VSC 7.1 with vSphere 6.7

[CommanderBond]

Hello,

did anybody try VSC 7.1 with vSphere 6.7 yet? I deployed the VSC appliance, it successfully registered to vCenter as shown in VSC maintenance screen and in vcenter/mob extensionManager, but its icon does not appear in vCenter nor is it displayed in the client plugins list in vCenter 6.7.

I already tried it using different browsers and rebooted the vCenter VCSA 6.7.

[mpandey]

VSC 7.1 is not compatible with vsphere 6.7.

We do not have the support for 6.7 release, we are working out to support the same in next release possibly 8.0

Thanks,

Manish

[Mordock]

Please keep us updated.  This is the only thing holding us back from upgrading today.

[BBT]

Is there a release date? We have a new environment already set up with vSphere 6.7 and are now finding out VSC is not compatible. 

Is it worth waiting? Or do we need to downgrade to 6.5?

[mpandey]

We are working on the plan to release it possibly in next release.

I will pass on the message of your need.

Please let me know the reason to move to vSphere 6.7? Is there anything specific that you are looking at from 6.7?

[BBT]

We are having new hardware, and had issues with 6.5, which we don't have with 6.7. But now we are blocked because of Netapp.... So the choice is between instable system because of hardware or not having VSC...

Is there a known release date for an updated version of VSC? If this is in 2-3 weeks, we can live with that. If this is in 2-3 month, we have a problem...

[mpandey]

Support for vCenter 6.7 is planned (but not committed) with VSC 8.0, planned (but not committed) for end of this year.

Please reach out to the NetApp account team if yop need  the support much earlier.

[Philipp]

Hi mpandey,

we would be happy to have VSC support for vSphere 6.7 earlier than end of the year.

Kind regards

Philipp

[thomasb82]

We would also appreciate 6.7 compatibility asap, if possible with HTML5 interface support as well.

I understand new versions have always some challenges but "until the end of the year..." that`s not cool at all.

It`s been 2 months since 6.7 is RTM and I doubt you don't get early access to beta versions.

Anyway, please keep working on it.

Also strange to see that VSC 7.1 + 7.1P1 disappeard from the "official" download list.

[Rolf_K]

We also would like to upgrade our 6.5 install with VSC to 6.7, to get rid of some bugs. VSC support is needed, HTML5 functions may come in 8.1 for us. 

/\Rolf/\

[Chittaranjan]

Hi There,

                On the surface, it does look like an unnecessary delay in supporting vCenter 6.7. However, engineering is working on the changes for vCenter 6.7 and also on shipping a completely new, pure HTML5, UI. This work leverages the new UI architecture introduced with vCenter 6.7 (and also supported with vCenter 6.5U2). These changes are not small and there is a significant effort ongoing to ensure that the customer experience is superior to the existing Flash based UI. On a parallel note, we can also see that currently only 2 vendors are supporting HTML5 with vCenter 6.7:

               Also most of the storage vendors have plans for supporting vCenter 6.7 in the latter half of 2018 as per VMware’s blog post. The new architecture is not something which has been in existence for a long time and has been introduced only recently (please refer to the link and do notice the date). There are other eco system changes which also need to be incorporated (like Java upgrade to Oracle Java 11 for example).

We would like thank all our customers for being patient with us and assure all of them that the new improved HTML5 based UI, supporting vCenter 6.7 and vCenter 6.5U2, will be well worth the wait.

[CommanderBond]

By now, VSC 7.2 was released. We updated our VSC instances: One connected to vCenter 6.5 and the other connected to vCenter 6.7.

vCenter 6.5 support by VSC 7.2. is fine: NetApp VSC plugin shows up in vSphere Web Client (Flex/Flash) and in HTML5 client and is working as expected, even in German HTML5 client (using the latest Fling appliance 3.39).

vCenter 6.7 support by VSC 7.2 is terrible: It does not show up in Flex Client, but it shows up in HTML5 client home menu as "app.name" when HTML5 client displays German language. With an English browser it shows up as "Virtual Storage Console".

However, in 6.7 it's displaying an HTTP 500 error in vSphere Client:

When adding a storage, it displays:

It's absolutely crucial for us that VSC fully supports vCenter 6.7 asap. We have production vCenters @ 6.7.

It would be fine to have a version with the technical preview for the HTML5 client, but the support for Flash based client should not been dropped until the HTML5 version is working fine.

[thomasb82]

I was shocked when I read this blog from 06/29/2018:

https://blog.netapp.com/welcoming-virtual-storage-console-7-2-with-support-for-new-vmware-features/

"This week, our NetApp engineering team released the latest version of the Virtual Storage Console unified software to connect users of NetApp® ONTAP® to their VMware environments, including vSphere 6.5"

I really hope 6.5 was a typo as it has been around since 2016... but looking at the replies here I just hope we will see a P1 release asap with full 6.7 support.

[EwyWins]

Will it be compatible with ontap 9.1P3?

[konnerth]

Yes, we are expanding our ONTAP support with the 7.2.1 virtual appliance release, targeting all currently supported ONTAP releases (9.1, 9.3, 9.4 and 9.5).

---Karl

[EwyWins]

Do you have a set date for the release yet?

Thanks

[konnerth]

Still targeting next week, probably towards the end.  I'm sorry, but that's the most specific info I have!

---Karl

[dkomanek]

I am using vSpehre 6.0u3 and as a preparing step to upgrade to 6.5u2 (still need VDP, so can't go to 6.7u1 for now), I already upgraded my Site Recovery Manager instances to 8.1, because Netapp interoperability matrix states it is a supported combination for SRA 7.2 (only  vSphere 6.7 is not). Well, it is not the case at all. SRM 8.1 + SRA 7.2 does not work even on older vSphere versions. Hopefully the updated SRA will be released really soon, because downgrade of SRM is very complicated. It would be also nice if netapp interoperability matrix could be more trustworthy.

Storage Replication AdapterStorage Replication Adapter 7.2 for ONTAP	ProtocolNFS	Host ApplicationVMware Site Recovery Manager 8.1
ONTAP OS (NETAPP OS)ONTAP 9.4

9082: This version of SRA does not work with vSphere 6.7.

David

UPDATE: Thanks to my local NetApp support, it is working now (SRA 7.2+SRM 8.1+vSphere 6.0u3): I had to uninstall and install again the SRA's MSI file (repair didn't work for me). So maybe it was SRM's issue, not SRA's, my appologies for the noise.

[GraemeH]

Out of curiosity, will the new VSC be able to talk directly to OCUM ? Or will it still seperate API Services ?

[konnerth]

API-Services is still needed to use the VASA Provider VVol dashboard (collects IOPS, latency, throughput and logical space used from ONTAP for each VVol VM).  The 7.2.1 appliance release will support API-S 2.1 and 2.2.  If you don't use VVols it is not otherwise needed.  We are looking at ways to simplify the collection of statistics.

---Karl

[rablighting]

Do you happen to know what version of vcenter server 6.7 will be supported? Is it just 6.7? 6.7U1? 6.7U1a? 6.7U2?