Year: 2016

Being a vExpert is a great acknowledgement of community contributions not just around VMware, but virtualization in general. As part of the award and recognition, many companies step up and also recognise the contributions the vExperts make. As part of this, Ravello Systems (recently acquired by Oracle) offers vExperts 1000 CPU hrs a month for Free. This is really great, and allows for the use of cloud resources for labbing and testing.
Ravello Systems is a cloud provider hosting on both Amazon and Google Cloud. The way Ravello is designed is that you create a blueprint of your servers and then fire them up and operate as required. There are some pre-made blueprints with images already loaded and there is also the ability to upload your own ISO/image to use the build of OS you require.
Today I am going to talk through setting up the Nutanix Community Edition blueprint that is readily available on Ravello.   (You can sign up and get your copy of Nutanix CE here for your home lab.) The Nutanix Community Edition is as it is called, the Community Edition. This is a free version of their Acropolis Hypervisor and Prism interface for use on your home lab.
Setting up a pre-set blueprint is simple.

1. Select the Applications Tab on the right and click on the bright orange “Create Application.” This will then open up a dialog box asking for the Name and Description of your new application. Tick “From Blueprint” and select “Nutanix Community Edition”  
2. Once created, you will see the VM sitting on the blueprint of your application. 
3. Select the Nutanix VM as this will bring up the resources tabs on the right hand side. This is where you can set your Compute, Storage and Network (including public IPs) – I will take your through these tabs, but it’s best to leave as default for this blueprint.
   The summary tab gives you a brief overview.
4. Select the General Tab, this is where you can rename the VM and give it a hostname before publishing. You can also set up a security key. 
5. The third tab is the System Tab, where you can adjust the compute for your VM. I have tried setting up with more memory, however I continue to receive errors on the blueprint – just leave as is.  Make sure you leave the “Allow Nested Virtualization” selected, otherwise you will not be able to run VMs on the Nutanix platform.
6.  Coming up fourth is the Disks Tab, this is where you can configure your disks. Nutanix uses HDD and SSD, so this are already pre-configure with heaps of room. 
7. The Network Tab allows you to set up networking. 
8. The last tab is the Services Tab, this is where you can open ports for your public IP through to your system. The main port for Nutanix is 9440 which is where your will connect through to Prism interface to manage your Nutanix Acropolis HV. There are also the SSH and sftp ports available as well as many others. 
9. Once you are happy with any changes you may have made, you can select the “Publish” button at the top of the screen.
   
10. You will then receive another box that will ask for where you would like to host your application. The two choices are Amazon and Google Cloud, there are cost benefits between the two providers and also speed benefits depending on where you are (Play around with different providers until you find one that suits – however you will need to recreate the applications). You can also set how long you would like your application to stay on for if you only need it for a certain length of time. Once you are happy  select “Publish”. This will then set up your VM in your blueprint and assign a public IP and DNS entry so you can then access the Prism interface over the internet.
11. During the application creation, there will be an hourglass displayed on your VM as it builds. This will then turn to a play button once it is on.
    
12. Once the VM is ready to be accessed, you will have both public IPs and DNS hostnames available on the right hand side under the Summary Tab. Select either DNS or IP and paste into your web browser (There are two, so you may need to try the other one).
13. If everything is up and running then you will be presented with the Prism logon screen. The default log in is admin/admin. 

That’s it. Really simple to set up Nutanix CE on Ravello Systems. Make sure that you have set up a .next account with Nutanix CE as this will be required to continue past the prism log in. As I am in Australia, I do find Ravello slow, but with a little patience it really does help, especially if you do not have a lab at home.
Thank you again for reading, I really appreciate any comments you have about this post or any others.
 
Keiran.
 

There are a few new things that have been added to vSphere 6.0 in the most recent update. One of the biggest additions and what I think is one of the coolest is the HTML5 Embedded Host Client that allows you to connect directly to the host using your Web browser, eliminating the need for the desktop client. Check out William Lam’s post on the Embedded Host Client.
For more What’s New in U2 – Check out the below release notes.
ESXi 6.0 U2
vCenter 6.0 U2
Part 1 will talk about how to update your vCenter Server Appliance with part 2 covering how to update your ESXi hosts. I’m not going to cover other components in this article, but keep in mind when you do, you will need to follow the upgrade sequence advised by VMware.  This article will cover upgrading a vCSA with an embedded PSC.
 
Updating vCSA
Note: You will be required to reboot the vCSA at the end of the update process.
First step is to log in to the vCenter Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) as root. You can do this through your supported web browser and go to the VAMI <HOSTNAME/IP>:5480.   From here you can select Update in the navigiator – this displays your current running version.

Once you have checked the current version, you will need to make sure that you are a using a valid repository to get your update from. Select Settings from the top right hand corner. In most cases it is best to leave as default, but if you have a local repository that you would prefer to use, then you can select that by choosing Use Specified Repository

Once you are happy with this, then you can click OK and select the Check Updates via URL.

Once the vCSA has finished checking for updates, you will see the update information displayed on the Updates home screen. Confirm that this is the version you are after. The Description, release date and severity of the update is outlined under More Details.

When ready, you will need to select the Install Updates on the right hand side and in most cases you would select Install All Updates unless you are only interested in the third-party updates. Once you have selected, then you will need to accept the EULA before the update will start.

The update will start and you will receive a progress bar. Select the Show details  to see a log of the progress. I have noticed that the progress bar shoots up to 40% and will sit there for some time until it will move up to 70%. My understanding is that at 40% it is downloading and 70% is installing. 

Once it reaches 100% you can click OK.

Next, select the Summary linkinside the Navigator. Here, you will find the Reboot option. You will need to click this when you are ready, the vCSA will restart reasonably quick.

To check that the update was successful, you can log back into the VAMI and click on the Update link and view the current running version.

In part 2, we will cover updating ESXi Hosts.

I you have any suggestions or want to request a blog post, please comment below or send me an email @ keiran [at] readsetvirtual.com

Thank you for reading.

Keiran.