VMware

Release Notes for VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0.2

Features | Documentation | Knowledge Base | Lab Manager Community


Last Document Update: February 24, 2011

VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4.0.2 | July 15, 2010| Build number: 4.0.2.1269

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:

New Features

This section describes the new features and performance enhancements in Lab Manager 4.0.2.

Support for VMware vSphere 4.1 and vSphere 4.1 Update 1

Lab Manager 4.0.2 supports the following versions:

  • ESX Server 4.1 Update 1 and vCenter Server 4.1 Update 1
  • ESX Server 4.1 and vCenter Server 4.1

Support for VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 2

Lab Manager 4.0.2 supports ESX Server 4.0 Update 2 and vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2.

Support for Mozilla Firefox 3.6

Lab Manager 4.0.2 supports Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

System Requirements

Lab Manager 4.0.2 supports the following VMware vSphere releases:

  • ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 5
  • ESX/ESXi 4.0
  • ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 1
  • ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2
  • ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 3
  • ESX/ESXi 4.1
  • ESX/ESXi 4.1 Update 1

Do not mix ESX/ESXi 3.5, ESX/ESXi 4.0, or ESX/ESXi 4.1 hosts in the same cluster.

The hosts in this list can be used with vCenter 4.0, vCenter 4.0 Update 1, and vCenter 4.0 Update 2. To use Host Spanning private networks, you must have an Enterprise Plus license.

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, ESX/ESXi 4.0, or ESX/ESXi 4.1, see the guides on hardware compatibility.

Upgrading to Lab Manager 4.0.2

You can upgrade from Lab Manager 4.0, Lab Manager 3.x, Stage Manager 1.x, or Lab Manager 4.0.1 to Lab Manager 4.0.2. If you are currently using Lab Manager 2.x, you must first upgrade to Lab Manager 3.x before you can upgrade to Lab Manager 4.0.2. You can check the Lab Manager or Stage Manager version with the About option using the Web console.

Before you upgrade Lab Manager, you must upgrade the vCenter server. See the Lab Manager 4.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide for more information.

Supported upgrades

Version Build Number

Lab Manager 4.0.1

4.0.1.1233
Lab Manager 4.0 4.0.0.1140
Lab Manager 3.0.2 3.0.2.56
Lab Manager 3.0.1 3.0.1.378
Lab Manager 3.0 3.0.0.2063
Stage Manager 1.0.1 1.0.1.1970
Stage Manager 1.0 1.0.0.1561

To upgrade Lab Manager from Lab Manager 4.0 or Lab Manager 4.0.1, run the Lab Manager 4.0.2 installer directly over Lab Manager 4.0 or Lab Manager 4.0.1. If there are virtual machines deployed on two or more hosts using host spanning, you should first undeploy these virtual machines and then upgrade from Lab Manager 4.0 or Lab Manager 4.0.1 to Lab Manager 4.0.2.

To upgrade Lab Manager from any other version of Lab Manager or Stage Manager, follow the procedures in the Lab Manager 4.0 Installation and Upgrade Guide.

After you upgrade, you must also upgrade the Lab Manager agent on each ESX host:

  1. Log in to the Lab Manager Web console.
  2. In the left pane, click Resources.
  3. On the Hosts tab, move the pointer over the host name and select Upgrade Agent.
  4. Repeat these steps for each host.

Refer to the known issues related to upgrades.

Known Issues

This section describes known issues in this release.

Upgrade issues

Certain operations may be unavailable after upgrading from Stage Manager 1.x or Lab Manager 3.x

After you upgrade the Lab Manager server, but before you launch the Lab Manager Web console, clear the cache in your Web browser to resolve this issue.

Customized sysprep.inf files are not preserved after upgrading

Lab Manager 4.x stores the Microsoft Sysprep files in a different location than previous versions of Lab Manager. If you have custom sysprep.inf files from a previous Lab Manager installation, you can manually copy them to the new location.

For example, you could copy a custom sysprep.inf file you created in Lab Manager 3.x for Windows 2003 (64-bit) from C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Lab Manager\Tools\CustomizeGuest\Windows\Sysprep\Win2k3_64 to C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Lab Manager\Tools\CustomizeGuest\Windows\Sysprep\Win2k3_64

Upgrading, repairing, or uninstalling Lab Manager may overwrite or delete a custom security certificate

When you install and configure a custom security certificate on the Lab Manager Web server and then upgrade to Lab Manager 4.0.2, run the Repair command from the Lab Manager 4.0.1 installer, or uninstall Lab Manager, the installer may overwrite or delete that security certificate with the default Lab Manager certificate. You must replace the Lab Manager certificate with your custom certificate after the upgrade.

Before you start, repair, or install an upgrade, you should make a backup of the certificate. You can restore the certificate after the upgrade. 

Thin provisioned virtual hard disk issues

Making a full clone of a thin disk converts it to a thick disk

If you make a full clone of a virtual machine or virtual machine template that includes a thin provisioned virtual hard disk, the cloning process converts the disk to thick format.

Exporting a virtual machine template with a thin disk converts it to a thick disk

If you export a virtual machine or virtual machine template that includes a thin provisioned virtual hard disk to an SMB share, the export process converts the disk to thick format.

Virtual machine template properties report a virtual hard disk as thick format

If you make a clone of a virtual machine template with a thin provisioned virtual hard disk and then view the properties of the virtual machine template, Lab Manager reports its disk as thick format. However, the template's base disk remains thin-provisioned and all the clones you make from the template retain the advantages of thin provisioning.

System administrators cannot view certain Lab Manager objects in an organization

When system administrators view workspace configurations, library configurations, network templates, virtual machine templates, or media files from within an organization, the drop-down menus listed below do not display all of the Lab Manager objects available to them:

  • Configurations in Other Organizations
  • Library Configurations in Other Organizations
  • Network Templates in Other Organizations
  • VM Templates in Other Organizations
  • Media in Other Organizations

To view all of the available Lab Manager objects, a system administrator must be in the Global organization.

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.

Lab Manager Web console page shows an empty box in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 on Linux

Some versions in Firefox 3.6 series strip executable permissions on files that are extracted from the XPI plugin binary (see http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2010/01/22/broken-executables-in-extensions-in-firefox-3-6). The console plugin does not load correctly and the console page appears blank. To resolve the issue, browse to the console plugin installation folder at
"/<Firefox_profile_folder>/extensions/VMwareMKSNPRTPlugin@vmware.com/plugins/" and run the command "chmod 755 *" to manually enable permissions on the files of that folder.

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

There are a number of possible issues and solutions:

  • In Firefox on Linux, if error messages appear when you try to use a virtual machine's 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.
  • If Firefox reports that it could not install the plugin (Cancelled -227), create a directory named "plugins" in $HOME/.mozilla on the client computer. Log in to Lab Manager and install the plugin. Restart Firefox.
  • If Firefox reports LoadPlugin: failed to initialize shared library /root/.mozilla/plugins/libmks.so [libexpat.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory], create a soft link to libexpat.so.

Lab Manager does not support serverless binding to an LDAP server

The Lab Manager User's Guide includes information about using serverless binding, but the information is incorrect. Lab Manager does not support serverless binding.

Resolved Issues

This section describes resolved issues in this release.

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. This issue has been resolved in this release.

Error occurs when importing VM Templates from vCenter

When importing a virtual machine from vCenter, the dvPortgroupKey value cannot be null error message appears. This issue has been resolved in this release.

SSMove Times out and Returns an Error

When using SSMove, the error message The vCenter operation has taken too long (60.00 seconds). Lab Manager considers this operation timed out. appears. This issue has been resolved in this release.

High IO feature does not correctly disable when rights are disabled

This issue has been resolved in this release. When the "High I/O" right is disabled for a user, this user can no longer perform high I/O activities.

Number of ports created when a new vSwitch is created should be configurable

You can now configure the number of ports for a vSwitch in the Settings page on the General tab.

Refreshing disk space on datastore does not update the "Disk Space Freed Upon Deletion" column

When refreshing disk space on datastores, the call times out and no error message appears. This issue has been resolved in this release. When refreshing disk space on datastores, the virtual machine status now displays the correct status instead of Unknown.

Deploying virtual machines in a fenced mode fails with two or more network cards

When you try to attach two or more network cards on a fenced virtual machine, the sqlException: Cannot insert duplicate key row error message appears. This issue has been resolved in this release.

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.