I hope you know the importance of the Hardware Compatibility, when you are working with new deployments or upgrades with VMware vSphere. VMware HCL provides the universal standards and support matrices for all the hardware platforms under the sphere of VMware. If you are a Runecast customer these compatibility matrices are at your finger tips and you can easily cross check the compliance of the running hardware and the vSphere versions without manually checking the VMware HCL.
You can request the beta download with this link and I recommend you to go ahead and give it a try, and make sure to share your valuable thoughts on this feature with Runecast team.
I have downloaded the appliance and deployed it in my test environment, it is just a generic OVF deployment and you can complete the deployment within few clicks, I hope I don’t need to explain how to deploy an OVF template in your VMware environment in this post.
Login to the Runecast Analyzer appliance using the default username and password
Username: rcuser
Password: Runecast!
At the Welcome screen provide the vCenter FQDN or IP address, Username and the password. Click on “Continue” to complete the connection to the vCenter Server
Provide the recommendation frequency and “Start the analysis“
After the making the successful connection to the vCenter Server Analyze the environment
Now, it’s time to use this new Hardware Compatibility feature against the environment
In this post, I use my test environment which use the servers with outdated BIOS versions and it is not comply with the VMware HCL standards. Those are my old Dell R710 servers with BIOS 1.2.6. It clearly shows the compatibility of the Server Model, CPU series, number of sockets, ESXi release and BIOS data. You can see the overall compatibility of the ESXi host with these components.
Also, you can directly open up the compatibility check of the VMware HCL Official Page from this section
You can see the supported Hardware and firmware compatibility directly on the VMware HCL page. In my case, I need to update the BIOS version to 6.4.0
There is filter added, just to filter out the “Only Hosts With Issues“
Your Feedback Is Really Valuable
Runecast Analyzer VMware HCL support is available in beta and available to test in your environment. Your feedback is really valuable to continue to improve and evolve the product. You can submit your feed back with the given options. Share your thoughts!
Runecast team will anonymously process the collected data and always value your privacy.
My Thoughts
As a VMware Engineer I can’t think about the compliance of my VMware environment without checking the VMware HCL. For a larger environment this can be time consuming work and great understanding of the product and the versions is required.
Runecast Analyzer VMware HCL Support provide you the easy access to the VMware HCL and compliance check against the compatibility matrices within few clicks. It’s obvious that it comes with a greater accuracy and it ensures your privacy, also it makes your life more easier. I hope that this solution will continue to evolve and we expect to see lot of new upcoming features and improvements in near future. It’s your chance try it out!
