Veeam Webinar with Doug Hazelman: 5 Steps to Successful Backup & Replication for Hyper-V! Watch it now

Build A Better Cloud With StratoGen VMware Hosting

 

Kodiak BlueBear 0.0.3 beta

15 May, 2009

Last night I received a renewed version of the Kodiak BlueBear beta product. The previous version 0.0.2 had a very beautiful interface, one that you normally expect on different types of software but not for managing a Virtual Infrastructure. The new version 0.0.3 promises to get rid of the dreaded SSL errors from 0.0.2 because of which Kodiak would ask almost every second for a SSL confirmation.

So installed 0.0.3 and ran it. Using the walkthrough guide at http://bluebear.org/docs/ I created two default connections and I set “bypass SSL” to enabled. Now back to the logon screen, I choose new connection and then select one of my connections (one to vCenter 4 beta one to vSphere beta ESX host). Unfortunately, the username and password are not always filled out automatically. Sometimes it works a few times and sometimes it doesn’t. Looks like that it only works if you first edit the connections. But when you restart kodiak and then choose a saved connection, username and pass are not filled out.

But an ever bigger problem is that I can’t seem to logon. Not to ESX, not to vCenter. When I press the Logon button, nothing happens. No error, no signal, nothing. Even leaving out a password or entering a wrong password on purpose doesn’t give an error message. Tried connecting on IP but even this is not working. Strange thing though is that when creating the default connections, an ESX icon is placed in front of the name of my ESX connection and a VC icon is placed in front of my VC connection. So, Kodiak can resolve the name and talk to the host. I tried entering a non-existing name, but then I can’t fill out the username and password, probably because it can’t find the host. On this point there again is no error message whatsoever by the way.

Maybe the development team put the wrong package online, but I find it very strange that they overlooked issues like this. The docs clearly states the vSphere is supported, so that cannot be the issue and even if it is not supported, a decent error message should inform you. See: http://bluebear.org/wiki/display/docs/Compatibility. After checking with other beta testers it turns out the with ESX 3.5 a login is possible.

Version 0.0.2 was almost as beautiful as a painting. Great graphics, nice layout, but almost no functionality and lots of SSL errors which should have been caught while testing during development. With version 0.0.3 again serious issues arise. How is this possible that big issues like these don’t show up prior to releasing the software. I do know its beta, but I don’t expect these kind of issues in a beta. At this point it doesn’t give a very good impression on the development process of Kodiak and the feature releases, which is a shame because the looks and ideas are great.

Please do read the comments in which BlueBear has responded!!!

by Gabrie van Zanten

  • http://www.bluebear.org Bobby Parker

    Hi Gabe,

    I’ll put out a package today that will give you some more enhanced feedback on the connection process and clues on what might actually be going wrong with your system, although I have a good idea already.

    Can you let me know if you’re receiving any status indicators of having been logged on at all?

    Since the backend is now driven by lua scripts, the feedback process is somewhat different, has to go through a different mechanism. It’s not immediately obvious, but if you click on the bottom status bar, you’ll get a window with output and debug logs in them. If you could copy those and mail them to me, it would help greatly.

    This troubleshooting information will be on the wiki…thanks for your time evaluating!

  • http://www.bluebear.org Bobby Parker

    You know, it just occurred to me…

    Are you getting any feedback that the VMWare plugin loaded?

  • http://www.GabesVirtualWorld.com Gabe

    Hi

    When pressing the logon button nothing happens except for a small color change of the button. When starting Kodiak, it immediately shows: “Module VMware loaded”. When I cancel the logon window, I am able to click the status bar and see the output logs (debug logs is empty). It reports the following info:

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::libKodiak: Kodiak system library initialized.

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::Initializing ManagedObject Support

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::LUA: ManagedObject.lua – ManagedObject support initialized.

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::Initializing DynamicElement support

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::DynamicElement.lua initialized

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::::Lua engine: VMWare support initialized.

    [14:27:29 GMT+0200]myservername.domain.local
    LUA-TASK::Login:0::All objects are present

    Regards
    Gabrie

  • http://www.bluebear.org Bobby Parker

    Thanks for the feedback Gabe.

    That at least tells me there’s nothing wrong with the script engine…re-reading your blog post, I noticed the stuff regarding vSphere…the note in our compatibility page is actually incorrect. We DO NOT have vSphere yet. I’m getting that page revised to avoid confusion. ESX/ESXi 3.5 should work fine.

  • http://www.GabesVirtualWorld.com Gabe

    In an e-mail conversation with Matt Miller from BlueBear, Matt responded:

    Gabrie,

    In regard to your thoughts about our test process, I couldn’t agree more! Bobby and I are already working to make our complete build/test/release much more robust than it is now…

    We already use a bug tracker – and are now feverishly attaching it to our public website!

    That windows SSL issue is the bain of my existence! Technically it’s a bug in Adobe’s AIR code – so we re-wrote all the offending bits. The catch being that Adobe’s SSL code performs slightly better on Linux and Mac systems than ours. We’re going to make this procedure transparent once the preferences system is better implemented.

    We’ll be bringing Kodiak’s private beta to a close around the end of June, and opening it up to the public. There’s also another bear ware in the works that will enter private testing soon after…

    You can bet that we’ll have our act together long before then. Thanks again for trying our software; we’re humbled that you feel strongly enough to write about it publicly, and we’re striving to exceed your expectations :)

  • http://iadvise.me/ iAdviseMe

    Hey, I added your Blog to my iCloudNews iPhone App: http://iadvise.me/icloudnews.htm

  • http://www.atomlab.us Thomas Gallaway

    Got the same issue http://www.atomlab.us/2009/05/20/kodiak-private-beta-0-0-3

    Seems to have problems loading the Inventory with VI3.

  • CB

    same problem here. I can connect to single ESX servers but I cannot connect to my VC server (VI 3.5 U3) (client Windows VISTA)

  • CB

    I’ve found an entry in my debug logs:

    Error in task RetrieveInventory:1

    luaDoString:185:
    builtin://lua_alchemy/as3/sugar.lua:129:failed to create object of type: ‘com.bluebear.plugins.vmware.model.vo::DataCenterPropertyFilter’
    stack traceback:
    [C]: in function ‘assert’
    luaDoString:185: in main chunk

« »