This is the second half of my thoughts on the vSphere 6.0 release notes. Part 1 can be found here

Disclaimer:
These are my own thought and ramblings. I think they should be questions you should be asking VMware, your TAM and the support people. These are not the only items in the Release Notes - just those that got my attention. Your mileage may differ and there may be other things that are of importance in the original document.

Takeaways:

• Another NFS 4.1 caveat.
• Makes me think that as with all new technologies – maybe we should wait until it is more stable and not jump into it feet first.

Takeaways:

• Same As Above
• It seems this is an all or nothing so no mixing between NFS versions – because this will cause problems.

Takeaways:

• Same As Above

Takeaways:

This is not really an error – but by design. It seems that people will have learn how to interact with vVOLs – as opposed to the way they are used to working.

Questions:

• Why is the default thick?
• If there are certain Storage solutions that do not support thick – then why not make the default thin?

Questions:

• If it might fail – why even give the option?
• Will it always fail? Ad if not –is there a common denominator that causes the failure?

Takeaways:

Dell and QLogic specific. Learn the implications if this is relevant to your environment.

Takeaways:

It is always good to wait a while until the worms come out of the cracks.

Questions:

Does Emulex have a solution?

Questions:

• If the features does not work – why enable it?
• Is it possible to automate this? If so how?

Takeaways:

Another whopper. If you suffer an APD (which can happen) and you are using Flash Cache. the I/O acceleration will not work properly until the VM undergoes a power cycle to re-enable functionality.

Questions:

• Is it possible to create some kind of report to find which machines can / have been affected?
• If a full power off/on required – or is a restart of the VM sufficient?

Takeaways:

This is strange – because the storage policy is based on the disk itself and should have no dependency on the VM itself.

Questions:

• What are the implications of having different storage policies for different machines?
• When will this be fixed?
• Is there a way to automate this?

Takeaways:

If you have a problem with your local RAID controller – this can cause your host to crash.

Questions:

• Is this a bug?
• With ESXi?
• The MegaRaid driver?
• When will this be fixed?

Questions:

Is it not possible to put in a check to or a delay to alleviate this problem?

Takeaways:

Again an all or nothing. Make sure that your plugins support 6.0 before the upgrade – otherwise you will not be able to use them.

Takeaways:

• There will be certain cases that adding a new LUN will require a full reboot of the host.
• Check to see if this is relevant to your environment

Questions:

If the LUN is added – not by the storage array tool – will this also happen?

Takeaways:

• Seems to be another LSI issue.
• Will not display in any event – and can only be obtained from the CLI.

Questions:

If the the information is there – why is it not displayed?

Takeaways:

Evidently a bug

Questions:

When will it be fixed?

Takeaways:

Wasn’t the purpose of having Host Profiles being able to take a current host and make a profile from it?

Questions:

• Won’t changing the IP address of the Host (to a static one) cause a disconnect of the host?
• Will this effect VM’s?
• Can this be done live?

Questions:

• Why done they restart?
• Windows Only?
• is service-control for both the Windows vCenter and the appliance?

Takeaways:

Good to know this information.

Takeaways:

If I remember correctly the service console was retired with ESXi 5.0 – Quite a while back? Was that not enough time to remove this?

Takeaways:

This is really a case of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)

Questions:

• Can or will this be fixed?
• Was this also an issue in previous versions?

Takeaways:

Using the Web client doesn’t always seem to work. It seems that it would be a good idea to use one or the other client but not mix and match.

Takeaways:

I guess permissions are not always what they seem – you might need a little something extra.

Takeaways:

Who was the genius who chose this name

Questions:

• Is this being worked on with the Anti-virus vendors to solve this?
• Who says that if I copy it back to the location – that the AV will not quarantine it again (whack-a-mole anyone)?

Takeaways:

administrator@vsphere.local is the all powerful being!!

Questions:

• Evidently this is a bug – when will it be fixed?
• Why does only the administrator user have the rights to do this – I assumed that the roles should have solved this?

Questions:

• Then why is the options there?
• And happens if I really need to isolate a vCenter server?

Takeaways:

That must also effect hardware alarms as well then

Questions:

• When will this be fixed?
• Will this affect my current environment?

Takeaways:

Have to look at the documentation

Questions:

• Isn’t the bash console enable by default?
• Where do they have to be uploaded to?

Takeaways:

But VMware wants us to stop using the “legacy Windows client” – don’t they? This is another reason to keep it.

Questions:

• How does the Web client know that I am running vCenter inside a Windows machine?
• Does that mean that VMware Tools is reporting also back on the applications inside?

Takeaways:

Don’t change the SSO domain.

Questions:

• What happens if I really have to change the SSO domain?
• Is there is a workaround?

Takeaways:

Yep another reason to keep the Windows Client :)

Takeaways:

• Test in the lab
• Will I need to remove a host every time I make a change to my storage?

Questions:

• So does this mean that I need to remove the host from the inventory every time I want to add / remove a datastore?
• Should the host be vacated before I make changes to storage?
• What happens to all the statistics that I had on the host before hand?

Questions:

• Which services?
• When will this be fixed?

Takeaways:

• Don’t go full screen!
• Better get learning those keyboard shortcuts

Questions:

Then who is it readable by?

Takeaways:

It seems that I will need to allow System.Read on the vCenter for all user that need access to performance charts.

Questions:

Why was this privilege added to 6.0 ?

Takeaways:

• There are some things that will break if you change passwords
• Don’t tell OPSEC (shhhhhh……)

Questions:

What do you think auditors will do when they find that there is a password that can do anything they wan tin the whole environment that has never been changed?

Questions:

Why am I allowed to choose the option if it is not supported?

Takeaways:

vSphere Web client will time out after an hour.

Questions:

Can the timeout be extended with a configuration changed?

Questions:

When will this be fixed?

Takeaways:

Nested Groups do not work, even though they should.

Questions:

When will this be fixed?

Takeaways:

Don’t refresh your browser when working with the web client.

Takeaways:

Multiple management interfaces to manage something that was integrated before sucks.

Takeaways:

Good to know.

Questions:

If it is disabled why is vMotion still taking this into account?

Questions:

Evidently a bug. When will it be fixed?

Takeaways:

But did you just not say a few minutes ago that you should never refresh the web browser??

Questions:

• How will it impact performance?
• What other options are there?

Takeaways:

When is an error not an error??

Questions:

When will this be fixed?

Takeaways:

• Again mix and max problems with versions.
• And yes the Windows client is still in use.

Takeaways:

This is ridiculous. I am exporting a VM and I need to configure it manually as well? What is the use of the export then?

Takeaways:

vMotion problems sometimes have nothing at all to do with what you think.

Questions:

Why should an external process like profile storage have an effect on vMotion? DRS as well I assume?

Takeaways:

Consolidation ratios!! If you are anywhere near that – then beware!

Questions:

Why allow the delete – if the datastore is not accessible?

Takeaways:

Got to love generic error messages.

Questions:

When will the non-informative error be fixed?

Takeaways:

Then who can read it?

Questions:

• Which tasks?
• How do Upload or export items then?

Takeaways:

If using a UNC – the vCenter has to be in the same domain as the storage.

Questions:

• Subdomains?
• Forest Trusts?

Questions:

If it is irrelevant – then why is it still there?

Takeaways:

Storage vMotion between different datastores – could have unexpected consequences.

Questions:

Is it not possible to raise an alert?

Takeaways:

Don’t use the vSphere client – unless you need to.

Questions:

Would it be more correct to raise a proper error?

Questions:

Evidently a bug – when will it be fixed?

Questions:

Does this mean that I need to cancel out of the wizard and start over?

Questions:

Evidently a bug – when will it be fixed?

Takeaways:

Damn! Just when I thought ESXi was a supported OS…

Questions:

• Does it work on the appliance?
• What happens with alarms?

Questions:

So does Autodeploy work or not?

That concludes my thoughts and questions on the new release.

I hope that this was useful, and will help you adopt the new versions, safely and properly in your environment.