VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail Release Notes

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 | 25 MAY 2022 | Build 19766960

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.1 | 30 JUN 2022 | Build 19948546

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail release includes the following:

BOM updates: Updated Bill of Materials with new product versions, which includes NSXT 3.1.3.7.4. See NSX-T 3.1.3.7 Release Notes and KB87975 for more information.

VMware Cloud Foundation Bill of Materials (BOM)

The VMware Cloud Foundation software product is comprised of the following software Bill-of-Materials (BOM). The components in the BOM are interoperable and compatible.

Software Component	Version	Date	Build Number
Cloud Builder VM	4.4.1	12 MAY 2022	19766960
SDDC Manager	4.4.1	12 MAY 2022	19766960
VxRail Manager	7.0.371	25 May 2022	n/a
VMware vCenter Server Appliance	7.0 Update 3d	29 MAR 2022	19480866
VMware ESXi	7.0 Update 3d	29 MAR 2022	19482537
VMware Virtual SAN Witness Appliance	7.0 Update 3c	27 JAN 2022	19193900
VMware NSXT	3.1.3.7.4	6 MAY 2022	19762317

VMware ESXi and VMware vSAN are part of the VxRail BOM.
Specific vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and Workspace ONE Access versions are no longer listed in the VMware Cloud Foundation BOM. See the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix for information about which versions of these products are supported with VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 and later. If your VMware Cloud Foundation instance includes vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.6.2 or later, use the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager UI to upgrade vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and Workspace ONE Access to a supported version. See vRealize Suite Upgrade Paths on VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.x +.
vRealize Log Insight content packs are installed when you deploy vRealize Log Insight.
The vRealize Operations Manager management pack is installed when you deploy vRealize Operations Manager.
You can access the latest versions of the content packs for vRealize Log Insight from the VMware Solution Exchange and the vRealize Log Insight in-product marketplace store.

Documentation

The following documentation is available:

Limitations

The following limitations apply to this release:

vSphere Lifecycle Manager images are not supported on VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail.
Customer-supplied vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) is a new feature supported by VxRail Manager 7.0.010 that allows customers to create their own vDS and provide it as an input to be utilized by the clusters they build using VxRail Manager. VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail does not support clusters that utilize a customer-supplied vDS.

Installation and Upgrade Information

You can install VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail as a new release or perform a sequential or skip-level upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.

If you deploy VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail with VxRail Manager 7.0.372, you must upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.1 on Dell EMC VxRail. See How to support VxRail 7.0.372 with VCF 4.4.1/4.4.1.1.

You can perform a sequential or skip level upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail from VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4, 4.3.1, 4.3, 4.2.1, 4.2, 4.1.0.1, or 4.1. If your environment is at a version earlier than 4.1, you must upgrade the management domain and all VI workload domains to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 and then upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.

IMPORTANT: Before you upgrade a vCenter Server, take a file-based backup. See Manually Back Up vCenter Server.

NOTE: Scripts that rely on SSH being enabled on ESXi hosts will not work after upgrading to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1, since VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4 disables the SSH service by default. Update your scripts to account for this new behavior. See KB 86230 for information about enabling and disabling the SSH service on ESXi hosts.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.1 on Dell EMC VxRail Release Information

The following features are introduced in this release:

Stability improvements to UI, synchronization and logging for scale upgrades.

You can perform a sequential or skip-level upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1.1 from Cloud Foundation 4.4.1, 4.3.1.1, 4.3.1, 4.3, 4.2.1, 4.2, 4.1.0.1, or 4.1. If your environment is at a version earlier than 4.1, you must upgrade the management domain and all VI workload domains.

To upgrade the management domain, apply the following bundles, in order:

NOTE: Before triggering upgrade to VCF 4.4.1.1, download all component upgrade/install bundles from VCF 4.4.1.

VMware Cloud Foundation bundle
Configuration drift bundle

VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail 4.4.1.1 contains the following BOM update:

Software Component	Version	Date	Build Number
SDDC Manager	4.4.1.1	30 JUN 2022	19948546

After you upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail 4.4.1.1, you can perform an out-of-band upgrade to VxRail Manager 7.0.372. VxRail Manager 7.0.732 includes security fixes for VxRail Manager and ESXi. See How to support VxRail 7.0.372 with VCF 4.4.1/4.4.1.1 for more information.

Known Issues

For VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1, see VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 known issues. Some of the known issues may be for features that are not available on VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail.

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.1 on Dell EMC VxRail Known Issues appear below:

VxRail plugin will not load in vSphere Client and displays the error "The provided vCenter credentials are not valid."

If the vCenter Server certificate is replaced more than once with same subject attributes with different root CA, then the connection between VxRail and the corresponding vCenter Server is lost.

Workaround: See Dell KB article Dell VxRail: VxRail plug-in displays error after replacing vCenter certificate in VCF on VxRail environment
VxRail bundle is available for an upgrade even though the NSX-T upgrade is still in-progress on VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail 4.x environment.

VxRail bundle is available for upgrade in SDDC Manager UI Bundles page and Update/Patches tab even though NSX-T upgrade is still in-progress on VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail 4.x environment.

Both NSX-T bundle and VxRail bundle can become available for upgrade in SDDC Manager UI Bundles page.

Workaround: Once you complete the NSX-T upgrade, the VxRail upgrade can be triggered. See VMware Knowledge Base article 88847 for more information.
vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VMs are moved to remote storage after a VxRail cluster with HCI Mesh storage is imported to VMware Cloud Foundation

When you configure HCI Mesh storage on a VxRail cluster and then import it to VMware Cloud Foundation, vCLS VMs are moved to the remote storage instead of being placed on the cluster's primary storage. This can result in errors when you unmount the remote storage for the cluster.
Workaround:
1. Login to vCenter UI.
2. Retrieve the cluster MorfId.
  In the Hosts and Clusters tab, click the Cluster entity and check the URL.
  
  For example:
  
  https://dr26avc-1.rainpole.local/ui/app/cluster;nav=h/urn:vmomi:ClusterComputeResource:domain-c10:373acc41-be7e-4f12-855d-094e5f135a67/configure/plugin/com.vmware.vsphere.client.h5vsan/com.vmware.vsan.client.h5vsanui.cluster.configure.vsan.csd
  
  The cluster morfId for this URL is 'domain-c10'.
3. Click the vCenter entity.
4. Navigate to Configure -> Advanced Setting.
  Be default, vCLS property set to true:
  
  config.vcls.clusters..enabled
5. Disable vCLS on the cluster.
  Click Edit Settings, set the flag to 'false', and click Save.
6. Wait 2 minutes for the vCLS VMs to be deleted.
7. Unmount the remote storage.
8. Repeat steps 3 and 4.
9. Enable vCLS on the cluster.
  Click Edit Settings, set the flag to 'true', and click Save.
10. Wait 2-3 minutes for the vCLS VMs to be deployed.
  Three vCLS VMs are displayed in the VMs and Templates tab.
The API does not support adding a host to a cluster with dead hosts or removing dead hosts from a cluster
The following flags appear in the API Reference Guide and API Explorer, but are not supported with VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail.
- forceHostAdditionInPresenceofDeadHosts: Use to add host to a cluster with dead hosts. Bypasses validation of disconnected hosts and vSAN cluster health.
- forceByPassingSafeMinSize: Remove dead hosts from cluster, bypassing validations.
Workaround: None.