vRealize Operations 8.6 | 12 OCT 2021

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

Build Details

VMware vRealize Operations 8.6 | 2021 | Build 18741589

VMware vRealize Operations Upgrade PAK for setups without Cloud Proxy | 2021 | Build 18741576

Note:This upgrade .pak file includes the OS upgrade files from Photon to Photon and the vApp upgrade files.

VMware vRealize Operations Upgrade PAK for setups with Cloud Proxy | 2021 | Build 18741576

Note:This upgrade .pak file includes the OS upgrade files from Photon to Photon, the vApp upgrade files, and Cloud Appliance upgrade files.

VMware vRealize Operations 8.6 Pre-Upgrade Assessment Tool | 2021 | Build 18696447

VMware vRealize Operations Cloud Appliance (vRealize Operations Cloud Proxy) 8.6 | 2021 | Build 18741588

VMware vRealize Operations Certificate Renewal PAK 8.6 | 2021 | Build 18456750

Check frequently for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

Read about the new and enhanced features in this release in Key Features and Capabilities.

Security Vulnerability Fixed

This release resolves CVE-2021-22033. For more information on the vulnerabilities and their impact on VMware products, see VMSA-2021-0021.

Product Support Notices

  • End Point Operations Management Solution

    The End Point Operations Management Solution and the related plugins have been deprecated and will not be supported.

Key Features and Capabilities

Complete revamp of product navigation for better user experience and findability. See vRealize 8.6 UI Navigation and vRealize Operations 8.6 Administration.

Support for Monitoring VMC on AWS Outposts

  • Manage and monitor VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts using the VMC on AWS integration account.

  • Optimize capacity and performance, troubleshoot, and manage compliance for virtual machines against various benchmarks.

  • Discover VMware Cloud on AWS Outpost SDDCs and configure the adapters to monitor vCenter, vSAN, and NSX-T.

  • Traverse VMware Cloud on AWS Outpost objects and view summary pages.

For more details, see VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts.

VMware Cloud on AWS Government Cloud

Introducing support for monitoring of VMware Cloud on AWS Government Cloud endpoints. See the known limitations to fully understand the limitations prior to onboarding VMware Cloud on AWS government cloud endpoints for monitoring in vRealize Operations. See the Configuring VMware Cloud on AWS Government Cloud Endpoint in vRealize Operations page for prerequisites and the procedure to monitor VMware Cloud on AWS Government Cloud endpoints.

Business Application Management

  • Provision to define your mission critical applications.

  • Supported modes:

    • Auto-discovered and monitored:

      • Service Discovery

    • Manually created which can include:

      • Application. There are two types of applications which are custom defined and known. Applications are automatically discovered via the Service Discovery adapter and Telegraf.

      • Custom group

      • Any object to tier

  • Compatible with vRealize Network Insight integrated applications and legacy applications.

    See Configuring Business Applications.

Content Management

Streamlined Data Collection Account Management

  • Single page for all the adapter configurations:

    • Cloud Accounts

    • Other Accounts

    • Integrations

    • Repository

  • Ability to visualize all the possible end points under a single pane of glass with proper categories including native and non-native management packs.

  • Improved content visualization brought in by each management pack.

  • Easy to manage Day 2 use cases:

    • Adapters with connection errors.

    See the Integrations Page.

Costing Enhancements

Capacity Enhancements

  • New 'Peak-focused' risk level in Capacity Settings for policies using the high utilization part of input data for capacity projections. Suitable for performance sensitive workloads with high spikes in utilization. See Capacity Details.

  • Ability to reset capacity computations. Allows users with the necessary admin privileges to specify the start date for capacity calculations and thereby directs the capacity predictive algorithm to ignore a portion of the old historical data that is not relevant to their future operations. See the Capacity Tab Overview.

  • Idle VM definition - Availability of several options for tuning the definition of an idle VM. See Reclamation Settings.

  • VM Shortfall - Displays how many VMs the cluster is short of. See the Capacity Tab Overview.

Capacity enhancements for storage

Simplified Troubleshooting

Global Settings Enhancement

  • Global settings are grouped into various categories and can be found through the free text search option. See List of Global Settings.

Dashboards and Views Enhancements

Admin UI Enhancements

Licensing

  • From vRealize Operations 8.6 onwards, you can apply perpetual and subscription licenses together on the same instance.

    Note: In order to handle the subscription consumption properly, the subscription licenses should be applied only after applying perpetual license.

Cloud Proxy

  • Added static IPv6 support for cloud proxy.

Native Management Packs

NSX-T

  • Enhancement to enable the remote collector to leverage proxy settings as defined in the VMware Cloud for AWS adapter configuration, for NSX-T data collection, on VMware Cloud for AWS.

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud Platform

Other Enhancements

Metrics and Properties Modifications

The following KB article describes all the metrics and properties that have been modified in vRealize Operations 8.6:

Metrics added in vRealize Operations 8.6

Instanced Metrics

Instanced metrics are disabled by default after deploying or upgrading to vRealize Operations 8.2 or later, and after importing a policy from older versions. To re-enable instanced metrics in vRealize Operations 8.2 or later, see KB 81119.

Updated Management Packs

VMware Management Packs that are updated for vRealize Operations 8.6 are:

  • SDDC Health Monitoring Solution 8.6

  • vRealize Operations Management Pack for VMware Cloud Director 8.6

  • vRealize Operations Tenant App for VMware Cloud Director 8.6

  • vRealize Operations Management Pack for vRealize Orchestrator 3.2

  • vRealize Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes 1.6

VMware vRealize Operations Certificate Renewal PAK File

An upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6 also upgrades the internal certificate, except for setups with Cloud Proxy connected. The VMware vRealize Operations Certificate Renewal PAK file must be applied on vRealize Operations 8.6 only if the internal certificate has expired and if Cloud Proxy was connected to vRealize Operations before upgrade. The internal certificate in vRealize Operations 8.6 is generated during initial deployment. See KB 71018. Cloud Proxy certificates are upgraded separately, for more details, see KB 83698.

Basic Authentication

Basic authentication using the REST API is deprecated and disabled in vRealize Operations 8.6 fresh deployments by default. Instances that have been upgraded to vRealize Operations 8.6, will inherit the same properties before the upgrade. It is recommended that you use token-based authentication instead. If you still need to enable or disable basic authentication, see KB 77271.

Active Directory Authentication Sources

Logging in to vRealize Operations with a short name will be successful only if the user name's domain suffix matches the domain name specified in the Base DN option. Otherwise, the full user name with the domain suffix is required during login. For more information, see KB 68131

System Requirements

Review this section before you install or update vRealize Operations.

Sizing and Scaling

The CPU, memory, and disk requirements that meet the needs of a particular environment depend on the number and type of objects in your environment and data collected. This includes the number and type of adapters installed, the use of HA (High Availability) and CA (Continuous Availability), the duration of data retention, and the quantity of specific data points of interest. VMware updates Knowledge Base article 2093783 with the most current information about sizing and scaling. The Knowledge Base article includes overall maximums and spreadsheet calculations that provide a recommendation based on the number of objects and metrics you expect to monitor.

Deployment Formats

You can deploy vRealize Operations 8.6 with VMware virtual appliance.

If you are deploying a vRealize Operations virtual appliance and vRealize Operations Cloud Appliance, use a VMware vSphere Client to connect to a VMware vCenter Server, and deploy the virtual appliance through the vCenter Server instance. The vRealize Operations virtual appliance and vRealize Operations Cloud Appliance must be deployed on hosts that are:

  • ESX/ESXi 6.5 Update 1 or later and managed by VMware vCenter Server 6.5 or later.

  • If you have vRealize Operations virtual appliance deployed on ESXi 6.0 or older hosts, you must first upgrade vCenter Server and ESXi to version 6.5 Update 1 or later, and then upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6.

Hardware Versions and Cipher Suites and Protocols

Hardware Versions

The minimum hardware version required for vRealize Operations 8.x releases is version 11. If your vRealize Operations virtual appliance had a hardware version earlier than 11, you must first upgrade to hardware version 11 on vRealize Operations virtual appliance and then upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6.

Cipher Suites and Protocols

For information about cipher suite lists and relevant protocols, see Cipher Suites and Protocols.

VMware Product Compatibility

VMware Product Compatibility

Note: The VMware Product Interoperability Matrix provides details about the compatibility of vRealize Operations with VMware products.

Note: For FIPS mode compatibility details, see the footnotes in the interoperability matrix. The product will not work in FIPS mode if there are footnotes that state that it will not work in FIPS mode.

Solutions and Browser Support

Solutions Support

In addition to the VMware solutions (vSphere, vRealize Log Insight, vSAN, Service Discovery, NSX-T, and many more), see the VMware Marketplace for many more solutions. These solutions work with Virtual Appliance single or multiple nodes.

Browser Support

This vRealize Operations release supports all current Web browsers, although only the following browsers were tested with this release:

  • Google Chrome: Version 91 and 92

  • Mozilla Firefox: Version 90 and 91

  • Microsoft Edge: Version 91 and 92

  • Safari: 13 and 14

Note: Support for Internet Explorer has been dropped from vRealize Operations 8.4 onwards.

SDDC Compliance

To ensure compliance of your vSphere, VMware Cloud on AWS, and vSAN 7.0, 6.7, and 6.5 objects, and also NSX-T 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5, and NSX-V 6.3.x and 6.4.x objects, vRealize Operations 8.6 includes compliance alerts for VMware vSphere Security Configuration Guides versions 6.7 Update 1 and 6.5. These security configuration guide alerts are based on the corresponding object types. Some of the alerts and symptoms are available only for backward compatibility with older versions of vSphere, even though the current release supports the latest vSphere Security Configuration Guide 6.7 Update 1.

Note: Compliance rules will work on vSphere 7.0 objects as well. However, those rules are based on vSphere Security Configuration Guide 6.7 Update 1.

Installing and Upgrading vRealize Operations

Upgrading to vRealize Operations 8.6, resets out-of-the-box content as part of the software upgrade process. This implies that the user modifications made to default content such as alert definitions, symptom definitions, recommendations, policies, views, dashboards, widgets, and reports are overwritten. You need to clone or backup the content before you upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6.

There are two different upgrade .pak files to upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6:

  • To upgrade from vRealize Operations 8.x to 8.6 without Cloud Proxy, you must download and apply the vRealize Operations Manager - Virtual Appliance upgrade .pak file without Cloud Proxy.

  • To upgrade from vRealize Operations 8.x to 8.6 with Cloud Proxy, you must download and apply the vRealize Operations Manager - Virtual Appliance upgrade .pak file with Cloud Proxy

Notes:

  • Direct upgrade from vRealize Operations 7.5 to vRealize Operations 8.6 is not supported.

  • While upgrading to vRealize Operations 8.6, the expected size of the /dev/sda for Photon OS is 20 GB (hard disk 1). For information about this requirement, see KB 75298.

  • To upgrade to vRealize Operations 8.6, you must upload the upgrade .pak file to the Master node only. Uploading it to any other node will result in a failed upgrade.

  • It is always recommended to run the Pre-Upgrade Assessment tool before an upgrade. A pre-upgrade assessment report that is generated will provide you with the recommended replacements. This tool provides you with an impact analysis following the reduction of metrics in various versions of the product. For more details on using the Pre-Upgrade Assessment Tool, see KB 85833.

Refer to the vRealize Operations Upgrade Center that has information about upgrading vRealize Operations. Refer to the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix for information about supported versions of vRealize Operations.

The vRealize Operations Information Center has detailed information about installation and software updates.

Refer to the vRealize Operations vApp Deployment and Configuration Guide that provides guidance for a vRealize Operations virtual appliance, before you install or update vRealize Operations.

Deploy vSphere with Operations Management (any edition) and vRealize Operations Standard together in one deployment.

Deploy vCloud Suite/vRealize Suite Standard, Advanced, or Enterprise and vRealize Operations Advanced or Enterprise edition together in one deployment.

Note: You can also install vRealize Operations by using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. For more information, see the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager Installation, Upgrade, and Management Guide.

Resolved Issues

For a complete list of resolved issues, see KB 87037.

  • GET/PUT call on Server Hardware HCI results in an incorrect summary (total cost)

    The GET/PUT call on the Server Hardware HCI using the new internal suite-apis /suite-api/internal/costdrivers/servergroups, results in an incorrect summary (total cost).

  • An error occurs if you modify flags while deploying cloud proxy in vCloud Director

    An error occurs if you modify the ‘Remote Collector’ and ‘IPv6’ flags that may appear while deploying cloud proxy in vCloud Director.

Known Issues

Installation and Upgrade Issues

  • VMware Cloud on AWS Government Cloud

    When you restart or upgrade cloud proxy, reconfigure the parameter values in the VMware Cloud on AWS and NSX-T Adapter configuration files.

    Workaround: See the Prerequisites section in the documentation for the details of parameters and values.

  • After you upgrade vRealize Operations from 8.4 to a later release, content upgrade and agent management actions fail

    After you upgrade vRealize Operations from a previous release, content upgrade and agent management actions fail on vRealize Operations on-prem and vRealize Operations Cloud when you also upgrade cloud proxy.

    Workaround:

    Complete the following steps:

    1. SSH to the Cloud Proxy VM.

    2. Run the following command: /rpm-content/ucp/subsequentboot.sh

    You can view the log from the following location: /opt/vmware/var/log/ucp-subsequentboot

  • Upgrade might fail if any of the nodes are running on VMs with US/Pacific-New timezone

    PostgreSQL database systems no longer support the US/Pacific-New timezone, which was just an alias for America/Los_Angeles timezone. If any of the vRealize Operations nodes are running on VMs with US/Pacific-New timezone, upgrade might fail.

    Workaround: Change VM timezones from US/Pacific-New to America/Los_Angeles, and then upgrade.

  • The Take Node(s) Offline wizard appears when you try to bring an offline RC node online

    When you try to bring an RC node back online after having just taken it offline, the Take Node(s) Offline wizard appears when you click the Take Node Offline/Online button, instead of the Take Node(s) Online wizard as expected.

    Workaround: If the node state still displays as Running or the status is still Online after having taken it offline, wait a few moments and then manually refresh the data in the view from the top menu to get the latest state of the node. After the correct state is displayed which is Not Running, the Take Node Offline/Online button will work as expected.

General Issues

  • Renaming the VMware Cloud on AWS cluster

    If a cluster is renamed in VMware Cloud on AWS, and as a result of renaming the cluster, if the management resource pool names change in VMware Cloud on AWS, then the following limitations are seen in vRealize Operations:

    • The view, "VMC Management Resource Pool" and the dashboard, "VMC Management VM Monitoring" excludes the management resource pool objects from the cluster that was renamed. As a workaround, update the filter definition for the view "VMC Management Resource Pool" to use a "contains" constraint instead of an "is" constraint for the name attribute that matches the value of "Mgmt-ResourcePool".

    • Jobs that are run through Automation Central will include the VMware Cloud on AWS management VMs instead of excluding them. Use caution with jobs as they may cause interruptions in the management VM functionality in VMware Cloud on AWS. 

  • JBoss server running in domain mode does not support LCM using custom Telegraf

    You cannot deploy jolokia.war across all the servers that run as a part of the JBoss domain mode and hence metrics cannot be collected.

    Workaround: Monitoring domain mode configuration in JBoss is supported in open source Telegraf. You can deploy jolokia.war across multiple servers.

  • The Add button in the Manage Telegraf Agents page remains activated after the creation of an application service

    While monitoring specific application services using Telegraf, the Add button in the Manage Telegraf Agents page is active after the creation of the second instance of the following application services: MSIIS, Active Directory, Sharepoint, MSExchange, and Network Time Protocol.

    Workaround: Delete the previous configurations of the specific application services and configure a new one.

  • Concurrent activation or deactivation of plugins during application monitoring using suite-api does not work

    During application monitoring using suite-api, when you activate or deactivate plugins concurrently, plugin activation or deactivation does not work. An exception is logged in the ucpapi.log file.

    Workaround: Provide a gap of one second between each thread during activation or deactivation of the plugins using suite-api.

  • When you get an application instance's configuration status using a Rest-API call, a wrong status is returned when the same configuration was installed or uninstalled previously

    If you installed or uninstalled an application instance and then uninstalled or installed it respectively, the API returns "SUBMITTING" when you try to get the application instance install or uninstall configuration status using "GET /api/applications/agents/services/{taskId}/status".

    Workaround: While getting the application instance configuration status using the "GET /api/applications/agents/services/{taskId}/status" API, ensure that you use the latest performed task ID. The result of calls with older IDs is undefined.

  • Previewing a view works incorrectly

    When you try to preview a view that was not opened recently, the preview is not displayed.

    Workaround: Click on Sample Data and then anywhere on the screen to view the preview. Refresh your browser tab afterwards, so that the workaround is applicable to other views from the left pane, which do not have a specified preview source.

  • When you upgrade from vRealize Operations 8.1 to 8.6, the Cassandra application service is displayed as Java Application in the Services Discovered/Configured column of the Manage Telegraf Agents tab

    During application monitoring, after you upgrade from vRealize Operations 8.1 to 8.6, the Cassandra application service is displayed as Java Application in the Services Discovered/Configured column of the Manage Telegraf Agents tab. This happens if the Cassandra application service is configured for monitoring in vRealize Operations 8.1, using the vRealize Application Remote Collector generic Java plugin.

    Workaround: Deactivate the Java plugin before you upgrade the vRealize Application Remote Collector agent on the VM. After upgrading the vRealize Application Remote Collector agent, the Cassandra plugin will be discovered and can then be activated.

  • System language settings affects service discovery

    Service discovery might not work if the system language is different from English. For languages different from English, network connection state values might be different from constants defined in standard RFCs.

    Workaround: None

  • Reconfigure the Project Price widget if the vRealize Automation 8.x integration is deactivated and then reactivated

    There is data missing in the Project Price widget of the Cloud Automation Project Price Overview dashboard when you deactivate and then reactivate an existing vRealize Automation 8.x integration.

    Workaround: Reconfigure the Project Price widget by completing the following steps:

    1. After you deactivate and then reactivate the vRealize Automation 8.x integration, navigate to Dashboards > vRealize Automation 8.x > Cloud Automation Project Price Overview dashboard.

    2. Edit the Project Price widget.

    3. Navigate to the Input data section.

    4. Select the '+' (Add Object) button and select the CAS World object from vRealize Automation Adapter 8.x > CAS World.

    5. Click OK.

    6. Navigate to the Output data in the same widget configuration mode. Search for and select the CAS Project Price View object from the list.

    7. Save the widget.

  • While monitoring applications, you cannot activate a plugin with the same fields till the plugin configuration is deleted

    An error message is displayed in the user interface of vRealize Operations that states the following: 'Failed to update resource: Resource with same key already exists'.

    Workaround: Manually delete the existing plugin configuration and then continue with the activation of the plugin. If the problem persists, delete the corresponding resource from the inventory.

  • Alerts from the vSAN adapter that correspond to vSAN health check tests are not canceled if the test is removed from the vSAN Health Service.

    vRealize Operations cannot detect and cancel deleted alerts.

    Workaround: Manually cancel the alert from the user interface of vRealize Operations.

  • Generated reports may be blank

    If you log in to vRealize Operations with vCenter Server credentials and generate a report, the generated report is always blank.

    Workaround: None

  • Despite deleting ucp-adapter instance certificates, users can run actions

    If users delete ucp-adapter instance certificates, they can still run actions such as, start and stop an agent, configure remote checks, and so on.

    Workaround: None

  • If you change the vRealize Operations web certificate, some adapter instances may stop collection

    Some adapter instances might stop collection after an update of the web certificate via API or from the vRealize Operations admin user interface.

    Workaround: Stop and start the impacted adapters.

  • Sorting by name in a view, results in unexpected behavior

    When you edit a view and sort by name, the number of virtual machines displayed is more than what is configured.

    Workaround: None

  • HTTP Post Adapter is deprecated in vRealize Operations 7.0 and above

    Re-enabling the HTTP Post Adapter can open vRealize Operations to security flaws.

    Workaround: Complete the steps in KB 60328.

  • The compliance score for a user with limited object visibility is the same as for a user with complete object visibility

    The compliance score is calculated for objects that are not visible (not assigned) to the current user.

    Workaround: Complete the following steps:

    1. Create a custom group with objects visible (assigned) to the user.

    2. For that group, apply a policy in which the needed set of compliance alert definitions is enabled.

      If that set is enabled only in one active policy (the one that is applied to the custom group), the compliance benchmark based on those alert definitions will display the correct score.

User Interface Issues

  • After upgrading cloud proxy and vRealize Operations to 8.6, the VM name is not appended to the MSSQL instance

    After upgrading cloud proxy and vRealize Operations to 8.6, the VM name is not appended to the MSSQL instance for existing or newly activated plugins.

    Workaround: None

  • The Last Year option in the date picker is not intuitive

    The Last Year option in the date picker indicates that the time range starts from the end of the previous month and goes back a year. It does not indicate a time range that spans one year from the current date or the whole previous year.

    Workaround: None

  • A PDF report file might not include all data from a widget that has a scrollbar

    When you generate a report that contains a custom dashboard with a widget that has a scrollbar, the downloaded PDF file might not include all the data in the widget.

    Workaround: Increase the height of the widget in the dashboard to fit all the data.

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