Hot off the digital presses is vSphere 5.5 Update 2. This is a minor update, but with some important supported database updates. It’s great to see SQL Server 2014 now supported. I’m in fact surprised they supported SQL 2014 so fast, so kudos to VMware. Now if we can only get SQL AlwaysOn availability groups supported..maybe someday. You should also take note that SRM 5.8 requires vCenter 5.5 Update 2, so whenever SRM 5.8 comes out be sure to upgrade your vCenter prior to deployment. vSphere 5.5 update 2 also allows the “legacy” C# vSphere client to modify some properties (RAM, Change network port group, Remove devices, vCPU, Mount ISO, Increase disk space, reservations, Edit advanced settings)Â of HW v10 VMs. Thanks VMware! Full vCenter release notes are here.
What’s New
vCenter Server database support:Â vCenter Server now supports the following external databases:
- Oracle 12c. Important: For pre-requisite requirements, see KB 2079443.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1
- Microsoft SQL Server 2014
vCloud Hybrid Service:Â The vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) introduces a new container, Hybrid Cloud Service, on the vSphere Web Client home page. The Hybrid Cloud Service container contains the vCHS installer and the new vCloud Connector installer.
Customer Experience Improvement Program: The vSphere customer experience improvement program is introduced to collect configuration data for vSphere and transmit weekly to VMware for analysis in understanding the usage and improving the product.
And as expected, ESXi 5.5 Update 2 also came out today. No surprise here. The biggest new feature here, and which was revealed at VMworld, is the support for 6TB of RAM in an ESXi host. Not too many people will be running hosts that big, but nice to know VMware has fully tested such monster hosts. For the full ESXi release notes go here.
Each of the release notes has a very long list of resolved issues. So if you are experiencing a particular bug, be sure to see if it has been resolved in 5.5 Update 2. You may just get lucky. These updates include security patches, so better start testing them in your pre-production environments and planning prod updates in the near future. As always, test, test, test before pushing this to production hosts.
Upgraded to 5.8 and we are getting this message. Known issue in this release but unsure how to resolve.
"Incorrect error message 'Failed to Install Certificate' appears when the Site Recovery Manager extension fails to register with vCenter.
When you use a trusted user-generated certificate and Site Recovery Manager Installer shows an error of failing to install the certificate, the error might also mean Site Recovery Manager failed to register with vCenter Server."
We haven't moved to our CA-issued certs yet and are using the self-signed for now.
Just a heads up. SRM was redeployed since we weren't using it actively. Still unable to register with vCenter. Our second SRM instance registered with our second vCenter server. SRM plugin is installed but the ability to use SRM in vSphere, as far as we ca tell, has been removed leaving us just with the web client.
I want to upgrade my vcenter server to 5.5U2 first.
If I upgraded it will it breaks my CA Certs ?
I am using Microsoft CA certs
No the upgrade will keep your SSL certs in place.
Derek, have you had a chance to test this with SQL 2014? I am running into errors when I have tried.
Trying to upgrade to 5.5 U2 and getting errors about Windows Protected Storage and not enough space on the database log. Running 2012 R2 and there is plenty of storage for the db logs, but could not find the Protected Storage Service.