VMware vSphere 6.7 has been announced by VMware recently and there are many enhancement and new features are available with this release.In this post I am sharing details about new features and enhancements of vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 .
VCSA 6.7 Improved Architecture
The major change for the vCenter Server Appliance , simplified architecture. All vCenter Server services are running on a single instance with all the function .
- vCenter Server with Embedded PSC with Enhanced Linked Mode
- High availability no longer requires a load balancer and fully supports native vCenter Server High Availability.
- SSO Site boundaries have been removed which provides flexibility of placement.
- Supports vSphere scale maximums.
- TLS 1.0 has been removed and using TLS 1.1
- 15 deployments allowed in a vSphere Single Sign-On Domain.
- Node management and maintenance is reduced
- Built-in Migration Tool will support to import the historical and performance data during a migration .
- Migration Toll will show estimated time of each option on migration window will take when migrating .
- You will have option to pause and resume while doing the migration of data in background .
- Migration from Windows vCenter to VCSA support custom ports if it has been configured in windows vCenter.
- New HTML5 clarity UI
vSphere Client (HTML5)
With new HTML5 client new enhancement came ,now it supports below workflows . But still all the functions are not fully supported , VMware is still working to reach to 100 % .
- Licensing
- Content Library
- vSAN
- Storage Policies
- Host Profiles
- vSphere Update Manager
- vDS Topology Diagram
vMotion and EVC
vSphere 6.7 enhanced vMotion capability , now it supports vMotion across vCenter Server versions up to 6.0 U3.With vSphere 6.7 you will have option to EVC on VM level and it is available Per-VM EVC. This will help you to move the VMs across clusters, datacenters, vCenters, and VMware Cloud on AWS. EVC .Also to support Per-VM EVC your virtual machine should be on the latest VM compatibility version 14 .
Monitoring & Management
- First the user interface is fully improved , VAMI is updated with Clarity user interface , Clarity UI.
- Dedicated to monitoring option available and you can see CPU, memory, network,disks and database utilization.
- More Security option on password requirements
- Increased the supported number of syslog forwards as three
- More flexibility in selecting patches and updates. Information about each patch or update is available such as type, severity, and if a reboot is necessary. Either you can stage or stage and install a patch or update from the VAMI.
- All the services related VCSA, their startup type, health, and state are visible here. Also you have the option to start, stop, and restart services if needed.
Built in backup and Restore Feature
- Backup scheduler to schedule the backups of their vCenter Server Appliances and select how many backups to retain.
- From activity section you will get detailed information of file based backup.
- The Restore workflow is available on backup archive browser and all your backups will be listing there .
vCenter Server CLI Installation
One of the enhancement with cli installer to manage the vCenter Server Appliance is availability of JSON template examples with vCenter ISO. These JSON templates are a way to ensure consistency across installs, upgrades, and migrations. Usually, you have to run one JSON template from the cli installer at a time in the correct order. This manual per-node deployment is now a thing of the past with batch operations. With batch operations, several JSON templates can be run in sequence from a single directory without intervention.
There is now a templates schemas directory under the CLI installer directory.
Repointing Tool
One of the enhancements which I liked with VCSA repointing option with cmsso-util command like tool. It is not anew feature , it was not available in vSphere 6.5 and makes a return in vSphere 6.7. This is using to repointing an external vCenter Server Appliance across SSO Sites within a vSphere SSO domain.
Additionally you can now repoint your vCenter Server Appliance across vSphere SSO domains. Can you say consolidation? The domain repoint feature only supports external deployments running vSphere 6.7. Built-in the domain repoint feature has a pre-check option which generates any discrepancies before repointing. The pre-check compares the two vSphere SSO domains and lists any discrepancies in a conflict JSON file. This is your opportunity resolve any of the discrepancies before running the domain repoint tool. The tool can migrate licenses, tags, categories, and permissions from one vSphere SSO Domain to another.
