VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0.1.1 Release Notes

VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0.1.1 | 10 JAN 2019 | Build 11061259 Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes            

The release notes cover the following topics:

• What's New
• Upgrade
• Product Documentation
• Resolved Issues
• Known Issues

What's New

vCloud Availability 2.0.1.1 introduces support for vCloud Director 9.5.0.1 and vSphere Replication 8.1.1.

Upgrade

Before you upgrade to vCloud Availability 2.0.1.1, verify that the vSphere Replication Management Server configuration file and the lookup service store the same universal unique identifiers (UUID) for the vSphere Replication Management Server (HMS). For more information, see How to check the HMS UUID in its local database and in the lookup service for vCloud Availability for vCloud Director.

To upgrade your vCloud Availability environment to version 2.0.1.1, you upgrade the vSphere Replication components and redeploy the vCloud Availability Installer Appliance, the vCloud Availability Portal, and the vCloud Availability Administration Portal. For more information, see the vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 Upgrade Guide.

Product Documentation

In addition to the current release notes, you can use the documentation set for vCloud Availability 2.0 that includes the following deliverables.

• vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 Installation and Configuration Guide
• vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 Administration Guide
• vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 Upgrade Guide
• Interoperability Pages for vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0

Resolved Issues

• Replicated VMs that are not attached to a network cannot be managed through the vCloud Director API and the tenant vCloud Availability Portal

  When you navigate to Reversed view under Workspaces tab and select a replicated VM that is not connected to any network, a [Code=500] Internal Server Error message appears, which prevents you from managing replication using the vCloud Director API and the tenant vCloud Availability Portal.

• Installing vCloud Availability by using a registry file fails due to an equals sign as a part of the API password

  After you create a registry file containing the deployment details for all vCloud Availability components and you run the vcav start command, the vCloud Availability Installer Appliance prompts you for missing API password, despite api-password has a value in the registry file. This occurs when the vCloud Director System Administrator’s password contains an equals sign (=).

• The vcav hbr wait-for-extension script fails during manual configuration of vCloud Availability that uses the deployment variables method

  During a manual installation of vCloud Availability, you run the vcav hbr wait-for-extension command to verify that the vCloud Availability Replicator service has started successfully. After 5 minutes, the command fails with a Required field "userName" not provided (not @optional) error message.

• Connecting a VM from a vApp network to a failover network with the same name fails

  When you connect a VM to a vApp network and attach the vApp network to a target organization virtual datacenter network with the same name as the source network, a Direct vApp Network is created and at the last step in the workflow, the original and only vApp Network is deleted, which leaves the VM without network.

• Using the vCloud Director storage migration wizard to migrate an organization from one datastore to another fails with an Invalid payload error message

  When you use the vCloud Director storage migration wizard to migrate an organization from one datastore to another and you have configured at least one of the datastores to belong to more than one storage policy, the migration fails with an Invalid payload error message. 

• The vcav_support_logs script fails to collect logs from nodes with hyphens in their name​

  When you attempt to gather a support bundle with the vcav_support_logs script on the vCloud Availability Installer using a host name that contains a hyphen (-), the hyphen is stripped from the name and causes the log collection to fail.

• Manual installation of vCloud Availability using Pivotal RabbitMQ fails at validation state

  When you have configured Pivotal RabbitMQ for manual installation of vCloud Availability and you run the vcav hcs configure command, the vSphere Replication Cloud Service validation fails with a Cannot connect to rabbitMq /[Custom folder] error message.

Known Issues

• Configuring the vCloud Availability Administration Portal might return an error

  When you initially configure the vCloud Availability Administration Portal, if the vCloud Availability Administration Portal is not available or is not reachable, the vCloud Availability Installer appliance returns the following error: ERROR - The SMP service did not start listening at <SMP Address>:8443.

  Workaround: Confirm if the error is false or reports an actual problem with the vCloud Availability Administration Portal by logging in to the vCloud Availability Administration Portal at https://vCloud-Availability-Admin-Portal-IP-Address:8443.

  If the vCloud Availability Administration Portal is available and you can log in, you can ignore the error.

  If you cannot reach the vCloud Availability Administration Portal, try to reconfigure the vCloud Availability Administration Portal. 

  • For an automated installation:
  1. Run the vcav status command.
  2. Note the number of the vCloud Availability Administration Portal configuration task that failed.
  3. Reconfigure the vCloud Availability Administration Portal again by running the following command:
     vcav next --task= number-of-the-failed-task --rerun --reconfigure
  • For a manual installation using a registry file, reconfigure the vCloud Availability Administration Portal again, run the following command:

  The following is a long, single command that should be run as one. For better visibility line breaks are marked with backslash (\) within the command. (\).

  vcav -d vcd-ui configure-smp \
--reconfigure \
--ui-address=vCloud-Availability-Admin-Portal-IP-Address \
--keep-self-signed-certificate \
--truststore-password-file=~/.vcav/.truststore \
--vcd=vCD-Name \
--mongodb-password-file=~/.vcav/.mongo \
--amqp-user=amqp-admin-user \
--amqp-password-file=~/.ssh/.amqp \
--tenant-ui-url=https://tenant-ui-FQDN:8443 \
--max-jvm-memory=1024

  If the error persists, try to reconfigure the vCloud Availability Administration Portal again. If the error persists after the second attempt, file a support request. When filing a support request, obtain the vCloud Availability Installer appliance logs that are located in /root/.vcav/vcav.log, and the vCloud Availability Administration Portal appliance logs that are located in /opt/vmware/vcav-smp/logs/dr-service-manager.log.

• When you run vCloud Availability Installer appliance scripts, you might receive the following error:

  Exception: Unable to create registry entry for type DISABLE_CERTIFICATE_VALIDATION.

  This issue occurs if the entries for DISABLE_CERTIFICATE_VALIDATION, NTP, or SSH_PASSWORD include spaces before the setting or around the equals sign (=) in the registry file.

  Workaround: Verify that there are no spaces before the setting or around the equals sign for the DISABLE_CERTIFICATE_VALIDATION, NTP, and SSH_PASSWORD settings and run the vCloud Availability Installer appliance again. Spaces are allowed after the setting or in a comment.

  Example:

  DISABLE_CERTIFICATE_VALIDATION=1                             # Disable all SSL and SSH certificate validation
NTP=time.example.com                                            # Default NTP server for deployed VMs
SSH_PASSWORD=example                                            # Default SSH password for deployed VMs

• vCloud Availability requires only one single sign-on server for vCloud Director and vCenter Server instances that support replication

  vCloud Availability cannot be deployed to a vCloud Director system where the connected vCenter Server instances support replication and use multiple single sign-on servers. All vCenter Server instances that support replication must use the same single sign-on server. If your vCenter Server and vCloud Director instances use different single sign-on servers, the vCloud Availability Installer appliance scripts fail.

  Workaround: Before you run vCloud Availability Installer appliance scripts, assign a comma-separated list of all vCenter Server instances that must not be configured with vCloud Availability to the IGNORE_VC_SERVERS environment variable. Use the names of the vCenter Server as they are configured in vCloud Director.

  Example: export IGNORE_VC_SERVERS=vc1.west.example.com,vc2.west.example.com

• After you install and configure vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, you cannot protect a virtual machine

  After the initial installation and configuration of the provider and the tenant sides of vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, protecting a VM results with the following error: Cannot create a secure tunnel for replication to the cloud. Check the status of the vCloud Tunneling Agent service. Exception details: 'Task failed. Failed to create to-the-cloud tunnel. Cannot resolve destination ID "UUID".

  Workaround: To work around this issue, do the following:

  1. Restart the vCloud Director service by running the following command:
     service vmware-vcd restart
  2. Verify that the service is resumed by running the following command:
     service vmware-vcd status
• A tenant attempt to configure a cloud provider might result with a failure​

  A tenant configuration of a cloud provider might fail with a Permission to perform this operation is denied error. The issue occurs in vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0.1.1 environments that use vCloud Director 8.20. If you use vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0, you must explicitly assign the necessary vCloud Availability rights to the vCloud Director Organization administrator for every new organization that you create.

  Workaround: Whenever you create a new organization in vCloud Director 8.20, assign vSphere Replication Cloud Service rights to the vCloud Director administrator role. For more information, see Assign vSphere Replication Cloud Service Rights to the vCloud Director Organization Administrator Role.

• The vSphere Replication Cloud Service might get suspended during configuration

  If the vSphere Replication Cloud Service gets suspended, check the following:

  1. Log into the vSphere Replication Cloud Service appliance and verify that the vSphere Replication Cloud Service is running by using the service hcs status command.
  2. Log into the vSphere Replication Cloud Service appliance and verify that there are no errors in the /opt/vmware/hms/logs/hcs.log file.
  3. Verify the values at the vCloud Director Portal Extensibility page and the RabbitMQ entry in the registry file match. If you did not explicitly set the values during the installation, the vCloud Availability Installer appliance uses default values for the settings.

  Workaround: Verify that the values in the vCloud Director Portal Extensibility match with the values used for the installation.

  If you modify the installation values to match the vCloud Director Portal Extensibility values, run the following commands:

  • For an automated installation:
  1. Run the vcav status command.
  2. Note the number of the vSphere Replication Cloud Service configuration task.
  3. Reconfigure the vSphere Replication Cloud Service by running the following command:
     vcav next --task=number-of-the-cloud-service-configuration-task --rerun --reconfigure
  • For a manual installation: 
  1. Reconfigure the vSphere Replication Cloud Service.
     vcav hcs configure \
--hcs-address=Cloud-Service-IP-Address \
--amqp-password-file=~/.ssh/.amqp \
--cassandra-replication-factor=number-of-Cassandra-nodes \
--vcd=vcd-01-name
  2. Verify that the vSphere Replication Cloud Service starts successfully
     vcav hcs wait-for-extension \
--hcs-address=Cloud-Service-IP-Address \
--vcd=vcd-01-name

   

• Clicking Save and Restart in the Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) of the vSphere Replication Management Server might result in a failure of vCloud Availability for vCloud Director

  During the upgrade of vCloud Availability, if you click Save and Restart in the vSphere Replication Management Server VAMI, the vSphere Replication Management Service might overwrite the universal unique identifiers (UUID) in the lookup service. This causes a mismatch between the UUIDs in the vSphere Replication Management Server configuration file and the lookup service. If the vSphere Replication Management Server configuration file and the lookup service do not store the same UUIDs for the vSphere Replication Management Server, new replications cannot be configured and the existing replications cannot be managed.

  Workaround: None.

• Outgoing replications to the cloud remain in Not Active state

  After installing or upgrading vSphere Replication to version 8.1.1, if the VMware vSphere Installation Bundle for ESXi does not install, outgoing replications to the cloud remain in a Not Active state.

  Workaround: Install the missing VMware vSphere Installation Bundle for ESXi. To avoid this issue, after installing or upgrading vSphere Replication to version 8.1.1, make sure that the new vr2c-firewall.vib file is installed.

• In vSphere Replication 8.1.1, the vCloud Tunneling Service is not configured to start automatically

  If you use vCloud Availability with vSphere Replication 8.1.1, you must start and enable the vCloud Tunneling Service on the vSphere Replication Appliance.

  Workaround: To work around this issue, do the following: 

  1. Log in to the vSphere Replication Appliance console.
  2. To start the vCloud Tunneling Agent service, run the following command:
     systemctl start vcta
  3. To enable the service, run the following command:
     systemctl enable vcta
• In vSphere Replication 8.1.1, vCloud Tunneling Agent logs are not part of the vSphere Replication Support Bundle

  vSphere Replication 8.1.1 logs information about the vCloud Tunneling Agent to /opt/vmware/vcta/logs/vcloud-container-debug.log.

  Workaround: If you are troubleshooting issues with the vCloud Tunneling Agent, use SCP or Win SCP to copy the /opt/vmware/vcta/logs/vcloud-container-debug.log file from the vSphere Replication appliance.