Category: vCenter [en]

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vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3e released

VMware has released a patch update 3e for vCenter. This is a maintenance release and primarily adds updates for vSphere with Tanzu. There are also separate release notes for vSphere with Tanzu.

What’s New?

  • Added Network Security Policy support for VMs deployed via VM operator service – Security Policies on NSX-T can be created via Security Groups based on Tags. It is now possible to create NSX-T based security policy and apply it to VMs deployed through VM operator based on NSX-T tags.
  • Supervisor Clusters Support Kubernetes 1.22 – This release adds the support of Kubernetes 1.22 and drops the support for Kubernetes 1.19. The supported versions of Kubernetes in this release are 1.22, 1.21, and 1.20. Supervisor Clusters running on Kubernetes version 1.19 will be auto-upgraded to version 1.20 to ensure that all your Supervisor Clusters are running on the supported versions of Kubernetes.

Check before update

If you upgraded vCenter Server from a version prior to 7.0 Update 3c and your Supervisor Cluster is on Kubernetes 1.9.x, the tkg-controller-manager pods go into a CrashLoopBackOff state, rendering the guest clusters unmanageable

Read KB 88443 for a workaround.

Test K8s Version

Make sure you’re on a supported K8s version.

Menu > Workload Management > Subervisor Clusters

The image above indicates we’re already on version 1.21, which is good for an update.

Update

Before updating your VCSA make sure you have a configuration backup! An optional VM snapshot is a good idea too. It might help to revert settings fast in case something goes wrong.

You can either apply the update from VAMI or from the shell. The image below shows an overview of the new packages with this update.

After the update is installed you will have an option to deploy a new Kubernetes version in your Supervisor Control Plane.

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VMware vSphere 7.0 U3c released

What happened to vSphere 7.0 U3 ?

vSphere 7.0 Update 3 was initially released on October 5, 2021. Shortly after release, there were a number of issues reported by customers, so on November 18, 2021, all ESXi versions 7.0 U3a, U3b, U3c, as well as vCenter 7.0 U3b were withdrawn from VMware’s download area. VMware explains details of the issue in KB 86191.

The main reason was a duplicate driver i40en and i40enu for Intel 10 GBit NICs X710 and X722 in the system. A check on the CLI returns a result quickly. Only one result may be returned here.

esxcli software vib list | grep -i i40
one result good – two results bad 😉

Hosts with both drivers will potentially have HA issues when updating to U3c, as well as issues with NSX.

What’s new with Update 3c ?

On 27 January 2022 ( 28 January 2022 CET) the new Update 3c was released and is available for download. Besides fixing the issues from previous Update 3 versions (KB 86191), the main feature is the fix for the Apache Log4j vulnerability (VMSA-2021-0028.10).

All users and customers who had installed one of the withdrawn updates 3 at an early stage are highly recommended to update to version U3c.

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NSX-T vSphere-Client Integration

One of the new features of vSphere 7.0 Update 3 is that you can now manage NSX-T directly from the vSphere Client. In the new menu of the vSphere client UI, you will now find a section dedicated to NSX.

Opening this section currently brings up an NSX-T status information page. At this current stage, we are able to deploy new NSX-T instances, but existing NSX-T installations won’t be discovered.

Why is that?

As usual, a look at the Release Notes helps. There you’ll find the following statement for vCenter 7 Update 3:

You can see the vSphere Client NSX-T home page that enables the feature, but it does not work with NSX-T Data Center 3.1.x or earlier.

The most recent NSX-T version is 3.1.3 [as of 11/15/2021]. This means we have to wait for NSX-T version 3.2 until the integration works.

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vCenter Server update planner at work

I’d like to point your attention to a new and useful feature which was introduced with vSphere 7 update 2. It is easily being overlooked in the abundance of new features, but it does a very good job in the prior to a vCenter update.

A requirement for the Update Planner is participation in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP).

The first sign of a new vCenter update is a notification banner at the top of vSphere Client.

Clicking on “View Updates” will take you directly to the Update Planner. This can also be found in the menu. To do this, select the vCenter in the Hosts & Clusters view and select “Updates” > vCenter Server > Update Planner in the menu bar at the top right.

All currently available updates are being displayed. In the case shown below, the vCenter is already at 7.0 Update 2, so only one possible update is listed. If several possible updates are available, the Update Planner can check the compatibility against all of them. To do this, select the radio button of the desired update (red box).

Once an update is selected, the action field “Generate Report” turns blue and shows the two possible sub-items “Interoperability” and “Pre-Update Checks“.

Interoperabilty Checks

The Interoperability Check verifies not only the ESXi hosts but also the compatibility with other VMware products registered in vCenter.

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