vSphere 5 ‘s new services in vCenter

I recently installed vSphere 5 on my test lab. Immediately, I notice there are few new services running under windows server. Let’s talk a look with those services.

 

vCenter Inventory Service

Remember I always encounter issue that inventory of datastore didn’t exactly refresh. It means when you browse content of datastore, you actually see nothing. Even after you restart service of vCenter. I believe Vmware understand this is a common issue and decided to separate Inventory service so we can manually clean up.

I quote a procedure of how to clean up Inventory service database as follow. It may come handy in one day.

Procedure

1	Stop the vCenter Inventory Service. a From the Windows Start menu, select Administrative Tools > Services. b Right-click vCenter Inventory Service and select Stop.
2	Open a command prompt.
3	Delete the entire contents of the Inventory_Service_Directory/data directory. The location of the Inventory Service directory is specified during the vCenter Server installation.
4	Change directory to Inventory_Service_directory/scripts For example, if you installed vCenter Inventory Service in the default location, run this command. cd /Program Files/VMware/Infrastructure/Inventory Service/scripts
5	Run the createDB.bat command, with no arguments, to reset the vCenter Inventory Service database.
6	Run the register.bat command to update the stored configuration information of the Inventory Service. register.bat current_vCenter_Server_fully_qualified_domain_name vCenter_Server_HTTPS_port For example, if the vCenter Server fully qualified domain name is machinename.corp.com and the HTTPS port is 443, run this command. register.bat machinename.corp.com 443
7	Restart the vCenter Inventory Service. a From the Windows Start menu, select Administrative Tools > Services. b Right-click vCenter Inventory Service and select Start.

The vCenter Inventory Service database is reset.

Vmware USB Arbitration Service

According to Vmware:

USB Arbitration Service

Manages connection requests and routes USB device traffic. The arbitrator is installed and enabled by default on ESXi hosts. It scans the host for USBdevices and manages device connection among virtual machines that reside on the host. It routes device traffic to the correct virtual machine instance for delivery to the guest operating system. The arbitrator monitors the USB device and prevents other virtual machines from using it until you release it from the virtual machine it is connected to.

However, it’s first time I see this service installed with vClient 5.0. As you can see from above, it normally sits on Esxi Host. so I assume it will work just like vmplayer which allows you to redirect your USB device on your vClient machine to your VM. Still need to find out whether it’s secured to do this way though.

VMware vSphere Profile-Driven Storage Service

As you all know, with in vSphere 5, we can associate a Virtual Machine Storage Profile with a VM and it’s virtual Disks. The associatable files are including .vmx,vmsd,nvram etc. You can assign disk to different speed or priority storage profile.

If you add a new virtual disk and associate it with a VM storage profile, this service will help you to do this job.

Well, that’s all what I have discovered so far for vCenter. More stuff coming soon.

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