Release Notes

Change error to warning when the instance type cannot be calculated immediately after launching a VM. Some environments are slow to show the required attributes to calculate what instance type is being used.

Version: vscale_2.0_20160523_21

April 26, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0 update

Fix a bug where logging of rbvmomi objects in the launch config was causing large memory spikes

April 15, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0 update

Optimize listing of attached ips to only look through configured tenants
Generate id and add key 'uuid' to cloud init metadata to fix cloud-init booting issue

April 6, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0 error handling fix

Fix error handling when the extraConfig of a VM is not yet available

March 10, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0 error handling fix

fix error handling logging when no SDRS recommendation is returned

March 3, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0 fix for RightLink 10

fix a small bug where userdata file was incorrectly named

February 25, 2016

RCA-V Adapter v2.0

Note: This is a major version change and requires installation via .ova as well as some potentially breaking changes. See upgrade instructions

Make the use of vSphere Resource Pools optional for tenants. Tenants can now forego the use of resource pools entirely and instead the adapter will use folders for organizing VMs. (PM-358) (PM-355)
Added official support for vSphere 6.0. (PM-175)
Allow mix of DHCP/Static network configuration. See the Documentation for more details. (PM-362)
Improved error handling
Upgraded version of Ruby
Use ConfigDrive instead of AltCloud for userdata
Multiple bug fixes

December 2, 2015

Bug Fix

Security Fix Fix a bug were some passwords were only being partially filtered out of logs.

Login to the RCA-V Admin UI.
Click on vCenter in the left column.
Find the Cloud Appliance (vscale) card and click on Upgrade button.
Look for the package labeled vscale_1.3_20151202_17.
Download and Activate that package.
Refresh your browser window.

November 11, 2015

New Features

wstunnel Update - the RCA-V admin portal has been updated to use the latest version of wstunnel (v1.0.6) for communication with the RightScale platform. We recommend all customers upgrade to this new version using the steps outlined below:

Login to the RCA-V Admin UI.
Click on RightScale Platform in the left column.
Find the Admin Interface card and click on Upgrade button.
Look for the package labeled vscale-admin_1.3_20151110_23.
Download and Activate that package.
Refresh your browser window.

July 28, 2015

New Features

This version of the RightScale Cloud Appliance for vSphere (v1.3) introduces the following new features.

Proxy Support for Private Clouds

Network admins within enterprises almost always require a proxy as a sentinel between the internal network and the open Internet. Typically, private clouds that are behind a corporate firewall are behind a proxy server as well. All traffic from/to these private clouds has to traverse through the proxy server.

We now support traffic proxying for all communication between:

RightScale platform and the cloud controller (for OpenStack, CloudStack)
RightScale platform and RCA-V (for vSphere environment)
RightScale platform and virtual machines within the private cloud. This is RightLink traffic. Both authenticated and non-authenticated proxies are supported.

In order to enable proxy support, please follow the instructions below:

From the RCA-V Admin UI, go to Connectivity > RightScale Platform > Overview card > Edit.
Select the HTTP(s) Proxy Enabled checkmark as shown below and supply the proxy URL.
You can specify the authenticated proxy URL using the following format: http://username:password@proxyurl:proxyport
To remove the proxy, uncheck the HTTP(s) Proxy Enabled box.

Support for Volumes on vSphere Storage Clusters

This version of RCA-V adds additional volume management capabilities related to use of storage clusters.

Volume Types can now be associated with Storage Clusters in vSphere instead of individual datastores. Volumes are created based on a volume type, thereby associating the volume to a storage cluster and not to a specific datastore within the storage cluster. Volume creation and attachment should remain at the cluster level, delegating the responsibility of actual datastore selection to the SDRS mechanism.

Snapshots for the volume can be associated with an individual datastore or storage cluster.

This feature is significant for enterprises that rely on the SDRS mechanism to create a balanced workload in their storage clusters, rather than having to pick an individual datastore for a volume that remains tied to that volume through its lifecycle. At present, re-location of volumes using automatic Storage vMotion is not supported.

Download Instructions

The latest version of the RCA-V appliance can be downloaded from the URL in this latest file. The latest appliance encapsulates the latest versions of the vscale and vscale-admin packages.

Upgrade Instructions

You can upgrade the vscale and vscale-admin packages to the latest versions using the RCA-V Admin UI. Please note that the upgrade path requires the RCA-V 1.2 appliance with vscale-admin_1.2_20150305_16, vscale_1.2_20150303_16, or newer.

Upgrading the vscale-admin Package

From the RCA-V Admin UI, go to Connectivity > RightScale Platform > Admin Interface > Upgrade.

admin package upgrade 1

Upgrading the vscale Package

From the RCA-V Admin UI, go to Connectivity > Center > Cloud Appliance (vscale) > Upgrade.

vscale package upgrade 2

In case you are on an older version of the appliance, it is best to make a copy of the vscale.cfg config file (which can be accessed through the Admin UI > Cloud Configuration > Advanced) and apply it to a new install of the latest version of the appliance.

Bug Fixes

The RCA-V v1.3 release addresses the following bugs/issues.

Implemented consistent name duplication checks across all cards in the Admin UI.
Introduced support for virtual CDROM to enable the following:
- Added support for cloud-init.
- Allow userdata to persist through a Stop (PowerOff) and Start (PowerOn) operation using a virtual CDROM drive.
  Note: Virtual CDROM is the default mechanism for placing userdata into the VM. This can be turned off manually by adding cloud_init_support => false to either the tenant defaults or specific tenant config in the Advanced section of RCA-V Admin.
Addressed an issue where dynamic type networks did not work as the default network.
Addressed an issue where VM snapsnots were not getting cleaned up after a failure.
Added ping time in the Connectivity > Center > vCenter Server card to show the network latency between the RCA-V appliance and the vCenter server.

March 4, 2015

Overview

This version of the appliance addresses three specific issues:

Volume attachments progressively getting slower when the number of volumes in the vSphere environment increases. Due to a locking issue in the VMFS implementation on vSphere, the performance of the volume attach operation through RightScale was impacted when the overall number of volumes managed by RCA-V increased. While RightScale does not have much control over the timing of VMware's release for the VMFS issue, we have worked around the issue by placing each volume created/managed by RightScale under its own sub-folder. This circumvents the locking issue we have encountered on vSphere. This fix requires an upgrade to the vscale_1.2_20150303_16 package. See instructions below.
Boot time performance improvement: Servers launched on vSphere will be polled more aggressively (instead of a 2 minute poll interval) so a powered-on VM gets detected quickly allowing the subsequent booting steps to start quicker than it normally would. This enhancement will result in boot time reduction of up to 90 seconds.
When sharing a VLAN across two datacenters, RCA-V only allowed a network to be configured for one of the datacenters. This issue has been resolved such that the same network that is shared across two datacenters can now be configured under both datacenters using VM Networks->Add Network for each datacenter. In order to take advantage of this fix, you must upgrade to the vscale-admin_1.2_20150305_16 package. Upgrade instructions for the admin package are provided below.

Upgrade Instructions

To upgrade the vscale-admin package, please follow the steps outlined below:

Login to RCA-V Admin UI
Click on RightScale Platform in the left column.
Find the Admin Interface card and click on Upgrade button.
Look for the package labeled vscale-admin_1.2_20150305_16.
Download and Activate that package.
Refresh your browser window.

To upgrade the vscale package, please follow the steps outlined below:

Login to RCA-V Admin UI
Click on vCenter in the left column.
Find the Cloud Appliance card and click on Upgrade button.
Look for the package labeled vscale_1.2_20150303_16.
Download and Activate that package.
Refresh your browser window.

Note: Archived Release Notes are Available Here