next, for information about using such API token for the initial pairing, see Configure the On-Premises to Cloud Director Appliance. VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 continues to fully-support local users while they are under deprecation.

  • Replication tracking virtual machine (RT VM) placement solution for Cloud Director replications - now replaces the independent disk and represents a shadow VM for replication placement to allow per-disk placement. The providers can also configure replication tracking for the existing vApp and VM replications. With a supported version of VMware Cloud Director in the destination site, RT VM replaces the independent disk as placement and reporting solution and allows per-disk storage profiles. For more information about RT VM, see Replication tracking placement solution.

  • Seed for vSphere DR and migration - now using a seed virtual machine is also available for replications between vCenter sites. For information about using a seed, see Configure a replication with a seed.

  • Deactivate protections to on-premises - protections now allow for finer control on the allowed destination site, separating on-premises from cloud sites, similarly to controlling migrations separately for on-premises and cloud destinations. For information about the policies to control this, see Configuring replication policies, Create a replication policy, and Edit a replication policy.

  • My Preferences now allows each user to select the language of their interface, dark, light, or high contrast theme, and select number of rows and whether the selected row follows the clicked row.

Upgrade

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 supports an in-place upgrade directly from versions 4.5.x or 4.6.x. To upgrade to version 4.7 from earlier versions, first upgrade to either version 4.5.x, or to version 4.6.x.

For information about the upgrade process, see Upgrading in the Cloud Director site and Upgrading on-premises and provider site.

APIs

The step-by-step guides to configure a deployed appliance by using APIs are available at VMware Cloud Director Availability Cloud Director DR and Migration API Reference and VMware Cloud Director Availability vSphere DR and Migration API Reference.

Interoperability

Legacy migrations

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 continues to support migrations from legacy vCenter Server versions 5.5, 6.0, 6.5, and 6.7. Note: vCenter Server 6.5 and 6.7 are legacy versions since VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.6.

For information about the legacy migrations, see KB 89181.

Configuration maximums

For information about the tested and verified uptime, concurrency, and scale limits, see VMware Configuration Maximums.

Caveats and limitations

  • For replications using the Classic data engine, VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 uses vSphere Replication module called Host-based Replication (HBR) version 8.8. For information about its inherited caveats and limitations, see the vSphere Replication 8.8 Release Notes.

  • With deactivated telemetry in VMware Cloud Director 10.5 and later, when opening VMware Cloud Director Availability from the plug-in in VMware Cloud Director, providing Feedback is not possible.

Supported browsers

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 supports the following versions of the browsers:

  • Google Chrome 117 and later

  • Microsoft Edge 117 and later

  • Mozilla Firefox 117 and later

  • Apple Safari 16 and later

Resolved issues

The following issues have been resolved in this release.

  • With over 25 organizations in VMware Cloud Director, vApp templates migrations result in an error when logged in as a provider in VMware Cloud Director Availability

    When the VMware Cloud Director environment has more than 25 organizations and you log in as a provider in VMware Cloud Director Availability, then if the vApp template you are trying to replicate is listed on a position over 25, you see an error message: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘id’)

  • For replications with Cloud Director sites, you cannot finish the New Recovery Step wizard if you filter the Recover replications list after you select workloads 

    In the New Recovery Step wizard, on page 2 Recover replications, once you select the workloads, then if you filter the list by the name of the vApp/VM entering 3 characters or more, the selection invalidates. When you click Next, then Finish, the Ready to complete page remains opened with an error message: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'vmReplications')

    This issue only affects replications with Cloud Director sites.

  • For vSphere DR and migration, attempting to repair the Replicator instances fails after upgrading to 4.6.1

    In vSphere DR and migration sites only, once upgraded to 4.6.1, you cannot repair the Replicator Service, for example, after changing an SSL certificate, or after changing the SSO credentials of the vCenter Server Lookup Service. 

Known issues

The following known issues are currently identified in this release.

  • New - When using seed disks, you cannot create a virtual machine replication from a Cloud Director site to an on-premises site

    Workaround: Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.2.

  • New - After a migration from an on-premises site to a Cloud Director site, the network settings of the new VM are missing

    When using VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 and later to migrate a VM from an on-premises site to a Cloud Director site with version 10.5.1 and later, and with Replication tracking placement solution, the NIC adapter type of the new VM changes from VMXNET3 to E1000, which results in losing all network settings from the source VM.

    Workaround: Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.2.

  • New - Replicating workloads to a Cloud Director site might fail

    When performing a protection or migration to a Cloud Director site and a source VM has attached storage disks with the same name on different datastores, VMware Cloud Director Availability attempts to recreate the disks with the same name on the destination, which results in the replication process failing with an error message: Unable to create replica placeholder disk.

    Workaround: In the source site, before the replication process, perform one of the following tasks.

    • Move one of the disks with duplicate names to the same datastore.

    • Rename one of the disks with duplicate names.

  • New - When using the default online repository, upgrading VMware Cloud Director Availability might fail

    The default online repository of VMware Cloud Director Availability changed to https://packages-prod.broadcom.com/vcav/. When VMware Cloud Director Availability tries to access the legacy repository, the upgrade process might fail. 

    Workaround: Perform one of the following tasks.

  • A recovered VM might have a different amount of NICs than the source VM

    After a failover or a test failover, the operation of adding or removing network adapters from a protected VM that is backed up by a replication tracking VM, might not be reflected on the resulting VM. Only the network adapters present at the start of the replication operation might be available to the recovered VM. The issue might occur only when using VCDA 4.7.0 with VCD 10.5.1 and later, and does not affect replications that are backed up by independent disks.

    Workaround: Perform one of the following tasks.

    • In the configuration of the recovered VM, add or remove network adapters manually.

    • Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.1.

  • Replications using the Classic data engine fail to synchronize or show a red state

    Due to specific networking requirements, replications that use the Classic data engine are affected:

    • Attempting to configure a new replication results in a task that is stuck. After about 10 minutes, the task might finish successfully, but the replication remains in red state.

    • Attempting to synchronize an existing replication fails with sync timeout.

    The issue might occur only when using VCDA 4.7.0

    Workaround: Perform one of the following tasks.

    • Open an SSH session to each Replicator Appliance and execute the following commands:

      1. /usr/bin/sed -i '/useDatastoreTickets/a\ \ \ \ \ \ <hostConnectionUseHbrTunnelEndpoint>false</hostConnectionUseHbrTunnelEndpoint>' /etc/vmware/hbrsrv.xml

      2. /usr/bin/sed -i '/useDatastoreTickets/a\ \ \ \ \ \ <hostConnectionUseSdkEndpoint>false</hostConnectionUseSdkEndpoint>' /etc/vmware/hbrsrv.xml

      3. systemctl restart hbrsrv

    • Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.1.

  • For replications to Cloud Director sites, when using a flexible storage profile in a recovery plan, the health validation does not check the availability of the disk storage profiles

    If a disk in a replication is assigned with a storage profile that is no longer available, while the VM configuration is assigned with an available storage profile, once this replication is added in a recovery plan, the health validation reports no issues. This issue affects only replications to a Cloud Director site as destination.

    Workaround: Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.1.

  • For vSphere DR and migration, using per-disk Placement Datastore on test failover produces a VM which seemingly has all its disks on the VM Placement Datastore

    When you perform test failover, the disks of the test failover VM appear on the VM Placement Datastore despite another storage policy assigned to its disks. Technically, the disks reside both on the Placement Datastore, where you select the disks to replicate, and on the VM Placement Datastore, where you select the VM configuration files to replicate. 

    Most of the replica data is still on the disks storage where you selected. Only a child disk resides on the configuration files datastore, which you can safely ignore. This issue only affects vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites.

    Workaround: Upgrade to VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.1.

  • The context menu in VMware Cloud Director does not allow to edit the replication settings page

    For existing replications, in VMware Cloud Director clicking Actions > Availability (site) > Replication settings opens the Replication settings window where all settings are inactive and cannot be modified.

    Workaround:

    To modify the replication settings:

    • Use the plug-in for VMware Cloud Director Availability by clicking More > Availability (site)

    • Alternatively, log in to the VMware Cloud Director Availability interface.

    Then navigate to the replication, select it and click All Actions > Replication settings.

  • For vSphere DR and migration, duplicate virtual machine names show under Advanced Datastore Settings when using the vSphere plug-in

    From the vSphere plug-in, after initially activating the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle, the virtual machine names show duplicates. This issue only affects vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites.

    Workaround:

    • Deactivate the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle, then activate it again.

    • Alternatively, log in directly to VMware Cloud Director Availability then repeat the replication operation.

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