Removing vCenter Extensions

Many different products that provide additional functionality within a vSphere environment, use the registration method within the vCenter Server. These so-called vCenter Extension used for integration. This may sometimes happen that a new installation of the product must be carried out where the vCenter Extension not properly removed. These vCenter Extensions can also be manually removed.

To remove a vCenter Extensions, go to the URL:

https:// //mob/?moid=ExtensionManager

Here, an overview is given of the present Extensions.

Select the Extension that needs to be removed and select Unregister Extension.

In the opened window, the name of the Extension need to be filed. For example com.vmware.vShieldManager to remove the Extension of the vShield Manager software. Then select the option Invoke Method to the registration within the vCenter Extension Services to remove the Extension.

Adding AD domain to vCenter 5.1

With the new vSphere 5.1 release, authentication can be done with local accounts and additional sources from existing authentication sources. When adding additional sources, one of the possibility to add Active Directory as a authentication resource.

In the following sample an environment will be added to the vCenter environment which contains a single domain controller.

The main configuration settings which must be set are the Primary server URL, which is the ldap source. In this sample a IP adress is used, but a FQDN will work to. The second configuration setting which have to be made is the Domain name of the active directory.

The last configuration is the authentication type. When using the Password type a UPN name of an administrative account and password will do.

Adding Users and/or Groups
After preparing the vCenter configuration for SSO, the user or groups can be added and given permission for using the vCenter environment.

Assigning Roles

After selecting the needed users or groups a role can be assigned to the selected user and/or group.

After hitting the OK button the user and/or groups are given the selected role within the vCenter environment.

vCenter with Oracle 11g

The latest release of VMware vCenter 4.1 is capable of using difference database systems, mostly these installations are done on SQL databases. But also DB2 and Oracle databases are supported. At a customer site is Oracle 10g used as a default for all databases. Within a few months the customer will upgrade these databases to Oracle 11g. Using these difference versions for now and in the feature, we decides to use the Oracle 11g client for installing vCenter and View Composer. The Oracle Install Client 11g is used for connecting to the Oracle 10 database.

vCenter will be placed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with slip streamed SP1, and is using a double vCPU with 4 GB of RAM.

Before the ODBC connection to the database can be made, the Oracle 11g client is places on the vCenter server, therefore the Oracle version 11 packages are extracted to C:\Oracle

• instantclient-basis-windows.x64-11.2.0.2.0.zip
• instantclient-odbc-windows.x64-11.2.0.2.0.zip
• instantclient-basic-win64-10.2.0.5.zip

After that the odbc_install.exe is executed for making the client software available within the ODBC connection software. A default tnsnames.ora Oracle configuration file, created by the customer is stored in the created sub folder NETWORK\ADMIN, which results in:

 C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2\NETWORK\ADMIN\tnsnames.ora

The installation of the Oracle 11 Client have been finished with these steps.

The next step is creating the ODBC connection to the database, the following steps are used for creating these connection:

Start Data Sources (ODBC) within Administrative Tools, and create a new System DSN

Select the Oracle in instantclient 11_2 and hit the Finish button

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Supply the needed information for the connection and use the Test Connection button for testing the connection.

After these steps the installation of vCenter can be done and the created DSN can be selected during the installation and the connection will be used for filling the database.

The latest step is the extraction of the ojdbc14.jar file from the Oracle instant 10 client, and place the file in the /Infrastructure/tomcat/lib folder