Q & A

I thought it would be a good idea to start a FAQ page. If you have a question that you have been unable to find an answer too, post it in the comments section of this article page and I will try to find a solution.

Over time I hope to be able to build a nice FAQ section.

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27 Responses to Q & A

  1. rjanakangnax January 31, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

    In a mulitple cell vcd setup, once you provide response file and the installation is completed and configured, I can see the 2nd cell under “Cloud Cells” . However ,the “vcenter” is not checked as shown in your diagram (except the primary cell has vcenter selected). Do I have to login to the web interface of cell2 and provide license keys, configure vcenter/vshield manager to use it? I am not able to see the web interface of vcd cell2. So not sure if it is a expected behavior.

    Thanks in advance!

  2. davehill February 2, 2011 at 8:43 am #

    Answer has been left on the FAQ page, thanks for your question.

    http://www.davidhill.co/faq/

  3. Simon Reynolds July 6, 2011 at 8:41 pm #

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for a really useful blog. I have a few questions — I’ve tried to find the info elsewhere. Any light shed on the following would be great:

    1) There is one vCloud Director (vCD) database.

    a) What happens to the abilty of Organization Admins, and vCloud System Admins, to access the cloud if the vCD database dissappears?
    b) If I restore the vCD from last night’s backup will it “sync” to the present state of the cloud by querying the VC server databases and by using any “cached” info on the vCloud Director cells?
    c) What if I have no vCD database backup and create a new vCD database?

    2) Within vCloud Director when you configure a firewall for a routed network you are configuring vShield edge device. The VMware Service Provider Program Product Usage Guide Q2 2011 says (on page 23) that VMware vShield for VMware vCloud Director can set firewall policies based on 5-tuples (source ip, source port, destination ip, destination port, portocol).

    But when you configure the firewall in the vCloud Director interface there doesn’t seem to be a way of configuring the 5-tuple — all you have in the dialog box is internal ip, port and protocol. Is this just the way it is in vCloud Director 1.0.

    3) When a vApp VM is noted in the vCloud Director interface as “Partially powered off” — what does that mean? The vSphere client shows the VM as powered off.

    Cheers

    Simon

  4. Sudhanshu dev November 24, 2011 at 7:00 am #

    Can we use a single Vshield with multiple Vcloud?

    • davehill November 26, 2011 at 11:18 am #

      You have to deploy a vshield manager with every vCenter connected to a vCloud Director.

  5. Ashok December 14, 2011 at 7:18 am #

    hi,

    I wanted to know the procedure to Add the new Esx Host to VCD and increase the Resources for existing cloud setup.

    Thanks in Advance
    Ashokv

    • davehill February 3, 2012 at 12:04 pm #

      Simply add the new host to the cluster providing your PvDC, then under Manage and Monitor, then hosts, highlight the new host, right click and select Prepare host. this will then deploy the vCD agent to that host.

  6. swapnil January 31, 2012 at 7:25 am #

    How to retrieve underlying cluster or resource pool from provider vdc using VCloud API. I have got Provider vdc using following api

    VcloudAdmin admin=client.getVcloudAdmin();
    ProviderVdc pvdc=ProviderVdc.getProviderVdcByReference(client, admin.getProviderVdcRefByName(null));

  7. Yair February 3, 2012 at 11:39 am #

    When importing a vApp from vSphere in VCD 1.5 using “move” (and not “copy”), it seems that VCD will always clone it to the datastore that has the most free space. Obviously, this takes a non-trivial amount of time for large vApps. Is there a way to prevent VCD from cloning the vApp?

    • davehill February 3, 2012 at 12:00 pm #

      Thats correct, vCloud Director always carries out a clone operation even when selecting a move. It then deletes the previous copy after the clone process has completed. There is no way to prevent the cloning as of v1.5 I am afraid. You are not the first person to highlight this.

  8. Yair February 3, 2012 at 11:42 am #

    Regarding my question above, I’m assuming, of course, that the vApp resides on a datastore that belongs to the relevant VDC. Even in this case, VCD will first clone it to another DS that belongs to the VDC (the one that has the most free space).

    • davehill February 3, 2012 at 12:01 pm #

      You are correct, vCD always selects the least used datastore, regardless of the operation.

  9. Yair February 3, 2012 at 12:08 pm #

    Thanks for the answer, Dave. That’s indeed unfortunate.

    Would it be possible to detach the VM’s disks, import it to VCD (without cloning, since the VM has no disks), and then re-attach the disks to the VM at the vCenter level? Or does VCD not like it when disks are added without its involvement?

    • davehill May 3, 2012 at 2:11 pm #

      You should never manage VMs outside of vCD. This potentially can cause issues. Always manage the VMs within vCD.

  10. Ketan Risbud February 17, 2012 at 12:58 am #

    When performing vMotion of a vCloud Director virtual machine to a different datastore from vSphere Client, vMotion fails and throws an error “A specified parameter was not correct.”

    When you power off the VM, you can migrate it to a different datastore.

    • davehill May 3, 2012 at 2:10 pm #

      Make sure the data stores are part of the Provider vDC and not separate ones

  11. Graeme Ash May 15, 2012 at 6:37 am #

    Hello,

    I am trying to get some scenarios sorted out and have only found a few answers on yours and others blogs. Hopefully you can help.
    We are looking to import VMs from a customer via one of the following methods:

    1. OVF export from vCenter and upload into vCD
    2. OVF Export from vCenter , import OVF to resource vCenter and then Import to vCD
    3. Use OVFTool to export and then import into vCD

    Q1. For each option I am trying to find out if they would go via the shared NFS share on the cells before being written to the Org vDCs storage. This will then allow me to calc the overall export / import process time.
    Q2. If they all go via the share, I assume it has to be as large as the largest VM being imported?
    Q3. Also in the vCD 1.5 Users Guide it states compressed OVFs are not supported in vCD, is this the case if you use OVFTool tool to import instead?

    Cheers for your help.
    Graeme

  12. davehill May 15, 2012 at 9:43 am #

    Answers to your questions:

    A1: Whenever you perform an upload to vCD, it uses the NFS share (correct name Transfer share) as a staging area. It will always go there before being written to the vDC storage.

    A2: Correct, the share has to have enough free space to cover the largest upload.

    A3: Compressed OVF’s are not supported for 1.5 even using OVFTool.

    My preference for your task would be option 1, least amount of headache. You export once, and import once. Option 2 only adds another import export process.

    Have you considered vCloud Connector? Makes this a lot easier, with built in workflows? Have a look it is a free application from VMware for this specific task. Also allows you to add multiple vCloud’s and see everything from a vCenter plugin.

    • Graeme May 16, 2012 at 12:36 am #

      Hello Dave,

      Thanks for your quick reply.
      Those answers are great.
      We have have looked at vCC but with a small VPLS link and a few TBs of VMs, it doesn’t really work.
      Thanks again.

      Graeme

  13. pushpa June 21, 2012 at 12:38 pm #

    VM is powered off on esxi server but on vcloud directory status shows as

    powering on, this busy status continues to be their for days.

    Please help on this issue

    • davehill June 23, 2012 at 9:32 am #

      Try resetting the vCenter connection. As a vCloud admin goto administration then vcenters, right click on the vcenter. If you have more than one cell you could try changing the proxy.

  14. site February 11, 2013 at 7:39 pm #

  15. Mary March 8, 2013 at 1:23 am #

    I have a question I hope someone here can answer. I recently found an extra install log on my Mac. It mentioned VMware a lot. None of the installations were done by me. I don’t ever do any remote computing. The thing I am most curious about is why, when I began googling some of the more unusual terms in the log, I was taken to a post deep in the VMware communities which was the log I found on my computer with the exact same times and dates. I couldn’t access the levels of the address that might explain why my odd log would be posted by someone. Here is the link

    http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/2171113-101618/install.log

    I would so much appreciate any help in this matter. I think I’ve found a virtual machine file on my computer and I copied it and then deleted it. any suggestions?
    Mary

  16. Mark May 1, 2013 at 6:40 pm #

    I saw the blog http://communities.vmware.com/message/1870394#1870394 saying that
    vCD cannot support VMs imported to vCD as vAPPs to be protected by VMware FT.
    Please can you point me to where is the official VMware documentation saying that we can’t use FT with a vAPP ?
    Thanks
    Mark

    • David Hill May 2, 2013 at 2:52 pm #

      The feature is not available in VCD which means it is not supported. To enable FT for VMs deployed in a vAPP within VCD, you would need to do this through vCenter. Configuring services through vCenter on VCD managed objects is not supported. It will work, but will require some additional manual steps.

      However, if you visit vcoteam.info they have some VCO workflows that can do the FT enablement using the API extensions within VCD.

  17. Rajasekar September 26, 2013 at 12:16 pm #

    I am trying to upload an ovf package from my local system to VDC through API.I have initiated the upload from the following request,

    Ubuntu vApp Template

    From the above request where do i mention the ovf package path?

  18. Alex Hunt August 2, 2015 at 4:01 am #

    Hi David,

    I am facing an issue in my vCloud director lab.

    I am trying to upload an ovf in one of my public catalog but it fails saying “The operation failed because vCenter Server “Alex_vCloud_vCenter” is not connected ”

    I checked in vCloud console that vCenter server was disconnected from vcd. I tried refreshing and reconnecting the vCenter server but it was failing with error

    ” Batch update returned unexpected row count from update [0]; actual row count: 0; expected: 1 ”

    I checked the vcloud-container-debug.log file in real time and found vcd is trying to connect vcenter time and again but failing each time. Excerpt from debug.log is as follows:

    ” com.vmware.vcloud.api.presentation.service.InternalServerErrorException: Internal Server Error
    at com.vmware.vcloud.vimproxy.internal.impl.VcUpdateListenerImpl.onOuterLoopBreakWithException(VcUpdateListenerImpl.java:727)
    at com.vmware.vcloud.vimproxy.internal.impl.VcUpdateListenerImpl.outerWaitForUpdatesLoop(VcUpdateListenerImpl.java:639)
    at com.vmware.vcloud.vimproxy.internal.impl.VcUpdateListenerImpl.run(VcUpdateListenerImpl.java:349)
    Caused by: org.hibernate.StaleStateException: Batch update returned unexpected row count from update [0]; actual row count: 0; expected: 1″

    Even the MSSQL database shows listener is disconnected.

    Also in vcloud-container-info.log i got

    “2015-08-02 16:44:02,651 | ERROR | 1045d40-d030-485b-9987-50a27d59e254Listener (1516) | AbstractFlushingEventListener | Could not synchronize database state with session |
    org.hibernate.StaleStateException: Batch update returned unexpected row count from update [0]; actual row count: 0; expected: 1”

    I have attached my log files at https://communities.vmware.com/message/2528287#2528287

    Can you please guide me towards resolution

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