VMware vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 Release Notes

VMware vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 | 16 DEC 2021 | Build 19067043 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
• Configuration Maximums
• Supported Browsers
• Upgrade
• Known Issues

What's New

The VMware vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 release introduces the following:

• New Horizon Collector
  • Partners can now meter Horizon deployments starting with Horizon 7.10 and up. Please note: Horizon metering does not include NSX for Desktop or VSAN for Desktop metering, and partner cannot mix VDI and vSphere VM workloads.
• Multiple Collector Enhancements:
  • NSX
    • Several features are now metered like Federation, IDS/IPS, and VRF
    • Plus enhancements to BGP / Dynamic Routing and IPv4/6
  • VSAN
    • Several features are now metered like Data in Transit Encrytion, Shared Witness, Cloud Native Storage, and HCI Mesh
  • vRealize Operations
    • Removal of Auto-Discovery
      • Partners utilizing vCloud Usage Meter must add each vRealize Operations Manager instance manually. Partners connecting to a vRealize Operations Manager instance without also connecting the vCenter Server will only report Unmanaged Per VM based usage.
      • Partner utilizing highly available deployments can implement the virtual IP of the vRealize Operations Manager deployment
    • License Groups Supported
      • partners can create groups in vROps and assign license keys. The highest edition key in the group will be used to determine the edition to apply to the group of objects.
      • vROps supports mixing Advanced and Enterprise editions on the same instance, and partners can pick and choose between those edition by using license key assignment and grouping. No other editions are supporting for mixing at this time.
      • Metering of vRealize Operations servers version 8.6 or above supports license edition measurement on a Virtual Machine level. For information, see Metering vRealize Operations Manager.
• Virtual Appliance Management Interface (VAMI)
  • Similar to the VAMI found on vCenter Server, several features are available for appliance management at
    https://<UM IP/FQDN>:5480
  • Features Available:
    • CPU, RAM, and Disk Resource Monitoring
    • Network Configuration
      • IP, Hostname, and DNS
      • HTTP/S Proxy
      • Local Firewall Rules
    • SSH Access Management
    • SYSLOG forwarding
• Reverse Proxy Support
  • Partners can add products with different FQDN's but use the same IP address behind a reverse proxy as part of connecting to and metering products.
• Hashing Control
  • Full or Select Opt-Out of anonymization
    • Partners can opt-out of data anonymization of some or all fields sent to VMware in an effort to make generated reports more usable, like opting out of hashing the VM ad vCenter Server names to make it easier to read the Virtual Machine History Report.
  • Anonymization with Redaction
    • Partners can choose to replace all anonymized fields with the same string like "REDACTED" and then hash that replacement string across anything that is anonymized. Reducing data visibility and readability for anyone and everyone.
• User Account Changes
  • The user account passwords for the root, usagemeter, and umauditor user accounts expire after 90 days. You can configure the parameters for password expiration. For information, see How do I change the password expiration parameters for the vCloud Usage Meter user accounts.
  • This release introduces support for a new user account, called umscheduler. You do not need to configure a password for this user account. The umscheduler user account does not have access to SSH.

For information about the compatibility of vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 and optional VMware products, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix.

Configuration Maximums

To view the tested scale and the VMware-recommended concurrency limits, see VMware Configuration Maximums.

Supported Browsers

The vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 Web application is compatible with the following Web browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Microsoft Edge

vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 is tested against the following Web browser versions.

Windows 10

• Google Chrome 96.0.4664.45
• Microsoft Edge (64-bit) 96.0.1054.34
• Mozilla Firefox    91.3.0esr

macOS Big Sur 11.6.1 (20G224)

• Google Chrome 96.0.4664.55
• Apple Safari 15.1
• Mozilla Firefox    94.0.1

CentOS 7

• Google Chrome 96.0.4664.45
• Mozilla Firefox    68.10.0esr

Upgrade

You can install vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 as an in-place upgrade on top of vCloud Usage Meter 4.x. For information, see Upgrading and Migrating the vCloud Usage Meter Appliance.

If you are upgrading from vCloud Usage Meter 4.1.x to version 4.5, in the vCloud Usage Meter Web interface, you must manually accept the certificates for all metered product servers.

To ensure the automatic aggregation and reporting of the monthly product consumption data, after a successful upgrade from version 4.4 or earlier to version 4.5, VMware recommends that you do not revert to the snapshot of the source vCloud Usage Meter appliance.

Known Issues

• When editing or auditing a customer rule, all objects that are part of the rule appear as Not Found

  If you delete an object from an inventory of a registered vCenter Server instance and that object is part of a customer rule, when editing or auditing the rule, all objects that are part of the rule appear as Not Found. vCloud Usage Meter displays all the selected objects with their MoRef IDs. Moreover, when auditing the rule, all the objects appear in the Missing Target Objects tab even though not all of them are deleted.

  Workaround: Edit the customer rule by manually deselecting the deleted objects from the Selected objects list.

• vCloud Usage Meter fails to collect vSAN data when all ESXi hosts for a vSAN cluster are disconnected

  If all ESXi hosts, which are part of a vSAN cluster, are disconnected, vCloud Usage Meter fails to collect the vSAN data in the following circumstances:

  • when the vSAN cluster uses the Duplication feature

  • when the vSAN cluster does not use the Duplication feature, but the version of the registered vCenter Server instance associated with the cluster is below 7.0 Update 3.

  As a result, you receive a Partial collection failure: VSAN notification in the Notifications window of vCloud Usage Meter Web interface.

  You might observe the following error messages in the vccol_main.log/vccol_error.log file.

  • When the vSAN cluster uses the Duplication feature

  ERROR --- [vCenter collector thread] com.vmware.um.vccollector.VCCollector: VSAN stage raised exception java.lang.NullPointerException java.lang.NullPointerException: null

  • When the vSAN cluster does not use the Duplication feature, but the version of the registered vCenter Server instance associated with the cluster is below 7.0 Update 3.

  ERROR --- [vCenter collector thread] com.vmware.um.vccollector.VCCollector    : VSAN stage raised exception com.sun.xml.ws.fault.ServerSOAPFaultException: Client received SOAP Fault from server: ‘>’ not supported between instances of ‘NoneType’ and ‘int’ Please see the server log to find more detail regarding exact cause of the failure. com.sun.xml.ws.fault.ServerSOAPFaultException: Client received SOAP Fault from server: ‘>’ not supported between instances of ‘NoneType’ and ‘int’ Please see the server log to find more detail regarding exact cause of the failure.

  The inaccurately collected vSAN usage data affects the units in the reports.

  Workaround: None. Check why all the ESXi hosts, which are part of the vSAN cluster, are disconnected.

• New In the Virtual Machine History report, the license edition for the metered vRealize Operations instance is different than the expected one

  If the version of the metered vRealize Operations instance is 8.10 or later, vCloud Usage Meter reports the detected virtual machines against the highest vRealize Operations edition associated with the product and does not take licence groups into consideration. That might result in a different than the expected license edition for the metered vRealize Operations instance in the Virtual Machine History report.

  Workaround: If only one license is active in vRealize Operations, delete the other licenses so that vCloud Usage Meter can report the detected virtual machines against the active license. If many licenses are active, there is no workaround.

• vCloud Usage Meter does not send email notifications in case of partial collection failure for vSAN and SRM

  vCloud Usage Meter does not send email notifications in case of partial collection failure for vSAN and SRM. Partial collection failure issues are displayed as error messages in the Notifications window of the vCloud Usage Meter Web interface.

  Workaround: None.

• The displayed DNS server in the vCloud Usage VAMI is wrong

  The DNS server dispayed in the vCloud Usage VAMI is wrong. The issue persists even after editing the DNS settings.

  Workaround: None. Upgrade to vCloud Usage Meter 4.6.

• The status of the metered NSX-T instance is Incomplete collection after NSX Service Insertion feature collection failure

  For NSX-T versions 4.0.x, collection of the data for the NSX Service Insertion feature fails with the following error observed in /opt/vmware/cloudusagemetering/var/logs/nsxt_error.log.

  Feature detector PacketInspectionDetector raised exception com.vmware.um.collector.UnexpectedResponseCode: API endpoint api/v1/serviceinsertion/sections on server 25 returned HTTP status 404

  As a result, the status of the metered NSX-T instance is Incomplete collection.

  Workaround: None. For more information, see the following KB: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/89145.

• The Monthly Usage report contains metered data for vSAN license editions that are different from the expected ones

  For vCenter Server/vSAN versions 7.0 Update 1 and above, if the vSAN cluster in a registered vCenter Server instance uses one of the Shared Witness or the Stretched Cluster features, the Monthly Usage report contains metered data for vSAN license editions that are different from the expected ones.

  Also, the number of the features associated with the cluster in the vsanFInt column of the Cluster History report is incorrect.

  Workaround: None. Use the Partner Connect Program Product Usage Guide to calculate the usage data manually or upgrade to vCloud Usage Meter 4.6.

• The Cluster History report does not contain the metered product consumption data for vSAN Cloud Native Storage

  If the vSAN Cloud Native Storage feature for a registered vCenter Server instance is not in a vSphere with Kubernetes/ Tanzu environment,  the Cluster History report does not contain the product consumption data for the respective vSAN Cloud Native Storage.

  Workaround: None. Upgrade to vCloud Usage Meter 4.6.

• The status of the registered NSX-V Manager instance is Credentials verified

  The Credentials verified message appears in the Status column of the registered NSX-V Manager instance.

  Workaround: None. The status changes to OK in an hour.

• vCloud Usage Meter reports twice the product consumption for a re-registered Horizon DaaS instance

  If you remove a Horizon DaaS instance from vCloud Usage Meter and re-register it again in the same month, vCloud Usage Meter reports twice the product consumption for this instance.

  This happens because Horizon DaaS does not have unique ID and after every registration, the instance is assigned a new ID. As a result, vCloud Usage Meter considers the re-registered Horizon DaaS instance as a new instance.

  Workaround: None. After removing a Horizon DaaS instance, if you want to re-register it in the same month, contact VMware Global Support.

• vCloud Usage Meter loses the proxy settings and stops sending product consumption data

  Some time after configuring a proxy server, vCloud Usage Meter looses the proxy settings. As a result, vCloud Usage Meter stops sending product consumption data.

  Workaround:

  1. SSH to the vCloud Usage Meter console as usagemeter.
  2.  Navigate to the opt/vmware/cloudusagemetering/conf/ file.
  3. In the nginx.conf file, activate the proxy server option.
     a. Open the nginx.conf file for editing.
     vi nginx.conf
     b. Add the following line to the file.
     jvm_options "-Dproxy_config=/tmp/vami-file";
     c. Save the nginx.conf file.
     :wq!
  4. Stop the gateway service.
      a. navigate to the /opt/vmware/cloudusagemetering directory.
     cd /opt/vmware/cloudusagemetering
     b. Run the script.
     ./scripts/stop.sh GW
  5. Start the gateway service again.
     ./scripts/start.sh GW
  6. Log in as root.
  7. Reboot the appliance.
  8. In the vCloud Usage Meter VAMI, set up the proxy server. For information, see How do I set up a proxy server.
• After upgrading to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, vCloud Usage Meter stops metering Site Recovery Manager

  After upgrading to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, the metering of the registered Site Recovery Manager instance fails. The vCloud Usage Meter log files displays the following error message.
  Unknown Failure HTTP transport error: org.bouncycastle.tls.TlsFatalAlert: certificate_unknown(46) ::

  Workaround: To workaround this issue, follow the steps in the https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/87221 KB article.

• After deploying or upgrading to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, the system stops creating the umhealth_<date>.log log files​

  After deploying a new vCloud Usage Meter 4.5 appliance or upgrading to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, the system stops running the umhealth cron jobs. As a result, the daily umhealth_<date>.log log files are missing from the opt/vmware/cloudusagemetering/var/logs/ directory.

  In vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, the local user account umscheduler runs the umhealth cron jobs. The system stops running the umhealth cron jobs, because the umscheduler account does not have sufficient privileges.

  Workaround: Upgrade to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5.0.1.

• After upgrading from vCloud Usage Meter 4.1.x to version 4.5, the status for a product consumption server becomes blank

  In vCloud Usage Meter 4.1.x, if a product consumption server cannot be metered due to invalid credentials or certificate, after upgrading to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, the status for this product consumption server becomes blank.

  Workaround: Delete the product consumption server and re-register it with vCloud Usage Meter 4.5.

• Site Recovery Manager consumption data is missing from the product consumption report

  If you configure Storage Profile Protection Groups (SPPG) on a Site Revovery Manager instance, vCloud Usage Meter cannot collect product consumption data from the virtual machines associated with the SPPG.

  Workaround: There is no workaround at this time.

• After upgrade to vCloud Usage Meter 4.5, SSH to the vCloud Usage Meter console results in a WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! error message

  After upgrade to this release, when you SSH for the first time to the vCloud Usage Meter console, you receive an error message.
  WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!
  This happens because after upgrading, the vCloud Usage Meter host ID is changed in the library.

  Workaround: From the known_hosts file, delete the old host ID, and accept the new one.

  1. Log in to the vCloud Usage Meter console as root.
  2. Open the known_hosts file for editing by using a text editor such as vi.
     vi /etc/known_hosts
  3. Delete the old host ID.
  4. Save the /etc/known_hosts file.
     :wq!
  5. SSH to the vCloud Usage Meter console and confirm the connection to the host ID.