Category: Linux

OVF and OVA formatted Virtual Appliances

The Open Virtual machine Format (OVF) originally came about in 2007 as the result of a proposal by vendors (VMware, HP, Dell and others) to the Distributed Management Task Force (DTMF), the goal being to create an open standard for interchangeability (portability) of Virtual Machines between hypervisors. VMware was an early and enthusiastic adopter of
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Upgrading to VCSA 6 fails

I began an upgrade of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance from 5.5 to 6 for a small (in VMware’s own terminology ‘Tiny’) vSphere environment of 3 hosts and about 30 VMs. I certainly didn’t anticipate any trouble beyond the usual hassles associated with upgrading an infrastructure-level service like vCenter. Unfortunately, carefully following VMware documented procedures
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Backing up and restoring the vCenter Server Appliance 6 database

One extremely important advantage of the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is its native PostgreSQL (vPostgres) database. With the embedded database and VCSA, it is now possible to support installations which scale to the maximum capability of vCenter, without additional Operating System or Database licensing costs. Incumbent with the use of VCSA, however, comes a
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