Runecast Analyzer v1.8 General Announcement

Runecast Solutions is thrilled to announce the General Availability of Runecast Analyzer v1.8. This major update brings support for VMware’s NSX-V product. We had significant feedback from our user base who wanted to see NSX vSphere (NSX-V) incorporated within the Analyzer.

VMware’s made no secret of its ambitions for its NSX network virtualization product, which it thinks has the potential to be bigger than server virtualization. These ambitions are driven by organizations who have started spreading their resources across multiple clouds and on-premise infrastructure.

We, Runecast, know it's always difficult for IT teams to adopt new technologies and products. Not only because of the product complexity but because of the knowledge transfer, various dependencies and the integration of multiple products. Adopting NSX vSphere aka NSX-V is a major step for IT operations teams and we want to help them to be more confident with their new NSX-V setups. NSX is still emerging into the mainstream market and it is often challenging to locate and troubleshoot problematic behavior that can lead to downtime and security incidents.  It is also difficult to pinpoint whether issues originate in the wider network configuration or in the VMware NSX platform.

The latest version of Runecast Analyzer automatically checks for thousands of configuration combinations which lead to known NSX problems. It will help you to avoid issues by telling you where vulnerabilities exist so you can resolve them before they actually happen. It will also rapidly accelerate troubleshooting when such problems occur.

v1.8 Main Functionality:

• The Analyzer now detects NSX issues on VMware NSX-V versions 6.2 - 6.4.x
• Automated scan and evaluation of the NSX-V Best Practices violations.
• Automatic NSX-V VMware Security Hardening profile analysis and reporting
• NSX-V DISA-STIG profile analysis and reporting
• Automatic discovery of the NSX Managers linked to VMware vCenters
• Web-console performance improvements for bigger environments (dozens of ESXi hosts).
• vSphere web console Runecast plugin NSX update with a new issue summary widget.

„I highly recommend Runecast Analyzer to all customers with vSphere clusters on premises. It reveals many hidden hardware and security issues before they might emerge and displays them on a plain and clear dashboard. Runecast covers vSphere, vSAN and in the latest release NSXv too.”

Dr. Michael Schroder
Microlytix
twitter.com/Microlytix

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How to install v1.8?

Download the v1.8 OVA instance from the Runecast portal and then either deploy it on the fresh VM. You can see this installation and configuration videos before the OVA gets downloaded.

How to upgrade to v1.8?

If you are existing Runecast user you can choose two ways how to upgrade to 1.8. It can be done either fully automatic by enabling application update in the Analyzer VAMI interface (see below) on your existing Runecast Analyzer virtual machine (typically on port 5480). Or manually when you download the v1.8 OVA instance from the Runecast portal and then either deploy it on the fresh VM or as an upgrade from older Analyzer via VAMI interface of the virtual machine.

How Can I Scan My NSX-V Deployment?

First, deploy the OVA as a separate appliance in your environment (2 cores, 4 GB RAM, and 30 GB available hard drive space). Then navigate to Dashboard.

1. Click Add vCenter and enter credentials of the vCenter that has an associated NSX Manager.

2. Enter your NSX manager credentials and grant Read-only permission.

3. Make sure the relationship is correct, select the checkbox and click Finish.

4. Click Analyze Now to scan your NSX-V deployment.

If you have NSX-V version 6.2 installed, the Analyzer requests validation of the mapped NSX Manager to vCenter (usually, you do not need to do anything, but if you have previously associated the NSX Manager with another vCenter then this could cause misleading results). All NSX-V versions above version 6.2 have vCenter registrations checked automatically.

NSX Manager connections shown in the Settings section:

You may notice that Runecast Analyzer is able to detect attached NSX managers even when these have not been added for monitoring (see the DeathStar-vC65.solar.system row on the picture above). To add the NSX Manager for proactive monitoring, click the relevant row and fill in the credentials.

Once the Analyzer completes the scan, you may browse the results via the main dashboard widget and its Network layer or via "All issues" view.

For more details about how to use NSX in the Analyzer, visit our previous NSX post.

The upgrade is available for existing Runecast customers under valid license. As always, there is free 14-days evaluation version of Runecast Analyzer with NSX-V support.

See how it works:

Michal Hrncirik | Head of Product Management