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Release Notes for VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0

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Last Document Update: July 13, 2009

VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0 | July 13, 2009 | Build number: 1140

VMware vCenter Lab Manager is an application that provides a rapid provisioning portal and image library management system. This system can be used to automate the setup, storage, and teardown of multimachine software configurations as well as provide a framework for service transition and release management activities.

Lab Manager leverages VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter to provide virtual infrastructure resources to multiple teams, projects, and geographies from a central location.

Using Lab Manager, you can create a shared virtual machine library that stores commonly used configurations and provides users with self-service access to these configurations for application development, testing, support, training, software demonstrations, release management, and more. Lab Manager administrators control access rights, storage quotas, and deployment policies.

These release notes contain the following sections:

Key Features

This section describes the new features and performance enhancements in Lab Manager 4.0:

  • vSphere support, which includes:
    • Support for VMware vCenter 4.0 with VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 or ESX/ESXi 4.0.
    • Support for vSphere features except:
      • VMware Fault Tolerance, which is disabled on virtual machines that are managed by Lab Manager 4.0.
      • Linked clones, because Lab Manager uses its own linked clones.
  • Multiple workspaces, which allow you to:
    • Create multiple workspaces in an organization with different resources available to each workspace.
    • Move configurations between workspaces and change the resources that are available to the configuration in the new workspace.
    • Set different sharing policies for each workspace.
      You can share configurations with all members of the workspace (for example, in production) or keep the configurations private (for example, in a developer workspace).
  • Host Spanning private networks, which allow you to create network-isolated configurations that span hosts.
  • Other new features include:
    • Configuration history
    • Archiving configurations
    • Importing virtual machines from vCenter and exporting virtual machine templates and configurations to vCenter
    • Resource usage monitoring
    • Support for latest browsers and guest operating systems

System Requirements

Lab Manager supports VMware vSphere 4.0 Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus. To use Host Spanning private networks, you must have an Enterprise Plus license. Lab Manager does not work with other editions of vSphere 4.0.

Lab Manager requires:

  • VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 or 4.0 hosts, or a mix of these hosts. Do not mix ESX/ESXi 3.5 or 4.0 hosts in the same cluster.
  • VMware vCenter 4.0

For details of all requirements and procedures to set up the product, see the Lab Manager 4.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide.

For information on hardware compatibility for ESX/ESXi 3.5 or 4.0, see the guides on hardware compatibility.

Known Issues

This section describes known issues in this release:

Guest customization fails if the configuration machine name contains a period

If the name of a configuration machine contains a period (.), guest customization fails.

IP forwarding conflicts

Using IP forwarding or DHCP servers in unfenced virtual machines or templates might cause problems with Lab Manager networking. You must disable IP forwarding and DHCP servers in all unfenced virtual machines and templates.

Sample virtual machine template and configuration are not available

When you install Lab Manager, the installation includes a sample virtual machine template (ttylinux-4-ESX3) and a sample configuration (Sample Configuration). If Lab Manager cannot prepare any ESX host during installation, these sample files are not installed.

Networks with overlapping IP pools

You must not create networks with overlapping IP pools. If you create physical or virtual networks with overlapping IP pools, and use these networks in the same configuration, this configuration might have more than one virtual machine or vNIC with the same IP address. This will cause networking problems.

Using Mozilla Firefox on Linux to access the Lab Manager Web console can cause problems with the console plugin

In Firefox on Linux, if error messages appear when you try to use a virtual machines' console, you might not have all required libraries installed. For RHEL 64bit, you need to install compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3 on the setup (ideally using yum, which also installs libstdc++.so.5), and for Ubuntu, go to http://packages.debian.org/stable/base/libstdc++5 and install the missing library

Lab Manager portgroups may not be deleted when unpreparing multiple hosts concurrently

To prevent Lab Manager portgroups from remaining on a host after the host is unprepared, edit the physical networks that are bound to that host and unbind them. Alternatively, in VMware vSphere Client, you can manually delete portgroups from the vSwitch.

Host preparation does not delete preexisting portgroups that use the same name that Lab Manager uses for physical networks

When preparing a host, Lab Manager creates at least one portgroup based on the system name of the installation. If there are already portgroups on this host with that name (for example, if the host was previously prepared and portgroups remain on it after the host is unprepared), you need to manually delete these portgroups before you can prepare the host.

Upgrading a previously upgraded Lab Manager 3.0.x installation to Lab Manager 4.0 may unbind physical networks

When upgrading from a Lab Manager 3.0.x installation (that was upgraded from Lab Manager 2.x installation) to Lab Manager 4.0, some network portgroups might not be recognized by Lab Manager.

In Lab Manager 3.0.x, if you have a physical network that still uses a portgroup with the legacy naming convention (LMNetwork000), deploying a configuration that uses this physical network will fail after upgrade. Although the portgroups exist on the appropriate hosts, and have virtual machines deployed to them, Lab Manager 4.0 does not recognize the portgroup with this legacy naming convention. All hosts appear unbound from the physical network. To deploy a configuration that uses this physical network, you need to rebind the hosts to the same vSwitch for the physical network.

The virtual machines that are deployed on the legacy portgroup will see the message, NIC's port group modified. The system administrator can clear this condition manually in the Lab Manager Web console or undeploy and redeploy the configuration. If administrators have administrative access to vCenter through the vSphere Client, they can manually move the virtual machine to the new portgroup.

Upgrading changes rights available to the User and View Only roles

When upgrading from Lab Manager 3.0.x to Lab Manager 4.0, the rights associated with the User and the View Only roles have changed. To restore the previous default capabilities of the User role, the Lab Manager system administrator must add the following rights to that role:

  • Workspace Configuration: Add Machine
  • Workspace Configuration: Create
  • Library Configuration: Clone to Workspace
  • Workspace: Clone To

To restore the previous default capabilities of the View Only role, the Lab Manager system administrator must add the Machine: Use Console right to that role.

Knowledge Base Articles

This section lists the VMware Knowledge Base articles published in this release. You can click the appropriate link or go to the VMware Knowledge Base and search using the article number.