vFabric Suite 5.3 Release Notes
vFabric Suite 5.3 | 24 APR 2013
Last document update: 24 APR 2013 |
What's in the Release Notes
The release notes cover the following topics:
What's New in vFabric Suite 5.3
This VMware® vFabric Suite™ release includes the following enhancements and new features:
- In addition to vSphere, the vFabric License Server can be installed on Amazon EC2 instances that are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and on a physical machine that is running RHEL.
- vFabric Hyperic plugins are provided for each vFabric Suite component. From a single management console, you can remotely monitor and manage all vFabric Suite components and applications, installed on multiple computers.
- User interfaces for the following products implement consistent LDAP integration for authentication: EM4J (vSphere console), Spring Insight (Admin UI), RabbitMQ (Admin UI), and Hyperic.
- Application Director services are available for all versions of vFabric components included in vFabric Suite 5.3.
Note the following changes in vFabric Suite 5.3:
- As of the 5.3 release, AppInsight is no longer a part of vFabric Suite. Accordingly, Application Performance Manager (APM), which consisted of AppInsight and vFabric Hyperic, is no longer a part of vFabric Suite. AppInsight is available from the APM download page. vFabric Hyperic remains available as a vFabric Suite component and as a standalone product.
- The Application Director 5.0 offering for vFabric Suite includes the Provisioning version only, not the full feature set.
- Cross-Cloud pricing for vFabric Suite will be available to customers on June 1, 2013. Cross-cloud pricing refers to the ability to license vFabric Suite Standard or Advanced across virtual, cloud, and physical infrastructure. See vFabric Suite Licensing.
- Read about new and changed features for each vFabric Suite 5.3 component:
Note for vFabric Application Director Users
vFabric Application Director 5.0 users must download and install the VMware vFabric Application Director Activation Key to activate the product during installation. This key is different from the vFabric Suite license key, which does not activate Application Director. See Download VMware vFabric Application Director 5.0.
Known and Resolved Issues
The following problems have been identified in this release of vFabric Suite. Where possible, a workaround is provided.
The table indicates the version in which the problem was found and, where applicable, the version in which it was fixed. If the Fixed In column is blank, it means the problem still exists in the latest version of vFabric Suite.
| Issue Number |
Description |
Found In |
Fixed In |
| VFP-687 |
When you upgrade vFabric License Server to version 5.3, the upgrade process is not recompiling the precompiled JSPs of the License Server. You encounter this problem if the copyright of the Web-based reporting UI is "2012" rather than "2013".
Workaround: Remove the precompiled JSPs (located in the c:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\work\Catalina\localhost\vfabric-license-server directory) and restart the vCenter Tomcat service. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-685 |
When you upgrade vFabric License Server from version 5.2 to 5.3, the upgrade process is not cleanly removing old files. You encounter this problem if the header at the top of the events log file includes "5.2" instead of "5.3".
Workaround: Uninstall version 5.2 of the vFabric License Server before you install version 5.3. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-684 |
When you use the monitoring commands (such as usage-over-periods) or the Web UI to view vFabric license usage over a time period, and you enter an end date that precedes the date you installed the vFabric License Server, the commands or UI return data for the installation date. The reports should return no data. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-679 |
Installation of vFabric License Server (on the vCenter Server Windows computer) fails if the password of the database user contains certains non-alphanumeric characters, such as #, *, !, and &.
Workaround: Install local licenses on the computers on which you have installed vFabric components. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-673 |
The installation of the vFabric License Server on Windows in a vSphere 5.1 environment fails if VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices is also running.
Workaround: Rerun the installation because it usually succeeds the second time. Alternatively, stop the VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices service before running the vFabric License Server installer. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-668 |
This issue applies in non-vCenter environments, where the License Server is installed on EC2 instances running RHEL or on a physical machine running RHEL. If a vFabric component is using version Java SE 6 (which in turn means its internal License Client is also using that version) but the non-vCenter vFabric License Server with which it is communicating is using Java SE 7, the License Client receives a handshake failure when it attempts to communicate with the License Server over HTTP.
Workaround: Use only Java SE 6 with the vFabric License Server. |
5.3 |
|
| VFP-553 |
If an ESXi host is disconnected, and that host manages VMs on which vFabric components are installed and are licensed by the vFabric License Server, the vFabric licenses on the VMs are correctly unassigned, but do not get automatically reassigned when the ESXi host is reconnected.
Workaround: After the ESXi host is reconnected, restart the vFabric components on any associated VMs. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-552 |
If a VM on which a vFabric component is installed migrates to a different ESXi host, and you run the versions-over-periods.bat monitoring command or use the Web User Interface to view license usage reports, the "Maximum Number of Machines" incorrectly increases. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-549 |
If you install and start a vFabric component on a VM before you install the vFabric License Server and activate your vFabric license using the vSphere Client, the vFabric License Server does not assign a license to the vFabric component even though it should.
Workaround: Restart the vFabric component. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-531 |
If you install and start open-source (OSS) RabbitMQ on a RHEL VM using a non-RPM package, the vFabric OSS license agent may not detect that the OSS RabbitMQ server is actually running. Thus it may not assign the server a vFabric license, which results in incorrect output when you run the monitoring commands.
Workaround: Install open-source RabbitMQ on RHEL using the RPM package. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-381 |
If you run vFabric License Server license-usage reports and filter or group by clusters, the output may include VMs that are hosted by ESXi hosts that were removed from the cluster but not moved into a new cluster. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-325 |
If you shut down the ESXi host that is running the VMs on which you have installed vFabric components, in certain circumstances not all vFabric licenses are released. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-298 |
On RHEL, the RPM install of vFabric GemFire fails if you have not previously installed a JDK or JRE on the VM.
Workaround: Before installing GemFire from RPM, install a JDK or JRE on the VM. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-288 |
When you install vFabric Hyperic Server from RPM on RHEL, and the installation process is scrolling through the EULA, the scrolling process occasionally hangs long enough that you might suspect a problem. The installation continues successfully after awhile.
Workaround: Wait until the installation starts again. |
5.2 |
|
| VFP-533 |
If you install two different versions of an open-source component that can be tracked by the vFabric License Server (such as Apache Tomcat 6.0.35 and 7.0.29) on the same RHEL VM, the current-versions.bat monitoring command may output incorrect information about the two versions as you start and stop them. This is also true for Apache HTTP Server and open-source RabbitMQ. |
5.2 |
5.3 |
Oracle Java SE 6 (JDK 1.6.0_29) Issue
vFabric License Server reports does not work correctly if you are using JDK 1.6.0_29, due to the Oracle bug 7105007.
|