DEM's vs Agents in vCAC

The original functionality was all based on agents, the agent was installed to do one thing, and it could only do one thing. It connects to the manager service via SOAP, and requires installing a dedicated agent for a particular type of endpoint. The DEM communicates with the web server via REST, it does not maintain a personality like an agent, but pulls down the required workflows at runtime. This allows you to update a given workflow one time centrally, and all the DEM's will run that new version next time they execute it.

There was an architectural decision after the DEM was introduced, that new functionality would be written into the DEM type platform and originally DynamicOps was talking about moving the agent functionality into the DEMs (never happened). So you will see things like Amazon EC2, physical provisioning, calling vRO, etc. are executed by the DEM Workers, but the original core functionality of the product (vSphere, Hyper-V, etc) have associated agents that execute that work.

DEMs are used for provisioning and managing machines on:

1.       VMware® vCloud Director® and VMware vCloud® Hybrid Service™ 

2.       Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) Manager

3.       Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

4.       Amazon Web Services

5.       Physical Server Management Interfaces for Dell, HP, and Cisco

Agents are used for provisioning and managing machines and services on:

1.       Hypervisor proxy agents (VMware vSphere®, Citrix, XenServer, Hyper-V)

2.       External provisioning infrastructure (EPI)

3.       Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs)

4.       Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

The DEM can be installed as either a DEM Orchestrator or a DEM Worker. At least one DEM instance must be present for each role.  Additional instances can be added for scalability and availability.

The DEM Orchestrator provides the following functions:

a.       Monitors and manages the DEM Worker status:

                                                   i.      If a DEM Worker fails, the DEM Orchestrator shifts the workflow to another DEM Worker instance.

b.      Schedules workflows

c.       Generates workflow history for reporting

  

DEM Workers communicate with the external systems to execute workflows.
 

 

 

End of Availability (EOA) of vSphere Data Protection Advanced standalone

Starting March 01, 2015, vSphere Data Protection Advanced is consolidated into vSphere Data Protection (available through vSphere Essentials Plus Kit or higher vSphere editions, all vSphere with Operations Management editions and all vCloud Suite editions) and will no longer require the purchase of a separate license.

Existing customers who purchased VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced may continue to use the product beyond the End of Availability date of March 01, 2015. This change in packaging does not affect existing product support or functionality. VMware remains committed to offering virtual machine backup functionality through VMware vSphere Data Protection as a feature of vSphere. The existing capabilities in VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced are now available to customers who purchased vSphere Essentials Plus Kit or higher vSphere editions, vSphere with Operations Management editions, or vCloud Suite editions and are current on their Support and Subscription (SnS).

This has no Impact on existing use of the product. It also has no impact on support already purchased from VMware or the support lifecycle for the product.

 

For more information on the end of support for this product, see the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix.

 

For more information, see Frequently Asked Questions - VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced End of Availability.

 

For More Info  Check this KB

How to Change the Owner of a VM in vCAC 6.x?

Sometimes we need to change the ownership of the VM. Now the question is who can change this this can be changed by business group manager or tenant administrator but these manager's should also be the part of entitlement. So here is the procedure:-





1. Login with business group manager or tenant administrator and then select the specific vm > click on reconfigure option from actions

2. Then select the new owner and submit the request.

you can check the request status from the request tab whether it is completed successfully or not.

Change Reservation, Business Group, Blueprint & Storage of vCAC 6.x Virtual Machine

Sometimes while importing the virtual machines in vCAC Wrong Business Group or any other attribute is selected so how to change this.
A fabric administrator can change the reservation of a virtual machine. This is useful when a virtual reservation moves to a new storage path that is not available in its current reservation.
You cannot change the machine’s current compute resource, but you can move it to any reservation on that compute resource, including one belonging to a different business group. You must be a business group manager of both the original and target business groups to use this function.

Prerequisites
Log in to the vCloud Automation Center console as a fabric administrator.

 

Procedure

1	Select Infrastructure > Machines > Managed Machines.
2	Locate the virtual machine with the reservation you want to change.
3	Click Change Reservation in the drop-down menu. The Change Machine Reservation page appears.
4	Select values from the drop-down menus as required.
5	Click OK.

Changes from vCAC 5.2 in vCAC6

Guide that describes Changes from vCAC 5.2 in vCAC6. Download it from here

Source:-
VMware Technical Whitepaper

Why we need Secondary Logon Service?

Windows secondary logon allows administrators to log on with a non-administrative account and still be able to perform administrative tasks (without logging off) by running trusted administrative programs in administrative contexts. In this scenario, system administrators require two user accounts: a regular account with basic privileges, and an administrative account (this can be a different administrative account for each administrator or a single administrative account shared among administrators). 

Secondary logons address the security problems presented by administrators running programs that may be susceptible to "Trojan Horse" attacks (such as running Microsoft Internet Explorer in the administrative context while accessing a non-trusted Web site).

Even though secondary logon is primarily intended for system administrators, it can be used by any user with multiple accounts to start programs under different account contexts without the need to log off.

The Secondary Logon service is started automatically after a "clean" installation of Windows. A "clean" installation of Windows means either installing Windows on a blank hard disk, or installing Windows in a folder other than the folder in which an existing version of Windows is installed.

For More Info Refer KB:-
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/225035

VMware New Courses

Yesterday VMware released some new courses. Check out the newest courses from VMware Education Services.

Classroom and Live Online

• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V6]
• VMware vSphere: Optimize and Scale [V6]
• VMware vSphere: What’s New [V5.5 to V6]
• VMware vRealize Operations Manager: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.0]
• VMware NSX: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.1]

Self-Paced eLearning

• VMware vCloud Air Fundamentals
• VMware Exam Preparation Workshop: Network Virtualization Certified Professional (VCP-NV)

On Demand

• VMware Mirage: Install, Configure, Manage [V5.0]
  Check out the free Sneak Peek

VM Resource and Availability Service - New VMware Fling

This Fling enables you to perform a what-if analysis for host failures on your infrastructure. You can simulate failure of one or more hosts from a cluster (in vSphere) and identify how many:

• VMs would be safely restarted on different hosts
• VMs would fail to be restarted on different hosts
• VMs would experience performance degradation after restarted on a different host

With this information, you can better plan the placement and configuration of your infrastructure to reduce downtime of your VMs/Services in case of host failures.

Instructions

1. Open hasimulator.vmware.com to access the web service.
2. Click on "Simulate Now" to accept the EULA terms, upload the DRM dump file and start the simulation process.
3. Click on the help icon (at the top right corner) for a detailed description on how to use this service. To download the instructions PDF click here
4. Upload the DRS dump File here 
    
   
   
   
   
   
   DRMdiagnose reviews the DRS cluster snapshot. This snapshot contains the current cluster state and the resource demand of the virtual machines. The cluster snapshot is stored on the vCenter server. These snapshot files can be found:

1. vCenter server appliance: /var/log/vmware/vpx/drmdump/clusterX/ 
2. vCenter server Windows 2003: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdump\clusterX\
3. vCenter server Windows 2008: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\drmdump\clusterX\ 

You can use WinSCP to download this file from vCenter Appliance to Windows Machine. Download the latest timestamp file 

Source:-
VMware Flings