VMware vCloud suite 5.8 and Horizon View 6.0.1 product updates

Yesterday ( 9 September 2014)  VMware released updates to the vCloud Suite 5.8 suite and VMware Horizon View components.  Here is a overview of the updated products:

 

After upgrading vSphere 4 to 5 the Fusion-IO card is in minimal mode

Last week I did a VMware vSphere and VMware View 4 to 5 upgrade.  The ESXi servers for the VMware View environment uses Fusion-IO (HP IO Accelerators) PCI flash cards for there non-persistent VDI pools. After the upgrade  to vSphere 5.1 I imported the latest Fusion-IO drivers and created a baseline in vSphere Update Manager (VUM) and deployed the new drivers to the cluster.

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After the installation of the Fusion-IO drivers on the ESXi hosts, the Fusion-IO card was not listed in the vSphere (Web) client. Via SSH I make a connection the the ESXi servers. When i run the fio-status command the following warning appeared:

Driver is in Minimal mode: The firmware on this device is not compatible with the currently installed version of the driver.

ACTIVE WARNINGS: The ioMemory is currently running in a minimal state.

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The warning means that the firmware needs to be upgraded. I uploaded the firmware to a central datastore and run the following command:

fio-update-iodrive firmwarefilename.fff

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When the firmware upgrade completed, the ESXi servers needed to restart.

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After the rebootI checked the status with the fio-status command again.  The Fusion-IO card is out of minimal mode.

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After the firmware upgrade the Fusion-IO card is listed again.

VMware vSphere 5.5 available for download

Today VMware vSphere 5.5 has become available for download. If you want a quick overview of the new features of vSphere 5 read the white paper called “What’s New in vSphere 5.5” found here. The vSphere 5.5 bits can be downloaded here and the documentation can be found here.