tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78689510141298927902024-03-17T20:03:33.873-07:00digitalvspace.comVMware/Tech Blog
Thoughts and insights from my day job as a VMware Administrator and VMware enthusiastTonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-70851210751073425852019-03-29T09:58:00.001-07:002019-03-29T09:59:14.426-07:00To the Mothership!I know there have been a lot of these kinds of posts lately and I have been trying to think of ways to start off this post and not go into the detail of my career back story like a lot of folks have done. I am instead going to focus on how VMware has played a part in my career.<br />
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I have been in awe of VMware tech for over a decade. My journey started with VMware Server back in 2008. I was amazed at the ability to run multiple OS's on one physical piece of hardware. I worked with VMware Player as well early on and I had always been a windows guy prior to this, but wanted to start learning Linux. This was a great way for me to try it out and get more familiar with it without all the pain of finding the correct drivers and getting all the hardware to be recognized etc, so I could get a functional machine. I used it as a testbed and learning platform to get more familiar with it.<br />
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I attended my first VMUG meeting in 2009 and they were talking about ESX vs ESXi and I ended up playing with ESXi 3.5 on a spare machine and learning that. I had a coworker that had left where I was at and joined a new company. He knew I was starting to play with VMware so he gave me some insight on how it was running at his new job. I was fascinated as he told me about vMotion and how you can have a running VM highly available and can migrate from host to host. He told me how DPM could power up and power down hosts throughout the day as load increased and decreased in the cluster. I decided to dig deeper at this point and buy a real server and continue my education.<br />
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I learned by attending a VMUG Virtual event of Install Configure Manage courses that were available at a local tech college for a fraction of the normal cost. I enrolled in the course and took my first VCP exam in 2014. It was at this point I started working with VMware at the professional level for the first time. Managing clusters for 5 locations across the Midwest. I learned so much in this role and had a manager that was very open to supporting all of my efforts to learn more about VMware and get involved in the community. We deployed our first vSAN cluster in 2016, I dove right in and learned this fascinating new tech. I immediately saw the value of vSAN and thought about how they were doing the same thing for storage with vSAN as they had done for virtualization with vSphere. I started with the help of many mentors and encouragement from my local Wisconsin VMUG leadership to do public speaking based on my experience deploying and managing my vSAN cluster. Speaking kept leading to more opportunities to speak and get more involved in the community.<br />
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For those of you that haven't tapped into the power of the vCommunity yet and started getting in touch with and networking in this great group of people that are willing to mentor and help you learn. Go back and read <a href="https://www.digitalvspace.com/2019/03/the-power-of-vcommunity.html" target="_blank">this post</a> I made last month, because the vCommunity is the reason I am able to say............<br />
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I am pleased to announce that I have accepted a position at VMware. I will be a Sr Solutions Engineer vSAN/HCI. I will be working with customers to understand their needs and provide solutions. A huge thanks to all those that have helped me on my journey. You know who you are! I am very excited to get started working with all of my new VMware family! Here is to a great future! Cheers and thanks for reading! #GovSAN</div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-9224425990236340992019-03-05T08:14:00.000-08:002019-03-05T09:41:19.835-08:00VMUG Leader Summit 2019<br />
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">I had the privilege of flying out to </span>Palo<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"> Alto to </span>VMware<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"> HQ to attend the </span>VMUG<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"> Leader Summit last week. I had so much fun connecting with old friends and meeting new ones. Leaders from all around the world were hosted by </span>VMware<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"> on campus. We had a great lineup of speakers and activities waiting for us when we arrived. We had the honor of a special talk from </span>VMware<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;"> CEO Pat </span>Gelsinger<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Here are some of the quick stats they showed in the opening of the meeting:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">350 years of experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">30+ countries</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">116 communities</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">350+ years of leadership experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">39 new leaders</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">66% first time attendees</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I was excited to be one of those new leaders and a first time summit attendee. It was a bit surreal to be sitting in the Elastic Sky theater listening to a talk by Pat </span>Gelsinger<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> that he had made special for us! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">I really enjoyed his talk on the 5 L's of leadership. Here are the talking points on that presentation:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Listen</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">God gave you two ears and one mouth, use them in proportion</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hippo effect, listen to the highest paid person since you have shown them that they are important</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Always listen to the noise (good things and bad)</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Learn</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Facilitating a learning environment in your workplace</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We don't want people that thing the same as we do, since we already know what they think.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Leader should always be learning</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Never waste a good crisis</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Always learn even in the good times</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Lifts</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We must be encouraged, so that we can be an encouragement to others</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Leader should always lift others and help give a positive outlook to others</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Leading in the tough times is where you get the most gain</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Links</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">You should always be linking(connecting) people together</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Leaders should be deeply passionate of their department and company</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">We all spend more time with our work family, than we do with our own personal family. Therefore treat the people we work with like family</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Leaders should create the environment that people enjoy their job and the coworkers</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif;">Another one of the highlights for me were the round table discussions.</span></div>
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We were able to get into smaller groups with leaders from around the world and hear some of their struggles, and were able to exchange ideas back and forth on topics like getting sponsors for meetings, ideas for giveaways and soliciting member feedback. It was time well spent as the discussions were very helpful.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">I enjoyed being able to talk with folks in our group that were from Greece, Italy, Canada, South Africa, and many other countries. It really is awesome to get perspective on what other groups struggle with and what they do well. We were all able to gain some insight from this meetings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Chris McCain gave a fantastic talk on public speaking that had a lot of great tips and information on how to properly prepare for a talk and to get more out of the crowd. It was a really great presentation. He spoke about how public speaking is storytelling and you need to tell a good story, be able to relate it to the audience and keep them engaged. He mentioned to not just blurt out facts. Relax, slow down and speak clearly. B<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">eing anxious will cause you to talk faster than the audience wants and faster than your brain wants. P</span>ausing to gather your thoughts isn't a bad thing even if it may feel like it, as it helps the audience to take in what you just said as well. There were many other tips to help us in our public speaking. Another key point was on the fact that the more you do it the more comfortable you will get with it, I am able to echo his thoughts here. It can even become fun once you settle in and know your topic and audience. See the high points below:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Public speaking is Storytelling</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It all starts with the topic</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Be the story that you tell</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Know and engage the audience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Be prepared, but know how to dance</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">RELAX, chill the effout</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the reception we had a great time meeting with various </span>VMware<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Product </span>SME's<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and discussed their product offerings and were able to participate in a contest to help the </span>VMware<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>SME's<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> win a </span>prize<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This was based on who got the most votes and visitors to their booth. I am happy to report my buddy Cody De </span>Arkland<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"> won, here is a photo of him taking a victory lap with his </span>prize<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms", sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I was also glad to finally have the opportunity to meet and chat with Sanjay Poonen, the COO of VMware at the reception. Very nice guy and down to earth!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I was able to meet with Jenni Gonzales who works for the VMware Technical Network and receive the VMTN Community Warrior hat that goes with the award I received a few weeks ago. That was really cool to get that while on campus and it is appreciated!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I can't forget to mention the awesome Jeff Goodall campus tour! This was a lot of fun as he showed us around the grounds and gave us a lot of the history behind the campus, building purposes and layout, and how it has grown over the years. Jeff has an awesome personality and delivers the tour with gusto! If you have the opportunity do not pass up on his tour! We would've loved to see the famous VMware turtles but unfortunately they were in winter hibernation, but we did get to see their pond! Here are a few photos of the tour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I want to thank both VMware and VMUG for giving me the opportunity to attend and helping equip me to succeed as a leader in this awesome vCommunity! Thanks for reading, cheers!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Excerpts of this post were taken from the excellent notes that <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveMassman" target="_blank">Stephen Massman</a> took at the conference. Thank you Stephen for sharing them! They were much more organized than my personal notes!</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-53944028066898215182019-03-01T09:56:00.004-08:002019-03-01T09:59:45.878-08:00The Power of the vCommunity<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now that my twitter feed has calmed down a bit from the good news VMTN posted, I wanted to get down a few thoughts. I am humbled and honored to have been selected as the Q1 2019 VMTN Community Warrior.<br />
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I have always been grateful to be a part of this community and wouldn't be where I am if I hadn't been mentored and showed many tips from all of you along the way. I wanted to take the time and thank some of those that have helped along the way:<br />
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<li>Britton and Heath Johnson both have always been encouraging and helped me step out of my comfort zone. <a name='more'></a></li>
<li>Jase McCarty has been a great encouragement and source of knowledge. </li>
<li>My friends and Co-Leaders in the WI VMUG that encouraged me to get involved and start speaking and supporting the community.</li>
<li>Sean Massey has been a huge encouragement in many ways. </li>
<li>Matt Heldstab for giving me opportunities to speak at NCWIVMUG and Minneapolis VMUG. </li>
<li>Ken Nalbone for friendship and speaking at Indy VMUG. </li>
<li>Joe Houghes for friendship and fun hanging out at VeeamOn and VMworld. </li>
<li>Al Rasheed for his kindness and support of many of my ventures. </li>
<li>Cody De Arkland for his encouragement and friendship.</li>
<li>Ariel Sanchez for reaching out when I became a vExpert and his continued encouragement.</li>
<li>Tim Davis for being a great friend and always willing to help out.</li>
<li>Listeners and guests on the Gigacast!</li>
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<li>So many others!</li>
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This list could go on for a long time as there have literally been dozens of you that have helped me to feel like such a part of this community. I have always tried to support and help others in the vCommunity when they have needed it because that kindness was shown to me. For those of you that haven't had the honor of helping to mentor someone and watching them succeed I highly recommend it! I enjoy helping to mentor others and help them get their start in the vCommunity. Sharing knowledge and helping others is what the community is all about. Paying it forward has been a huge part of my motivation to keep going and do all that I do. Folks took time that they didn't need to, to help explain something, or make an introduction, or just offer encouragement. I remember so many conversations when Heath was trying to get me to join twitter. "but I don't have anything to say" I would say. He would say "you have value to add and things you can contribute". I have made so many friends since getting into the vExpert program, and I do mean friends, not just industry peers. I truly count so many of you as friends. I enjoy seeing so many of you out at VMUG events and other tech conferences. It is good to catch up and see what you have been up to and enjoy some laughs together in person instead of GIF swapping on twitter.<br />
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The vCommunity has been amazing and as Al Rasheed would say Kindness matters. Thanks for reading! Cheers!Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-72898744330830582142018-10-05T10:22:00.001-07:002018-10-05T10:22:50.820-07:00Welcome to Blogtober 2018Well it is hard to believe it has been a whole year already since blogtober last year! For those not familiar with this, it was an initiative started by a friend of mine named <a href="https://twitter.com/mattheldstab" target="_blank">Matt Heldstab</a>.<br />
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Inside jokes aside, Matt is very active in VMUG and the community and he has been a great mentor! He encouraged me to sign up last year and I am honored to once again be a part of it this year. It is an awesome way to help the community through blog articles and to show each other what we are up to in terms of projects, problem solving and general helpful things for our environments, be it production or home labs. I always find it encouraging to hear from folks that have read my blog and it has helped them in some form.<br />
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This event has the great benefit of also being highly promoted by VMware, VMTN, VMUG, and the vCommunity at large so the blog gets great exposure. I saw the best stats ever on the blog last October and as you can see for yourself on the graph things went through the roof on site hits during this time period. The second spike that occurred was in May of this year when the main VMware twitter account retweeted one of my blog posts, again that wouldn't have occurred without the extra exposure from blogtober the previous fall.<br />
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I am going to do my best to get all of the required articles in, but I have the best excuse ever if I somehow don't make it. As some of you know my wife are expecting a child and the Dr says its coming any day now! We are excited for the new baby and I am looking forward to some time off from work to spend with the family.<br />
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I encourage everyone to get involved in Blogtober. You won't be sorry you did! To see the full list of this years particpants and their blogs please visit Matt's site here: <a href="http://tcwd.net/vblog/2018/09/03/blogtober-2018-tech-edition-its-baaack/">http://tcwd.net/vblog/2018/09/03/blogtober-2018-tech-edition-its-baaack/</a><br />
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If you are are new to my blog welcome! For those returning readers welcome back! I hope to have a productive #blogtober together with you and the #vCommunity! Cheers and thanks for reading!Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-28102025401250080582018-09-05T09:04:00.002-07:002018-09-05T11:07:29.951-07:00Post VMworld 2018This was a very exciting VMworld for me this year. I had so many things lined up before I headed out to Las Vegas. As always it was great to meet so many of you that I have only known online through twitter, as well as reconnecting with friends made at past VMworld and VMUG events throughout the country. This truly is a vCommunity like no other!<br />
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I was fortunate enough to be selected as a Tech Field Day Delegate this year and spent time in the suite at the Delano hotel for meetings with 3 different vendors as they presented their solutions to the delegate panel. This was my first experience and it was a lot of fun. I will be making a separate post on this event. We met with StorageCraft, Netapp and Dell/EMC and they presented various solutions. The event was streamed live on <a href="http://www.techfieldday.com/">www.techfieldday.com</a> but you can go back and watch on the Tech Field Day YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSnTTyp4q7jMhwECxXzMAXQ" target="_blank">here</a> to catch the recordings. Huge shout out to <a href="https://twitter.com/SFoskett" target="_blank">Stephen Foskett</a> for inviting me and his hospitality while at the event. It was great to get to know other past delegates as well.<br />
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I did a guest spot on the Virtually speaking podcast with Pete Flecha and John Nicholson. This was a lot of fun as well. We talked vSAN, and community involvement so look for this segment in a future episode. Pete and John do a great job on this podcast and its been a great show to listen to over the years so it was very exciting to be a guest on the show! I appreciate it guys!<br />
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My buddy Britton Johnson had told me he couldn't go to VMworld this year, but he showed up and surprised me on Sunday night. He was selected as this years VMware NSX roving reporter and I was interviewed by him for a short segment that you can view on the NSX YouTube Channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/vmwarensx/videos" target="_blank">here</a>. Britton and I also did short video review segments of the conference on our YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVg1FRbdp7Ai0dYnTav7vQ/featured" target="_blank">here</a>. We tried to recap the days events quickly while they were still fresh in our minds. We also recorded a recap video on my flight home.<br />
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This year I met so many people. Thanks to all those that came up and said hello! It was a very busy conference, but a lot of fun as well. I was able to see my fellow Wisconsin VMUG leaders at many different points during the conference. I was able to participate in a Home lab Panel at the VMUG booth with several other great folks such as Valdecir Carvalho, Mark Brookfield, Craig Herring, and Alastair Cooke. We gave tips from our home lab expereinces and answered questions from the audience and I hope it helps get some of you out in the community interested in building your own lab or helps you improve your current one.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-NKBNKenshtfdFcmNvpSynU2VB6odQf2uJKr2abED5wPEnlM9-YFAZt2tl4H2jDA3qZrzmpeZYIV8T3uFPHiZiTF0Fe-Ni1T2MQHto_Z4AQNUrYZBe2ptmsyvuVxHU9WERtPxMneLDA8/s1600/IMG_2883.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-NKBNKenshtfdFcmNvpSynU2VB6odQf2uJKr2abED5wPEnlM9-YFAZt2tl4H2jDA3qZrzmpeZYIV8T3uFPHiZiTF0Fe-Ni1T2MQHto_Z4AQNUrYZBe2ptmsyvuVxHU9WERtPxMneLDA8/s200/IMG_2883.HEIC" width="200" /></a>Very much enjoyed hanging out with my buddy Jase McCarty at the vSAN party and many others at the VMware Code hackathon Monday evening was a great time hanging out with friends and geeking out. Tuesday night was the vExpert Party at the Pinball Museum, and Veeam party and that was pretty cool as well. I ended up skipping the VMworld Fest party and just hung out with my friends Joe Houghes, Ken Nalbone and Chad Roth at a VMworld LAN party. We played some games and had a great time chatting.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvHxmPfTPAVXj3WsfHvN_01osNqdm7k0JBApoVNapxmH_plO5F_hPI7pR4tgbSQ4y0QnS_TRpuKq6solSuTHDRkMfog1SNmTLDw8URt3m-GhmAX8XkS4i5Zo-DB87mitl7dm5_iNRVs4/s1600/IMG_2882.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvHxmPfTPAVXj3WsfHvN_01osNqdm7k0JBApoVNapxmH_plO5F_hPI7pR4tgbSQ4y0QnS_TRpuKq6solSuTHDRkMfog1SNmTLDw8URt3m-GhmAX8XkS4i5Zo-DB87mitl7dm5_iNRVs4/s200/IMG_2882.HEIC" width="200" /></a>I attended some great sessions on vSAN. One with Pete Koehler and John Nicholson on The vSAN I/O Path Deconstructed Deep Dive that had some very interesting points getting down into the nuts and bolts of how vSAN works. That was very cool to also understand why some of the design decisions were made the way they were.<br />
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I also really enjoyed Christian Dickmann's session on future looking vSAN releases and features. <br />
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There is some very exciting stuff coming down the road for that, including major improvements to the vSAN Capacity management screen with usage projection. Another very cool feature they are looking at adding in is VUM based firmware updates, having just gone through a lot of firmware upgrades in my production vSAN this would come in quite handy!<br />
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I will leave you with a few photos from the event and the great folks I got to hang out with! Until next year in San Francisco I look forward to seeing you all at VMUG's and saying Hi on Twitter! Looking forward to the Cinci VMUG Usercon and meeting folks next week! Cheers!<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-18695830468877431822018-04-17T05:00:00.001-07:002018-04-17T05:00:23.573-07:00vSAN 6.7 is here!Today marks the release of vSAN version 6.7 along with vCenter and vSphere 6.7. The versions line up now across those three products which will make things a lot less confusing, so we are already off to a great start. There are many significant improvements to this version, and I was fortunate enough to be part of the blogger early access program to get a sneak peak at this release from the marketing team. I will go over a few things that they shared with us in this post.<br />
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HTML5 client integration for vSAN is almost at feature parity with the flex web client. vSAN workflows have been optimized for less clicks and a more efficient user experience. Support will still continue for the Flex web client, but new features going forward will only be available through the new HTML5 interface. This will be much nicer to have an interface free of the flash player, and it is very fast in comparison!<br />
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Native vROps dashboards for vSAN are now available in the vSphere Client. Quickly see the basics like health and more, or click to move to the vROps console for the full vSAN dashboard.<br />
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vSAN iSCSI Service Supports Windows Server Failover Clusters with both physical and virtual guest iSCSI initiators.<br />
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There is a new Adaptive resync feature to ensure fair allocation of resources for VM I/O and resync I/O when dynamic load changes occur on the system. When storage I/O exceeds the capabilities of the available bandwidth adaptive resync will make sure that specific traffic types are not starved for resources. Under contention resync I/O is guaranteed at least 20% of bandwidth, and if no resync traffic exists VM I/O is allowed to consume all of the available bandwidth. Maintains balance between VM and resync I/O. This existed in vSAN 6.6.1 but has been further enhanced with the bandwidth capabilities.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTA3WKcU0uZGUZq0xXl-rbGp_jsL-jSK310UFEdbUngg6gEOZfqp1y_46m7EzE8opXNkio45nYzEPhA-1qUfVa0puDEjx7X42AnYUL0pjNnk7qHO-plhs4dJ3GjDZhpbQGzcAWovHaqEo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+4.02.52+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1600" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTA3WKcU0uZGUZq0xXl-rbGp_jsL-jSK310UFEdbUngg6gEOZfqp1y_46m7EzE8opXNkio45nYzEPhA-1qUfVa0puDEjx7X42AnYUL0pjNnk7qHO-plhs4dJ3GjDZhpbQGzcAWovHaqEo/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+4.02.52+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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In the past, the VM Swap Object was hard coded to Mirrored with the space reserved. This is very cool that it uses the policy that the VM Home Space is assigned. Until you move to vSAN 6.7, take a look at this older <a href="https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2016/02/24/vsan62-powercli-sparse-vswp/" target="_blank">vSAN Swap article</a> written by Jase McCarty, that shows how to thin-provision the VM Swap object to free up some capacity.</div>
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Witness Traffic Separation can now be fully separated from the vSAN data traffic in vSAN 6.7 Stretched Clusters. This makes networking a lot easier because the vSAN data network does not have to communicate with the vSAN Witness. Hosts use an alternate VMkernel port to communicate with the vSAN Witness.</div>
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There have been some nice improvements in the vSAN health check as well. Performance has been enhanced. They have also removed duplicate warnings when you have a host disconnected, for maintenance etc. Health check enhancements will also now be delivered in between product releases. HCL checks have been improved and now firmware version and driver checks have been separated. It is good to see them dedicate time to improving this piece. As a vSAN admin you spend a lot of time in here and performance improvements are sure to make an impact in your day to day operations work flows.</div>
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This next feature is something I feel the platform has been lacking for a while, most other vendors have proactive support for their devices if there are failures detected, while this is not quite there it is laying the framework for that to happen. vSAN support insight allows VMware GSS support technicians to be able to help understand your configuration and see generalized data to help troubleshoot issues, you just need to have Internet connection for vCenter allowed either natively or through a proxy and have the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) turned on. This allows technicians to have a live look at your environment without giving up any sensitive information. They do not see host names, VM names, IP addresses or anything uniquely identifying. This helps for better reactive support, this will help cut down on the number of requests from GSS to ask you to upload logs. As mentioned before it has proactive support capabilities but that is not quite in place yet.</div>
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vSphere now supports 4Kn (or 4K Native) devices. Because vSAN is native to vSphere, vSAN will now also support 4Kn devices (for the capacity tier), allowing support for many of the newer drives today.</div>
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Improved security with vSphere and vSAN 6.7! The vSphere Cryptographic Module that both VM Encryption and vSAN Encryption utilize, has undergone FIPS 140-2 validation.</div>
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Overall there are some really nice improvements across the board and I think the vSAN team has some really great work to be proud of here. They have touched on some pain points and worked hard to improve the speed and performance of the product. They are also accounting for things customers have been asking for, and making the product more secure with VM and vSAN encryption options. That is all for this vSAN 6.7 preview. I hope you have enjoyed this first look at the product. Thanks for reading! Cheers!</div>
<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-76798934413051269602018-04-17T05:00:00.000-07:002018-04-17T05:00:08.759-07:00VMware Releases vSphere and vCenter 6.7I was fortunate to be part of a blogger vExpert early access program and got to see the new product version before the launch. Having taken part in the vSphere beta for the past few years, I have been very much looking forward to this release. I was under embargo but can now share some of these things with you as that has been lifted as of today.<br />
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<b>Installation</b></div>
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The Clarity UI is used for the installation. This is a nice new look for the installation and upgrade processes. One of the main benefits now is a browser and platform agnostic approach to the install.</div>
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Here are the supported upgrade paths, note that the path from 6.5U2 to 6.7 support is not live yet, but will be in the future. If you are currently on vSphere 5.5 you will need to upgrade to 6.0 to be able to get to 6.7. Another side note vSphere 5.5 support ends on September 19th so if you haven't already considered this now is the time! **NOTE** This is the last release for Windows based vCenter</div>
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<b>vCenter improvements</b></div>
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vCSA migration now supports your current custom ports for services during the migration process if you have changed any of the default ports on your install these settings will be preserved on the new vCSA.</div>
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New and improved vCenter Appliance Management Interface (VAMI)<br />
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There is a new Monitoring screen, this screen will give much more detail <br />
<a name='more'></a>with everything under one tab. Their are CPU and Memory graphs for viewing real time and historic data. A welcome addition is the visibility to the individual disks of the vCSA to show you if there is a space issue and it will kick off an alarm inside of the vCenter web client to let you know there is a problem, this screen received some much needed improvements.<br />
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You can also see details on vCenter services and which ones are running and get alert flags if there is a problem. The VAMI interface supports forwarding logs to up to 3 external syslog servers.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGz6QnSQ8JY8P7V2iSCiOQ0iHb5T7BBvsj2_WFhoph1ZObto1qWB5C0tdrn3ZfzSKyjavI91xH1Kp1jQzoUOR-_luOzW14w_hetFtulkrKncW_9xCM9sbr-bpVQT5qyMdKUSynTyEB3NE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+12.29.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="794" data-original-width="1600" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGz6QnSQ8JY8P7V2iSCiOQ0iHb5T7BBvsj2_WFhoph1ZObto1qWB5C0tdrn3ZfzSKyjavI91xH1Kp1jQzoUOR-_luOzW14w_hetFtulkrKncW_9xCM9sbr-bpVQT5qyMdKUSynTyEB3NE/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+12.29.18+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Backup/Restore options have improved. You can now do a scheduled backup of the vCSA from the VAMI, this is a key piece that was missing in the last version as backups had to be manually created. You also have retention options for those backups.<br />
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Backup activity is logged and the vCSA state is verified before the backup starts. The backup will not run if there are issues, they will resume upon issue resolution. The idea here is that you will always have a reliable backup to restore from, it ensures the integrity of the appliance before backing up. Restore method is from the vCSA ISO, and then browse for backup files from your repository.<br />
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For patching you can now choose which version to upgrade to instead of just the latest version. You can also now stage updates and remediate later. It no longer has to be done right away. Update methods are either from CD-ROM, default URL or custom URL<br />
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vCSA CLI Tools<br />
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You can now reconfigure from embedded to external PSC deployment. You can now also repoint vCenter server to a PSC inter-site and across sites.<br />
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<b>vSphere client</b><br />
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The big news here is that the client is now HTML5 based, This was available with 6.5 but it is now much more robust and almost on parity with the web client. The big items like vSAN and vROPS integration, vSphere Update Manager are all now here. The UI design teams have worked hard to make sure that the workflows require fewer clicks to accomplish tasks. The flex web client is still around, but the HTML5 client will be the platform of choice and all new features will be added to the HTML5 client only going forward. This should sound familiar as this was the same way the transition from the vSphere thick Client in 5.5 to the Flex Web Client in 6.0 was handled.<br />
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There are some new features at the VM level as well. There is a new Virtual Hardware version (14). I am excited to see some of the new capabilities in this version. One of the features stands out however and that is VM level EVC mode enablement. This allows you to improve VM mobility beyond your local cluster including the cloud.</div>
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<b>Update Manager</b></div>
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vSphere 6.7 is now the first official release to include vSphere Update Manager (VUM) in the HTML5 interface. This will be interesting to see. Much like the rest of the UI workflows have been optimized to require fewer clicks for increased efficiency. He is a list of what is included in this initial VUM HTML5 release:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93d2ptF8iVcuI6Qm3H2DGA-S_WTK1Am6nRr1_HrpilPK2l0Ih3bXO0WnK8K8HM9Cg2eoxLC-RGwgsT-3RumixrCCKZqLqaOEvvs7E62eAnbiEd-1v9HokjOK-rOQ1gPCLgW7I1Ni0EvQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.07.30+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="1600" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi93d2ptF8iVcuI6Qm3H2DGA-S_WTK1Am6nRr1_HrpilPK2l0Ih3bXO0WnK8K8HM9Cg2eoxLC-RGwgsT-3RumixrCCKZqLqaOEvvs7E62eAnbiEd-1v9HokjOK-rOQ1gPCLgW7I1Ni0EvQ/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.07.30+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Efforts have also been made to reduce downtime with updates within VUM, there are two methods. One is called Single Reboot Upgrade and the other is called Quick Boot. They each have different features and requirements that are broken out below.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPSZZwujiLgWE-4i_NPEDWQkBjW9f-ZWLVSVxFNz0xCNY-OQoYBTdEoSMKQy0UBwpKJ_02R8ul5TElbA7sZa_FWg-MD1570Ik8naR1iTfSDs7ojY2MhVyUo7nv-8YvpKq8HenmefneVtc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.32.48+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="639" data-original-width="1600" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPSZZwujiLgWE-4i_NPEDWQkBjW9f-ZWLVSVxFNz0xCNY-OQoYBTdEoSMKQy0UBwpKJ_02R8ul5TElbA7sZa_FWg-MD1570Ik8naR1iTfSDs7ojY2MhVyUo7nv-8YvpKq8HenmefneVtc/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.32.48+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Single Reboot Upgrade</b></div>
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Prior to vSphere 6.7 upgrades required 2 reboots, now when upgrading from 6.5 to 6.7 one reboot is required, the first reboot is eliminated for faster host uptime, and there is nothing to configure, you can take advantage of this automatically, note upgrades from 6.0 still require 2 reboots.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitv_j1HA6LczcnwpO6fCS9kf4-fHYZiPMbcgkmniUz8d_KHdS6RLkVoPtdxXAJ4rCV43-xowAZcKSMlTu5Xx_90OgGseXyeU_wUcOyf6X2ySGRNISmEHlTFjNdi0jpSsQgs5hQhQHgNo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.52.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1026" data-original-width="1600" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitv_j1HA6LczcnwpO6fCS9kf4-fHYZiPMbcgkmniUz8d_KHdS6RLkVoPtdxXAJ4rCV43-xowAZcKSMlTu5Xx_90OgGseXyeU_wUcOyf6X2ySGRNISmEHlTFjNdi0jpSsQgs5hQhQHgNo/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.52.41+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Quick Boot</b></div>
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Another outstanding feature meant to reduce downtime in enterprise data centers is the new Quick Boot. This allows you to reboot the hypervisor without rebooting the physical hardware. VMware is working with hardware partners to get this certified for other manufacturers. Currently it is supported with only a small amount of Dell and HP hardware and requires vSphere 6.7. So this will be a new feature going forward on supported hardware.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaJ29ZDw2hWTS2LJOgjpTBG5vTYDIpDfP0x4nfa4PnTUJkOZ3Gm_ovHeri06whVaquQnQvlyeoum5wyG92jzhhjaodcc-s3JmWtflFQUjT035YJO2f79t3S7MD2s1-Tah2Qo_xMfdVnRI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.26.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1600" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaJ29ZDw2hWTS2LJOgjpTBG5vTYDIpDfP0x4nfa4PnTUJkOZ3Gm_ovHeri06whVaquQnQvlyeoum5wyG92jzhhjaodcc-s3JmWtflFQUjT035YJO2f79t3S7MD2s1-Tah2Qo_xMfdVnRI/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.26.00+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Host Profiles</b><br />
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Host profiles are now also included in the HTML5 Client. This is the initial release and provides basic functionality. Currently supported functions are creating host profiles from a host, edit host customizations, check compliance, and Remediate. I am sure this will continue to get more functionality added to it in the future.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWTO8yS-UzBNArEq-k-fVWS6WAQfJ30hhMC3HAyjm06b8J99b9DH84QaeJkyDet-SentOQdbSG13jIjMChxRZpxrrNZaF594nYz8nGc5yCFtjapBntX0Ls7uwg1RijqvVVYxC5onLnndk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.56.21+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWTO8yS-UzBNArEq-k-fVWS6WAQfJ30hhMC3HAyjm06b8J99b9DH84QaeJkyDet-SentOQdbSG13jIjMChxRZpxrrNZaF594nYz8nGc5yCFtjapBntX0Ls7uwg1RijqvVVYxC5onLnndk/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.56.21+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>vSphere Restful API's</b><br />
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There are many new API's added in this release. Here is a list:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl3oL6t36GAB3b2TDWL-31abd0bVqo_axLDvYy4Evjfu51crga_sriWBTkd2HKYJIATaylLzPzOfXjm3SbmH3ry9TICTSe4L9fgxNjweIw-PTvcMAPSecTZp01CBFphI4NOaqXPluEGXY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.59.24+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="1600" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl3oL6t36GAB3b2TDWL-31abd0bVqo_axLDvYy4Evjfu51crga_sriWBTkd2HKYJIATaylLzPzOfXjm3SbmH3ry9TICTSe4L9fgxNjweIw-PTvcMAPSecTZp01CBFphI4NOaqXPluEGXY/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+1.59.24+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Security</b></div>
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There have been many security enhancements to vSphere 6.7. vSphere 6.7 is using TLS 1.2 by default. There is the ability to use Virtual TPM 2.0 with support for VM encryption. You can also see there are options for Virtualization Based Security. I will not go into the weeds on this topic here.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfpp-2Fo72GAfRsHfQ2HMzLXOgX7NrMV7mgDrzgaDIkkHeIT5FqggH4QfjC9ZsckT22z8wuMomjEbVr6t6fVmekZ_Mu4bddGjcf4k-Ms__NmoskhjHgSNQXemQ-Y6TnQOv918Hgy-0-dc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.14.45+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfpp-2Fo72GAfRsHfQ2HMzLXOgX7NrMV7mgDrzgaDIkkHeIT5FqggH4QfjC9ZsckT22z8wuMomjEbVr6t6fVmekZ_Mu4bddGjcf4k-Ms__NmoskhjHgSNQXemQ-Y6TnQOv918Hgy-0-dc/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.14.45+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZXJurWbaNx6oChwePNyYOgkPOzTpQK8k0M5gwrqb5Hm3wH5PvJCVoHLkDigOBKqP7g2x6Q-CFJBgghRNeFmqbimSvUQvXdnrGgr0jgomyYMy4viYTCMygIQ0oqzbsadKpUc5aue6YCU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.17.09+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1600" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZXJurWbaNx6oChwePNyYOgkPOzTpQK8k0M5gwrqb5Hm3wH5PvJCVoHLkDigOBKqP7g2x6Q-CFJBgghRNeFmqbimSvUQvXdnrGgr0jgomyYMy4viYTCMygIQ0oqzbsadKpUc5aue6YCU/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.17.09+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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VM Encryption can now be enabled with a single click. This can be done on a granular per VMDK basis if you have sensitive data only on one virtual disk. This is handy if you have PCI or HIPA requirements in your organization.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0BdpSjETlu7qh5SykcsrfhNBvscabQa76KPCcyc3Hykbq7qnc8wmd-Gw669A_CGFxbNKZQHyQ0AOE43dcOkgvglo6vWcvKNm6Iz03Q0FNIm9mMOZS4nyWK78rVe-0CBJcmj2MVzRHK0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.55.35+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1600" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0BdpSjETlu7qh5SykcsrfhNBvscabQa76KPCcyc3Hykbq7qnc8wmd-Gw669A_CGFxbNKZQHyQ0AOE43dcOkgvglo6vWcvKNm6Iz03Q0FNIm9mMOZS4nyWK78rVe-0CBJcmj2MVzRHK0/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+2.55.35+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Universal Application Platform</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJ3AclfzLjdEZlrpGIvgl7m9NUyNxv9PBZmU5teCNKuLDHkyqLs_3vvnPtDyNzBwUBmHgknADPXJdZvyCifcZzpjuCqeVRdLPRD7UTmuURk_fKn-X85E5lZOljNA_HRs9eO97sbb50E8/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.18.11+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="1600" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsJ3AclfzLjdEZlrpGIvgl7m9NUyNxv9PBZmU5teCNKuLDHkyqLs_3vvnPtDyNzBwUBmHgknADPXJdZvyCifcZzpjuCqeVRdLPRD7UTmuURk_fKn-X85E5lZOljNA_HRs9eO97sbb50E8/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.18.11+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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There are some significant features in here related to NVIDIA GRID vGPU's including vMotion using the suspend and resume option. This will be huge for those using these cards for 3D graphics.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gSIU2sYX-2DGtCqFcbjV_eN71cLvfgexzwWlIemuparIM3CL-1buzsekakCi8uGGMBZDuPWs2S_06wa_MOb1cIlEOJo8dDYGyzirTlzGYZO0C0Bb-k02jnLMOwWDR7QIjBBaBRA5kEE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.17.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="1600" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gSIU2sYX-2DGtCqFcbjV_eN71cLvfgexzwWlIemuparIM3CL-1buzsekakCi8uGGMBZDuPWs2S_06wa_MOb1cIlEOJo8dDYGyzirTlzGYZO0C0Bb-k02jnLMOwWDR7QIjBBaBRA5kEE/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.17.41+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Persistent Memory (PE)<br />
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This will significantly impact VM performance as these devices become available running almost at RAM speed to increase workload performance in VM. These devices are cheaper than system RAM but are faster than SSD.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7alxEPg8kE3Goenlm-vxrQMwnC3TQhctz7uZtuRzLo96DX3dSefi_JVibp4peFlNydSRYmIbJVNBkXM0gsPKOrFm5fzrY3o13-rd13z1ioAny3F40K06cBBUKnMU-0myOdm_jG4kHIUA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.22.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="828" data-original-width="1600" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7alxEPg8kE3Goenlm-vxrQMwnC3TQhctz7uZtuRzLo96DX3dSefi_JVibp4peFlNydSRYmIbJVNBkXM0gsPKOrFm5fzrY3o13-rd13z1ioAny3F40K06cBBUKnMU-0myOdm_jG4kHIUA/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-16+at+3.22.51+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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This is just a small sample of all the new features and enhancements as I haven't the time to cover them all.<br />
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Congrats to the VMware UI design teams and the vCenter/vSphere teams for all of their hard work on the UI and the back end and feature improvements. This looks to be a great release with many pain points addressed. I can't wait to get my hands on the bits and play with the GA release in the lab. That is all for now. I hope you enjoyed this preview of vSphere and vCenter 6.7. Thanks for reading! Cheers!</div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-68803831468627231742018-04-03T07:37:00.000-07:002018-04-17T12:46:09.826-07:00Resync Improvements in vSAN 6.6Having seen some of the resync times in the past on vSAN 6.0 it was welcome news to hear about vSAN 6.6's ability to weigh which route was more expensive (in terms of rebuild time/data to sync) if a host was out and came back into a cluster, but I had never seen it for myself, until today. I am in the middle of working on a vSAN upgrade and I have to update the HBA firmware for my controllers. I switched to the N2215 HBA for my vSAN and need them on the VMware VCG supported firmware. The current firmware level is 9.00.02.00 and the VMware recommended versions in the vSAN Health Hardware Check, shows either 11.00.02.00 or 13.00.02.00 are supported.<br />
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<a href="https://images.pexels.com/photos/159282/technology-servers-server-159282.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&h=350" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="467" height="298" src="https://images.pexels.com/photos/159282/technology-servers-server-159282.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&h=350" width="400" /></a></div>
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I knew this upgrade was going to take a while with various firmware versions on the host needing to be upgraded. Firmware upgrades are notoriously slow due to the critical nature of the components. Many safety checks are in place to make sure things are working. In addition to the HBA firmware I also had UEFI firmware, DSA, IMM which is IBM/Lenovo speak for an out of band server management card. vSAN resync times were top of mind as I approached this update. To remedy this I knew that I wanted to increase the default vSAN resync time, which is 60 minutes when a host is absent from the cluster. There are a few ways this can be done, either GUI or CLI and I will show both methods here. In the web client you can go to the host level and choose <b>Advanced System Settings</b> and edit the value for <b>VSAN.ClomRepairDelay</b>,<br />
<a name='more'></a>in my case I changed it from 60 to 90 minutes to give myself more time:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSA2TT210QtUMKP5RetZl8zWn7qFSwW5dCBu4Skp_oVjazAn8np-B3Wq-RjoQM7SXHxojV4aN9wxFA8FQrXNxdslExJXFHP79PMF6EM7F6gX4Equ2gFqgWACYwuuaVvrk1efjhUN1CSw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-02+at+11.20.35+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuSA2TT210QtUMKP5RetZl8zWn7qFSwW5dCBu4Skp_oVjazAn8np-B3Wq-RjoQM7SXHxojV4aN9wxFA8FQrXNxdslExJXFHP79PMF6EM7F6gX4Equ2gFqgWACYwuuaVvrk1efjhUN1CSw/s400/Screen+Shot+2018-04-02+at+11.20.35+PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The VMware <a href="https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2075456" target="_blank">KB</a> article for this shows that even if you change this setting via the GUI you will still need to SSH into each vSAN host and restart the CLOMD service for the change to take effect. Use the following command:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh5LtCQ_RzQasaQ4u0U3-NC1Ad1UwXaOpM8Ksck8jSoWNbar70dT7x4pAqG0CI1IV3EaU15ergBLc2Sz-Gwwnxrupn2UAaifj6w_bS9akyRgzwr6qNwAI1FLqWX2SHuI1jOcfzm62W6jA/s1600/clomd.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="19" data-original-width="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh5LtCQ_RzQasaQ4u0U3-NC1Ad1UwXaOpM8Ksck8jSoWNbar70dT7x4pAqG0CI1IV3EaU15ergBLc2Sz-Gwwnxrupn2UAaifj6w_bS9akyRgzwr6qNwAI1FLqWX2SHuI1jOcfzm62W6jA/s1600/clomd.JPG" /></a></div>
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If you prefer the CLI method, you can change the settings using the following commands via SSH on each vSAN host:<br />
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After that piece was taken care of I started the upgrades. Firmware upgrades are like watching paint dry, but I wanted to keep any eye on the systems as they upgraded. You never know what might happen if you turn away from the screen, you could miss an important message or error popping up. After booting into the BOMC which is a live Linux environment the upgrades started, they took quite a while as expected and after 6 reboots I knew it wasn't likely that I would make the 90 minute window I had given myself. I knew it would be close, but that I wouldn't make the cutoff with boot time etc. For those unfamiliar with vSAN, ESXi boots do take longer as the service for vSAN needs to start up, it also has to initialize the disks and then start doing checksums/data checks before the rest of the hypervisor can finish loading. I knew that things would be better than what I had experienced on 6.0 but I wasn't quite prepared for how much better. I had experienced a 48 hour resync once on 6.0, keep in mind that doesn't mean that data was lost or VM's were down. It was simply due to the design of our vSAN array, running FTT=1 (Failures to tolerate) I was left with only 1 good copy of "some" VM components. Again this doesn't affect all VM's either, depending on component placement and which host went down, SPBM (Storage Policy Based Management) settings etc.<br />
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Contrast that with what happened today on vSAN 6.6.1, when the host came back up after the firmware upgrades, I pulled it out of maintenance mode and looked to the vSAN health section to see what would happen. I went in to see how much data was resyncing and it started out at 4TB, but as I was clicking refresh I was watching that value rapidly shrink as vSAN was doing its evaluation of the data from the missing host that had just come back "online" to the array. Within a few seconds the number dropped to 1TB, then 900GB, then 40GB, and a few minutes later the array was healthy with full redundancy attained once more. The 40GB it eventually settled on was the amount of differential change the rest of the SSD's in my array had see in the time that Host 1 was offline. All other data had been evaluated very quickly and was determined to be usable and only the stale data had to be refreshed.<br />
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As I mentioned to a friend, it is one thing to hear about the feature improvements of vSAN, and it is another thing entirely to witness them first hand. I want to give the vSAN team huge kudos for the way they have continued to improve the product and make it enterprise ready. They continue to deliver improvements that customers expect in an enterprise class array. I hope you found this post useful. Thanks for reading. Cheers!Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-60832211969435766372018-03-20T09:53:00.001-07:002018-03-20T09:53:08.969-07:00vExpert 2018<br />
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Hi everyone, This is just a quick post to say I am thrilled to announce that I have been accepted back in the VMware vExpert program for 2018. <br />
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This is VMware's program for community and advocacy for technologists. This has been a great opportunity for me and has created a lot of new friendships with people out in the community. It has opened up speaking at events for me and has been a really awesome experience. It shows you are dedicated to the community and it really means a lot. There is special swag at events for vExperts and the coolest thing is the licensing for VMware products for the home lab. Again I am really honored to be accepted back in for my second year this year and look forward to getting out there and meeting some of you at a VMware or VMUG event near you! Cheers!<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-41031051404797030662018-03-14T21:22:00.001-07:002018-03-14T21:22:20.055-07:00Home Lab Series Part 2Welcome back to my home lab series, it has been a while since I have gotten a chance to write a blog post. I have had a lot of exciting things keeping me busy in my professional and personal life. I was very fortunate to be selected as part of a home lab presentation series on vbrownbag. It came about as a discussion on twitter shortly before Cody Dearkland was a guest on our podcast the vGigacast. We had some discussions on home labs and Cody ended up reaching out to Jonathan Frappier and we were put on the schedule for the month of February. It was a very exciting opportunity and for those that would like to see it I will post it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSQM-axQooU&t=713s" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Now lets get back to the home lab series. When we first left off we had discussed a lot of the various types of gear I had gone through over the last several years. <br />
<a name='more'></a>As I said in my vbrownbag, If there is one thing that is constant about a home lab it is change! I have had things break, deployments fail, plans for money to fund things fall through and so many of the other things that can change the best laid plans for upgrades and capabilities in the lab. I mentioned at the end of the last series we would talk about my first shared storage array.<br />
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I decided to try out a free product called freenas and I had an old AMD Phenom II system laying around, so I set out to utilize that software using some drives I had. It was a humble setup with the triple core phenom processor and 8GB of RAM with smaller drives. I also used the built in SATA on the motherboard and went with 7200RPM hard drives and used iSCSI over dual 1Gbe links. I tried setting up a LACP lag but at the time didn't have the ability license wise or cluster wise to build a required virtual distributed switch so I just used them in a failover mode. This worked well for quite a while until I wanted more space and performance to run things like Horizon View Linked Clones which were available at the time in Horizon 5.<br />
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Since I had a spare gaming rig that wasn't getting much use for gaming any longer I decided to repurpose that system as the new freenas. It was a much newer system with a Core i7 3770K processor at 3.5Ghz and I had 32GB of RAM in that system. I also knew I needed more storage space to do all the things I wanted to do in the lab. In addition to VMware products, I had a file server VM with Plex movies on it that needed more space. I ended up purchasing 7x 3TB HGST 7200RPM drives. I researched and planned upgrades for months that I knew would really make the system perform a lot better down the road when I could afford them.<br />
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Base Freenas </div>
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I knew I could get it to go faster if I eliminated the next bottleneck of the 1Gbe iSCSI storage links. I started doing lots of research on Fiber Channel and how it worked with freenas and what cards were compatible and recommended to use. Poking around the freenas forums I found a few articles suggested getting a QLogic
QLE2462 as it would work and was dirt cheap. I ended up buying 2 cards
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Freenas after Fiber Channel Upgrade</div>
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I had been reading about getting off of the motherboard SATA ports and getting a real HBA for the drives. All of my research led me to the LSI 9211-8i. I purchased it on ebay for under $100 and flashed it to IT passthrough mode so that freenas could manage the drives. This sped things up a bit more going from 230MB/s to 260.<br />
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Freenas after FC and LSI 9211-8i upgrade</div>
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I also decided that I wanted to use the L2ARC caching freenas is capable of, for write caching to speed up the read/write time of the array. I was able to repurpose the Samsung 840 Pro SATA SSD that had been the OS drive in the gaming rig as the
cache device. This sped things up a bit more going from 260 to 277 read, but what is really interesting here is seeing the benefit of the write caching with the L2ARC SSD device in place. You can see it went up from 292 to 312MB/s.<br />
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Freenas after FC, HBA, and SSD caching</div>
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As you can see overall these changes I made over the course of about a year to a year and a half were pretty small changes expense wise since I already had the computer. The largest expense was the hard drives themselves, but overall the other upgrades were pretty affordable and contributed quite a bit as a whole to the performance increase inside of a VM where these benchmarks were performed. I hope you enjoyed this post. In the next installment in the series we will look at Home Lab 2.0. Thanks for reading Cheers!<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-10815461432017631132018-01-12T20:49:00.004-08:002018-01-12T20:49:53.201-08:00Home Lab Series Part 1My home lab has gone through so many different variations through the years, as my needs at work have grown and changed my home lab has changed with it. I have constantly tried out new products just because I am a tinkerer and love playing around with new software and love the hunt for new parts as well. I have spent countless hours on eBay, forums and websites researching that next item I need or that next product I want to try. This series will attempt to take you through the various iterations of my lab as it has changed over the years. I will focus on what worked, what didn't, troubles I have had, other blogs, websites that have helped me over the years and it might not be 100% technical either. There may be some reminiscing as well as I try to recall the various configurations it has gone through. I hope you enjoy this series and come along with me as I discuss the home lab.<br />
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First, a little background, I have been building my own computers since 2001 when a friend encouraged me to give it a try. I had always been interested in computers and had been using them for quite a while at that point, the better part of a decade in 2001. While in High School I took every computer course I could, but I had never thought of building my own. This was to be my start tinkering with computer hardware. As my career grew, starting out on a help desk for a small ISP back in 2005, I was always intrigued by<br />
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hardware and software. I continued to build gaming computers and was always trying out new routers and networking equipment. This wasn't a full home lab by any means but really got my interest going in that direction. I transitioned to a job as a network services technician for a large corporate firm and got my first taste of real servers and networking in 2007. I was hooked at that point. I couldn't believe that I was getting paid to play around with servers and storage and loved it. I worked there for 7 years honing my skills, but in 2014 it was time to move on. I had really gotten into VMware back in 2008 and played with VMware Server, Player and workstation extensively and I decided that I really wanted to get certified and learn it much better. I was convinced that I wanted to do that for a living. I met Brian Kirsch from the Wisconsin VMUG and learned that he was an instructor at MATC and he was able to give information on enrolling in their Install, Configure, Manage course for vSphere 5.5. I got to studying for the course and realized that I wanted my first real server to play with to help me learn this stuff. I scoured eBay and purchased a Dell R610 1U rack server show below. I got what I could afford at the time which was a config with Dual Intel X5560 Processors 2x146GB 10k drives and 48GB of RAM. As you can see I purchased a wire shelf from Home Depot to hold it as I had no rack.<br />
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I studied hard and went through the course and final exam using that server. I took the test and got my VCP the summer of 2014 and the first thing I did was start looking for jobs with VMware in the description. Since then I have upgraded and added many things, but this was the beginning of my home lab. It was just the one host and a 24 port Netgear GS724Tv3 smart switch. It was a humble beginning but really helped me learn the concepts of the VMware vSphere software and how to run and manage a VMware environment. This also landed me my current job as a Network Administrator where I have learned so much and deployed many great VMware products like vSAN, and Horizon View. I hope you have enjoyed the intro to this series, we will jump into my first shared storage and other upgrades in the next installment! Thanks for reading!<br />
<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-9395758764345938782017-10-31T20:21:00.003-07:002017-10-31T20:24:19.338-07:00vSAN 6.6 Rebalance & Resync OperationsIn this post I will delve a little bit into day 2 OPS here with vSAN. Suppose you have had a maintenance window for rebooting and patching hosts, or perhaps you have a message under vSAN health saying that a proactive disk rebalance is needed on your vSAN cluster. In either scenario you will have components of VM's resyncing or in the case of a rebalance, moving on the cluster. This won't be a long post, but will give you some idea of what to expect when you encounter either disk resync or proactive rebalancing on your vSAN cluster.<br />
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First off let's define what the difference between the two operations are. A resync is replicating VM components across hosts in accordance to Storage Policy-Based Management or SPBM FTT=1, FTT=2 etc.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In this scenario you might have taken a single host out of the cluster and put it into maintenance mode, lets say for patching purposes. While that host is out of the cluster the disks in that host, provided you chose the recommended maintenance mode option of ensure accessibility, (see my article on updating a vSAN host <a href="http://www.digitalvspace.com/2017/10/updating-vsan-cluster-using-vum.html" target="_blank">Here</a>) will not be syncing changes that are made elsewhere in the vSAN cluster. Once that host is back up after patching and is admitted back into the vSAN cluster it will have to resync those changes to bring back the redundancy on some components and sync transactional data changes made from the other disks in the cluster. Let's say for argument sake that you went long on your patch window and for one reason or another didn't make it under the 60 min resync window. New in vSAN 6.6 is a feature that will evaluate which scenario is quicker and it will just pull the disks back in and use them versus a full resync that would happen in vSAN 6.0 and earlier. There is now intelligent evaluating going on behind the scenes to determine the least costly method of getting the cluster back to a normal redundant state.<br />
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Proactive rebalancing is different. In this scenario we have multiple disks inside of disk groups and we may not be using all of the disks efficiently. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as adding or removing capacity devices to vSAN. In this example we have a 4 SSD disk group and could have 3 disks that are almost full with the 4th not being utilized very much at all. A proactive disk rebalance warning seeks to correct that action and is a built in alarm in the vSAN health stack.<br />
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The rebalance will take a while depending on the size of the components it needs to move, also keep in mind that not all traffic will be across your network, you may also have disks rebalancing data across the internal HBA to another disk in that same host as shown in the photo below. You will notice two different VM's that are syncing components to the same host. This traffic never hits your network since it is internal to the host.<br />
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The rebalance task will show 5% complete until its actually done. This is a known bug in the UI only and will hopefully be addressed in a future release. You can see the accurate progress in RVC. You can keep an eye on what the Disk Proactive rebalance is doing on the vSAN health check Cluster level alarms vSAN Disk Balance screen. There if you click the Disk Balance tab down below it will show you which components on their respective hosts from which VM's still have yet to balance. Also rebalance operations can be stopped and resumed at any time.<br />
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If in either scenario you run into an issue where you have high network loading where resync or rebalancing operations could pose a threat to the cluster, a new feature was added in vSAN 6.6 that allows you to have control over how much bandwidth these operations take. Not only can you control the bandwidth, but before you even change that setting you can see how much bandwidth each host is using in the current operation. Keep in mind that VMware recommends that the throttling only needs to be changed in extreme scenarios, and a vSAN health warning called <b>Resync Operations Throttling</b> will fail if you enable it.<br />
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I hope this post has helped show some of the differences between Rebalancing and Resyncing operations in a vSAN cluster along with some helpful tips for working with both scenarios. That is it for long. Thanks for reading. Cheers!</div>
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-20087106728633718932017-10-30T20:21:00.002-07:002017-12-27T19:29:45.115-08:00Updating a vSAN Cluster using VUMI wanted to shed some light on what some may think is a mystery or difficult task. How do I update a vSAN cluster using vSphere Update Manager (VUM)? The quick and simple answer is easily! The great thing about vSAN is that you already know how to upgrade and patch it since it is built into the ESXi hosts and vCenter web client that you already use daily. I will take you through the process of upgrading a host in my home lab. Remember as with any upgrade make sure that your hardware is supported and on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) before proceeding with ANY upgrade.<br />
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The first step is to make sure you have a baseline attached to your cluster and/or Hosts. You can navigate to the update manager tab in the vCenter Web Client to do this. A baseline is a group that you setup for either patches, or upgrades and then you assign it to physical ESXi hosts or Clusters. You can see here that we have baselines created and VUM tells us that this particular host that we have highlighted is not compliant with this baseline and needs to be patched in order to be in compliance. We will go ahead and create a baseline for this host so you can see that process.<br />
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For this example I am going to create a baseline for critical host patches. I will check that box when creating the baseline, in this case since the critical host patches is a predefined baseline I don't need to go any further to assign to my hosts, another way it can be done is by right clicking a cluster or a host and then choosing to attach a baseline that way as well.<br />
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Here you can see the current patch level on the host is ESXi 6.5u1 build 5969303 in its non compliant state.<br />
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Now that we have created a baseline and told VUM to scan for updates and can see that we are not in compliance, we can start the process of upgrading. What I like to do first is enter the host into maintenance mode, VUM will do this for you but I prefer to do this step manually. </div>
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As we enter maintenance mode we are presented with a choice on what to do with the vSAN data that resides on this host, while in maintenance mode. We can evacuate all data to other hosts in the cluster, a very nice addition in vSAN 6.6 is the ability to see how much data would need to be moved. Per VMware recommendations there is no need to do a full migration for only a patch, that will take hours, or days depending on what your data is like on the vSAN array. Ensure accessibility is sufficient in this case as the host will only be down for a few moments. If it is down for longer than that due to some sort of issue, be it hardware or software, depending on your SPBM and your vSAN node design, you should at least have 1 copy of the data and after 60 minutes if a host doesn't come back up vSAN will self heal back to full redundancy on the remaining hosts (provided you have at least a 4 node RAID 1 setup required for self healing or 5 nodes in RAID5)</div>
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Now that we have our host set to go into maintenance mode, migrate all VM's off of the host with vMotion, once the host has fully gone into maintenance mode you can click the remediate button to start the patching process. You will select your baseline as the critical host patches. In my case the same patch was also listed as a vSAN recommended patch as well. Click Next.</div>
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Here we can see how many patches this baseline will apply, this will be only 1 patch here to get to the latest version. Click Next.</div>
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Here we can see the actual patch name to be applied, what product the patch is for, and its actual release date.</div>
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On this next step we see that we have options to run this patch install as a scheduled task. We also see an ignore warnings box. I have always run my patches right away as I want to keep an eye on everything and make sure things come back up OK.</div>
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You can choose your VM options on this screen, but again the way I do this to make sure that ALL VM's are vMotioned off before I get to this point simply for more control, but this screen is where the host will vMotion VM's off the host and go into Maintenance mode if you choose to do it this way. In a vSAN environment I would recommend you do these options manually as well. It is great that the system can do it, I just prefer seeing each step through. Also on each one of these coming screens you will see the option to save the parameters you choose on that page as the default host remediation options going forward, so you do not have to choose them every time. This is a handy time saving feature I would recommend taking advantage of.</div>
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We see more options for the cluster level on this screen and we have to turn off DPM during the remediation as well as turn off FT, and HA admission control, if you do not do it in this step you will get a warning of it being on in a later step and it will prevent the remediation process from going any further. </div>
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We are almost ready to hit finish, but at the top there is another step I always do, just as a precaution and that is to run the Pre-Check wizard, it will warn you if a service is on that will prevent Remediation from occurring.</div>
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Here is what the pre-check report looks like with HA admission control still turned on in the cluster, it will warn you that it is on and then it will give you a recommendation on what action to take to rectify the situation so that you can continue with the patching. </div>
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From here on out the process is automatic. You will see the host do what is essentially a live image boot onto the new ESXi version and then it will download the installation script from Update Manager and install the new version. It will take a while for the host to do this and then reboot a second time where it will boot from the installed version. You can now see the version shows as build 6765664. It will take a while for vSAN to reinitialize the SSD's in my case and then will finish booting.</div>
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At this point the host will show back up in vCenter. You can now exit maintenance mode and the cluster will go back to normal functionality. You can go to the monitor tab and click on vSAN and then the Resyncing Components section and you will notice that the vSAN disks will be resyncing data that changed on the cluster disks while this host was offline. It shouldn't take long for this to complete, but you can watch the progress here and it will show you which components from VM's that are resyncing and how much data is left to resync from each component.<br />
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We can go back to the vCenter Web Client Update Manager page and run a Scan for Updates check and see that it is now compliant with the patch baseline that it wasn't compliant with prior to the patch cycle. One other thing, I also go back and make sure to turn back on the HA admission control that was turned off on the cluster during the remediation. I hope that helps answer some questions on the process and showed how easy it is to maintain patch levels on your vSAN clusters. Until next time. Cheers!<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-43894633198861912532017-10-27T21:06:00.000-07:002017-10-30T10:00:18.213-07:00Setting up Encryption in vSAN 6.6<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have had this post in the works for a while now. I have had some challenges in my home lab with unstable storage and issues with fiber channel support on my freenas server. I have since moved over to a IBM DS3400 SAN and that has been much more stable, anyway I digress, onto the content!<br />
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I wanted to play around with the new encryption options that vSAN 6.6 brings to the table and I was fortunate enough to get setup with a HyTrust KMS server so I can get it up and running and test it out. I want to give a huge shoutout to the HyTrust team for providing this to me, without their support this post would not be possible! I will not be doing any benchmarks but rather seeing how the technology works and how easy it is to implement.<br />
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The first step is to have a working vSAN cluster. I happen to have a 6 node nested ESXI 6.5u1 vSAN cluster in my lab with each nested host containing 2 vCPU 16GB of RAM, 1 10GB Cache disk and 1 50GB capacity disk for a total of 300GB on the vSAN Datastore. This Cluster is running FTT=2. I will be installing the Hytrust KMS server into the nested environment.<br />
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I will then be choosing the vSAN encryption option on the Configure tab of the vSAN settings and then will point it over to my HyTrust KMS server appliance.<br />
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Let's deploy the Appliance OVA shall we?<br />
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Here you can see the configuration options and it looks like its a pretty lightweight appliance, only requiring 2vCPU and 8GB of ram for a recommended deployment size. I will be choosing the Demo size since this is a nested lab and requirements will be low. That brings the resources down to 1GB of RAM.<br />
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Next we will need to fill in the IP address and DNS information for the appliance. That is it for the OVA deployment. Let's see what is next.<br />
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After powering up the appliance, we are first greeted with the HyTrust logo and then are prompted to create a new password for the keycontrol system. The next step after that, it asks you if you are joining this KMS server to an existing keycontrol system. In our case this would be a no, as this is the first keycontrol system in the lab. Now we can further manage the appliance by going into the web GUI.</div>
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Now that we are in the web GUI we need to login with the default credentials of username <b>secroot</b> and password <b>secroot</b>. </div>
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Accept the EULA and then change your password. Next up we need to configure the email notification delivery settings. You can skip these if you wish. Once those are set we can move on to configuring the KMS cluster. We need to setup the KMIP server by clicking on the Icon for it in the top menu.</div>
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Then it is time to enable the KMIP server by clicking the word disable, then checking the enable box, then saving that setting, and from what I experienced, even if you hit the save button it doesn't turn the service on until you hit the Apply button in the lower right. We also need to make note of the port number of 5696 that the server uses for later configuration in vCenter.</div>
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We will want to then choose the User tab and click on it and create a user. If you see a message that says the KMIP server is disabled, go back and re-enable the server and make sure to hit Apply after saving. In my case I named the user the same as the vcenter that was going to be using this KMS KeyControl system. Do not specify a password here as it will mess things up in later steps. This is left blank intentionally in accordance with the documentation received from HyTrust.</div>
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I will go ahead and click create on that user as shown above, and then click to select the vCenter user that was just created and choose the Download Certificate from the Action menu. This will complete the actions we need to take in the HyTrust GUI.</div>
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We now need to go into vCenter and configure our KMS server. At the vCenter level in the Web Client we will go to the Configure tab and then on the left nav column choose Key Management Servers. Then click the green + to add KMS.</div>
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Here we will enter in a name for the <span style="background-color: yellow;">KMS</span> cluster, a FQDN for the server, IP address and port information, this is port 5696 that we noted from enabling the KMIP server in the HyTrust GUI earlier. I will then click ok and set that as the default KMS for the Cluster. Then click trust to accept the Certificate from Keycontrol.</div>
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Now we are back at the KMS screen in vCenter and we notice that we have an error message that the connection status is "Cannot establish trust connection". It explains if you click details that you need to generate a Certificate for the cluster, which we already did in steps up above in the HyTrust GUI.</div>
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The next step is to import that certificate that you downloaded earlier from the vCenter user tab inside of the HyTrust UI, and now use it to establish trust between vCenter and the KMS cluster. To do that we will click the Establish Trust with KMS ribbon at the top of the menu.</div>
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We will choose the last option on this screen. Upload certificate and private Key.</div>
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Extract the Zip file you downloaded from HyTrust UI earlier and upload the vCenter.pem Certificate for both fields, Certificate and Private Key and make sure after uploading that they match with the same Key in both fields.</div>
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You can now notice that our connection status has changed to Normal with a green check letting us know everything is communicating.</div>
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Now we are done adding the KMS to vCenter. Let's navigate over to the Cluster level, and look at the configure tab under vSAN General, we will choose the edit button on the top right to edit the disk configuration.</div>
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You will notice that when I select the Encryption option that the HyTrust KMS populates automatically since it is the only KMS installed. You also have the option of clicking the Erase Disks before use box, which will significantly reduce the chances of a data leak, and increase an attackers cost to view sensitive data. Once I click OK the cluster will do rolling disk group reformats in the vSAN cluster to enable the encryption feature.</div>
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Now our vSAN cluster is encrypted. It really doesn't take that much effort, was much longer to make this post up than to actually deploy the solution. For those that are in Healthcare with HIPA requirements or those in the Banking Industry with PCI Compliance to adhere to, this is a strong solution that is now built into vSAN, all it requires is a KMS provider and a little configuration and you are set. This solution uses data at rest encryption and ensures that anybody that walks out of your datacenter with a device will not have any useful data at all. It uses AES-256 bit encryption. I hope you have enjoyed this walkthrough of vSAN encryption and KMS provider setup. I would again like to thank HyTrust for providing the KMS for this demo. Cheers and Thanks for reading!</div>
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-45657752196513537082017-10-26T20:21:00.002-07:002017-10-26T20:27:03.256-07:00VMware Licensing Organization TipsI bet there are lots of folks out there that just love managing licensing both on their systems and in the VMware portal. For those of you that didn't sense my sarcasm, there have been some pain points in the past, but I have to say I have been so impressed with recent changes to the VMware portal and some additions in vSphere 6.5 regarding license management that I had to share once I found them.<br />
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They have made it really easy to use and have separated the product lines in the main licensing page, this is done by default and is not something you have to setup. The portal is laid out really nice and is pretty easy to navigate compared to how things have been in the past.<br />
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Another really cool feature is the ability to split and combine CPU licenses really easy. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Let's say for example that you used to have a few separate hosts at a location and now you have changed it over to a cluster, you can easily combine those licenses and label them with the name of the cluster and you also can add in location tags as well. This is a feature that I find helps me out quite a bit. Another scenario would be that you need to separate a pack of CPU licenses so that you can dole them out to other locations. It is also a welcome feature to be able to upgrade and downgrade licenses as you need to. All of these things come in really handy whether you are a small shop or have dozens of sites to keep track of. Here are all of the options they give you on the top of the page, it is a very versatile system that is flexible to whatever your needs are.<br />
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One of the neat things that I discovered very recently is the ability in vSphere 6.5 to import a special license report into vCenter, it will take the data that you have entered into the VMware licensing portal such as the location and notes that you have made on that particular license or group of licenses. Then it will display them on the appropriate products in the licensing section of the vCenter web client. I assume it does this by matching the product keys up. This allows you to not only notate and keep track of what license is installed at which site location in the my.vmware portal, but also allows that same data to be imported and kept track of right within vCenter itself. That is a powerful tool when it comes to everybody's favorite time of year, Renewals! This can help you track down which CPU Licenses are at each location and will help you sort out what products need to be renewed. Here is how it works.<br />
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First you need to export your licensing data from the my.vmware portal in a specific report called the Product Licenses, Details, and History Report as shown here:<br />
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This will export the data to a CSV file, which you will download and then import into vCenter here<br />
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As part of the wizard it will auto detect the licenses in the file and compare them to your license inventory and then automatically apply some of the license tags, and notes details to the correct product, again this is only if you have added this additional information into the my.vmware portal. It will also give you the option to manually add additional license data into the system for other products. In my case those other licenses it gave me the option to manually add were old licensing for outdated products no longer in use, so I manually removed them from the import by unchecking those boxes.<br />
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This is what it looks like once you have imported the data into vCenter. You can see that each site label has been imported into the correct location and the tags from the VMware licensing portal show under the My.VMware Column headers for each licensed asset. That is it for this post. I hope you found it useful and take advantage of some of the new tools to help manage licensing built into vSphere and vCenter 6.5! Cheers!Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-57785025356418681122017-10-11T20:20:00.002-07:002017-10-11T20:20:24.917-07:00VSAN 6.2 Deployment Part 3 ImplementationToday we will be getting back to the VSAN deployment series I had started earlier this summer, it's time to continue on with excerpts from the presentation I have been doing at VMUG's on my VSAN deployment. Today we will be focusing on the Implementation phase. Here is an overview of that process.<br />
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We started by getting our 4 new Lenovo servers racked then installed esxi 6.0u2 on them, we then installed our 10Gbe switches and configured our VLANS separating out our VSAN traffic on its own VLAN which we also isolated from talking to the rest of the network as we were told that the multicast traffic VSAN 6.2 required could get quite chatty and could take down other network switches on the network (note that this requirement was removed in VSAN 6.6 which now uses unicast) Our network topology in part 2 of this blog series showed our dual redundancy we planned for by having 2 10Gbe switches and 2 PCIE 10GBe interface cards per host.<br />
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We installed a brand new vCenter 6.0u2 appliance onto legacy hosts (IBM Bladecenter) which was a welcome addition to the production environment (no windows updates yay!) as I had been using it in my labs for several years already. We then disconnected all hosts from the legacy windows vCenter left all datastores and VM's in place and swung them over and connected them into the new vCenter appliance. The next step was to recreate folders and resource groups in the new vCenter. I chose not to migrate any data over from the old windows vcenter environment as I wanted to start with a clean slate and not bring over any unnecessary logs from the legacy system.<br />
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Next up was networking in preparation for turning VSAN on. We built our vDS which is required for VSAN.<br />
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We created the vDS port groups and NIOC shares making VSAN traffic the highest priority, vMotion was next, then virtual machine traffic, and finally MGMT traffic was the lowest priority. For those that may not know what NIOC is, it is a mechanism called Network Input Output Control that does exactly what it sounds like, it prioritizes network traffic types as a QOS service over these shared links. Here you can see how we set that NIOC value on each traffic type:<br />
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Now that we had all the preceding steps in place it was time to turn VSAN on, which I found out is pretty exciting and anticlimactic at the same time. All you need to do after you have all the prerequisites met is to turn the service on in the cluster settings</div>
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The next step was to claim our disks which can be done 1 of 2 ways in VSAN 6.2 (note VSAN 6.6 and newer only have the manual disk claim option, this was done to prevent scenarios where you could be trying to remove a disk from VSAN for whatever reason and the system would auto claim it back into the disk group) You can choose the auto disk claim option and the cache and capacity disks will be auto detected and configured per node. the second option and the one we chose just because I wanted to have more control to see how this works was the manual disk claim option both methods can be seen in the screenshot below: </div>
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We also chose to enable the Dedupe and Compression option to conserve space. This was a brand new feature in VSAN 6.2 and one that we had decided in the planning phase that we definitely wanted to take advantage of. One other thing to note as this was a brand new VSAN cluster without any data on it we had no issues enabling this service, just be aware that when you enable it, the disk groups get rolling reformats to enable this option, while it is stated that they are non disruptive I was glad I didn't have to test that out.</div>
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During the network validation phase the system confirms that you have a VMkernel port setup on each host that is a part of the VSAN cluster configured and ready to go as a double check before VSAN is enabled.</div>
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The next step is the actual disk claiming. as you can see in the screenshot below you will choose your disk type here SSD or HDD, and you will then choose whether that disk is a cache or capacity device. Note that each VSAN node's storage is made up of logical units called Disk Groups and Disk Groups are made up of a set of cache and capacity devices, the configuration maximums are 7 capacity devices per disk group and 5 disk groups per node. We had 1 disk group per node with 1 cache <span style="background-color: yellow;">SSD</span> and 5 capacity SSD's in our final design.</div>
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At this point VSAN was up and running. After all the hard work with preparation and planning it was very easy to actually turn it on and start using it. The last thing we did was to start migration from legacy over to the new <span style="background-color: yellow;">VSAN</span> environment. </div>
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As shown earlier in this blog series the first node in the VSAN cluster was connected to the legacy storage via Fiber Channel so I migrated compute for each VM over to the first VSAN host using vMotion, once that was completed the next step was to change the networking on the VM from the legacy vSS to the new vDS VM network port group. I could then do a storage vMotion to get the files migrated fully over to VSAN. After that was complete I would then do a vMotion to bring that VM down to another node in the VSAN cluster to free up resources on the first VSAN cluster node for more VM's to be migrated in. This process took a few days to get around 100 VM's migrated in. </div>
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That just about covers it for the implementation phase of this project and this ended up being a longer post but I hope people enjoy it and learn from it. Next time we will go over some Tips and Tricks I learned along the way in this deployment. Thanks for reading! Cheers!</div>
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-52686682618771505622017-08-24T09:33:00.000-07:002017-08-24T09:35:11.605-07:00VMware Community Involvement<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguDEZZXVFXMwGd2ESl7pS2xmusy80tqk3Rb9k5SKCrWcGYISMLd9J3sO5_4tgFuEvyMEgH7Ch1XKhjjhKTyGeSTHvqVRKkRAQMraYzdBO3b4fMmWw0X8MVaPTAT1KwwO1t4_8Ql25Z0j8/s1600/vExpert-VSAN-Logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="1022" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguDEZZXVFXMwGd2ESl7pS2xmusy80tqk3Rb9k5SKCrWcGYISMLd9J3sO5_4tgFuEvyMEgH7Ch1XKhjjhKTyGeSTHvqVRKkRAQMraYzdBO3b4fMmWw0X8MVaPTAT1KwwO1t4_8Ql25Z0j8/s320/vExpert-VSAN-Logo.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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I have been very blessed to have many mentors that have given me sound advice in my career. They have seen my desire to learn, and given me advice on how to grow via skill set and other means. Mentors have helped to continue the learning process to help me grow my career. One of those means has been getting involved in VMware and VMUG communities.<br />
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Last week I am honored to share that I was awarded the <b>VMware vExpert VSAN</b> award for my contributions to the community around the vSAN product. Thank you to Corey Romero and his team for all they do to support this community! I have to say this wouldn't be possible without those mentors! They gave me the push I needed to apply for the program and succeed. I have done a lot of promotion of this product through twitter, doing VMUG presentations at local meetings and USERCON events throughout the Midwest. These presentations were based upon my production install experience with VSAN. This will be a short post but I wanted to give some mentoring advice of my own based on my experiences.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The first thing I would have to say to any aspiring vExpert or anyone looking for career growth for that matter, is to <b>put yourself out there </b>and step out of your comfort zone! Get involved in a local VMUG, start attending meetings, get to know the leadership and the membership! You will be surprised by how willing to help everyone is in the community, and how much the leadership will appreciate having someone that wants to step up and participate. One thing they love is people willing to do Community presentations at Quarterly meetings. It doesn't have to be a long talk sometimes they can fit you in time slots as little as 15 minutes until you get comfortable, they have tools and advice that can help get you more comfortable with public speaking as well.<br />
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Start a blog! I was encouraged to start this blog by several of my mentors and it has been a lot of fun. Even if I don't get a ton of readership it's rewarding to try to help others with things I have learned and get those thoughts down on paper. I can't tell you the number of times I have seen bloggers refer back to their own articles as reference!<br />
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Start a podcast. It doesn't have to be anything fancy and it doesn't have to be deeply technical, it can be whatever you want it to be. Just try to be as accurate with your information as you can and learn from the experience. I am currently Co-Hosting a podcast with my longtime friend Britton Johnson and it has been really fun, and we learn from each other as we discuss certain VMware product lines that either of us have more experience with.<br />
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I have learned so much from my experience on the job, but the VMUG community is an amazing resource that you don't want to miss out on. I appreciate all the information I have gleaned and all the relationships that I have made through both the vExpert and VMUG communities. I am looking forward to meeting many people that I have only known through twitter at VMworld in a few days.<br />
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Bottom line is don't be afraid to put yourself out there! You will be amazed what happens once you step out of that comfort zone and be an active participant! Thank you to all of my mentors out there, you know who you are! Cheers and thanks for reading!Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-85152035555913395702017-08-08T08:28:00.000-07:002017-08-08T08:54:53.536-07:00VMworld 2017 PreviewIt's hard to believe that it's almost here already, but VMworld 2017 is just around the corner! It is a very exciting time for those in the virtualization community. There are so many great learning opportunities, with very good speakers on some great topics such as VSAN, VMware on AWS, NSX and many more. I thought I would put together a short post with some of the sessions I plan on attending while I am out there.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">My Session List</span></b><br />
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vSAN Vision: The Future of HCI [STO1490SU]<br />
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vSAN in VMC on AWS environment [VMTN6656U]<br />
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What's New in vSAN 6.6: Technical Deep Dive [STO2047BU]<br />
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Best Practices for vSAN Design: A Real-World Perspective [STO1372BUR]<br />
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The Top 10 Things to Know About vSAN [STO1264BU]<br />
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Hackathon Event: 15 teams hack on ideas! [VMTN6722U]<br />
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Optimizing vSAN with vRealize Operations [STO1895BU]<br />
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vSAN Setup & Management the Easy Way! [STO1968BU]<br />
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vSAN Beyond the Basics [STO1479BU]<br />
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Interpreting Performance Metrics in Your vSAN Environment [STO1206BU]<br />
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vSAN Management Today and in the Future [STO1378BU]<br />
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vSAN Technical Deep Dive [STO2986BU]<br />
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Successful vSAN Stretched Clusters [STO1118BU]<br />
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Automate Your Security with NSX [SAI3019BU]<br />
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Feel the vRealize Network Insight: Overcoming Operational Challenges with NSX and Underlay Networking [NET2810BU] with <a href="https://twitter.com/theseanodell" target="_blank">@theseanodell</a> Presenting<span id="goog_734699302"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_734699303"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are many opportunities to network as well, I am really looking forward to meeting some of the new people I have met on twitter since getting into the community vexpert program and starting this blog. I have also met a lot of people through the VMUG events I have spoken at and look forward to seeing them again as well. If anyone else wants to meet up while out at VMworld hit me up on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/importcarguy" target="_blank">@importcarguy</a> </span><br />
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This is going to be one of the best VMworld's ever for me personally as I have also signed up for the VMware Code Hackathon, this is an event where you can join a team and do problem solving on a particular Project. You can join any team and no coding experience is necessary. I will be on team SABUtage with Jase McCarty, Cormac Hogan and a few others. We will be working on end to end automation of a stretched VSAN cluster using powercli. This will be a lot of fun and will be a great learning experience as I am a powercli newbie. Click <a href="https://blogs.vmware.com/code/2017/07/28/vmworld-hackathon-back/" target="_blank">Here</a> to learn more about it and sign up. I hope to see you all out there in a few weeks and safe travels! Vegas Baby!<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-3191457381209691832017-08-01T20:01:00.002-07:002017-08-01T20:11:22.570-07:00VSAN 6.2 Deployment Part 2 In the last post we looked at the Plan, in this post we are going to take a look at our Design. We worked with a partner that we gave our requirements on compute and RAM and they came up with the design.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTw5bGAw5aIs8XIMIyBCekPioaa8Kx138G1gt6j_JkG6BptHDI3nMjgRx8_hZ4F6gUWVEjSJrO_fJI4ToierjFISK1t7g_m6l44v9T_YIfA2I5tLxIzFL8bhQhd08p384HAERkPcXy8nk/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-08-01+at+9.40.13+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="976" data-original-width="1600" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTw5bGAw5aIs8XIMIyBCekPioaa8Kx138G1gt6j_JkG6BptHDI3nMjgRx8_hZ4F6gUWVEjSJrO_fJI4ToierjFISK1t7g_m6l44v9T_YIfA2I5tLxIzFL8bhQhd08p384HAERkPcXy8nk/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-08-01+at+9.40.13+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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We ended up with a 4 node Lenovo x3650 M5 cluster each with Intel Xeon E5-2650V4 Processors and 384GB of RAM. The disk groups initially were 1 x 400GB cache disk and 3 x 1.6TB Capacity disks to meet our need of around 10TB of raw data, <br />
<a name='more'></a>we ended up expanding that before the project deployment was finished, but more on that in a later post. One of the things we really wanted to take advantage of in VSAN was the new for version 6.2 feature of Dedupe/Compression. We were looking forward to the increased rack space and lower power requirements from this consolidated approach as well. Remember from the planning phase that we had a very large Bladecenter and 2 separate multi shelf SAN systems that this would replace.We also as part of the design wanted to repurpose a newer v3700 SAN array that had been previously a part of our production VMware environment for direct to disk backups and get away from the slow process of backing up directly to tape<br />
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All flash VSAN requires 10GBe interconnects (hybrid VSAN can still use 1Gbe) so we went with 2 Cisco 3850 12 SFP+ port switches for redundancy. Looking at the Diagram below shows our network wiring topology<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL-iAap97SBBLdPW7AcofcYGB85KYcBPvLzs7tL4ZhDD5VPUadTNHToI2RvSdranLba6JDSEW5Wq02nEGR7VBgdK9LkrfEEsEM48si3LF8La-v-vwkwBqNJy-Ctq5MXtCAziamu0jKOWo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-08-01+at+9.46.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="1600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgL-iAap97SBBLdPW7AcofcYGB85KYcBPvLzs7tL4ZhDD5VPUadTNHToI2RvSdranLba6JDSEW5Wq02nEGR7VBgdK9LkrfEEsEM48si3LF8La-v-vwkwBqNJy-Ctq5MXtCAziamu0jKOWo/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-08-01+at+9.46.17+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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As you can see we chose 2 switches and 2 PCIe cards for a double failover configuration, meaning we could tolerate either a switch or a PCIe card failure and still be fully functional. We isolated our VSAN and vMotion traffic to the VSAN 10GBe stack only, with Multicast traffic being a requirement on VSAN 6.2 (VSAN 6.6 now removes this requirement and uses Unicast) we wanted to make sure that the VSAN switch stack didn't affect our other edge switches, we were told the multicast traffic on VSAN can be very chatty and could cause problems on other parts of the network. We allowed only Management traffic and VM traffic out to the core via the Fiber uplinks. We also added a separate VSS to our design for our DMZ traffic zone. Stay tuned for the next post in this multipart series where we will go over the implementation of VSAN. Thanks for reading! Cheers!<br />
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-33913519051521865312017-06-07T19:53:00.002-07:002017-06-07T19:53:52.678-07:00VSAN 6.2 Deployment Part 1This will be part 1 of a multi part series on how I deployed VSAN, This is content taken from presentations I have done at several VMUG quarterly meetings and USERCONS over the last 6 months.<br />
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In this installment we will take a look at the Project Planning phase.<br />
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Our original plan didn't include VSAN at all. It in fact started out as a conversation between us and our vendor on a request to quote out 3 new blades for our existing IBM Bladecenter. We knew that we had some upcoming applications that were going to require compute and RAM be added to the cluster. The word that we got back was that the bladecenter was EOL soon and it didnt make much sense to invest any more in that platform. So we were looking at migrating back to rack mount servers. We had done a POC with a leading all flash storage array that had promised some good dedupe and compression ratio's that didn't pan out (we had lots of art files that didn't compress very well).<br />
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I had seen early presentations on VSAN when it was first released and was impressed with its capabilities way back in 2013, and while out at VMworld 2016 last summer, after talking with several VMware reps concluded that it might be worth a look. I liked its baked into vsphere ease of use and patch upgrade cycles being no different than a normal esxi host patch cycle. We had a series of meetings with VMware reps in person and over the phone as well as meetings with our vendor discussing the possibility of going with VSAN.<br />
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So lets recap some of the reasons we looked at VSAN<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW6IYphnOO2L7fB7teUdTWK-0bazRL9D3FcRwlF4XzLes_o03TMm1y4OFWIWdS6s6HvmfIaT-Uoi2miokgYz1xEtKSGXqab6W0MO9ZKqty8vdjk41YSmQZCpc09Te4ghdJuAsXUfoHMWQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-06-07+at+9.34.01+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="1440" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW6IYphnOO2L7fB7teUdTWK-0bazRL9D3FcRwlF4XzLes_o03TMm1y4OFWIWdS6s6HvmfIaT-Uoi2miokgYz1xEtKSGXqab6W0MO9ZKqty8vdjk41YSmQZCpc09Te4ghdJuAsXUfoHMWQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-06-07+at+9.34.01+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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In addition to the aforementioned reasons we also wanted to increase SQL transaction performance for an application that we had some challenges with using the SSD's of an All Flash VSAN. We were also interested in gaining rack space back with the compactness of a Host node only configuration and the power benefits that go with it. I also liked the Software defined data center vision that VMware has for all of its products to tie together. I am looking at a possible NSX deployment in the future and VSAN was a natural first step.</div>
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In the next installment we will take a look the design phase and the hardware specs we came up with for the deployment. Thanks for reading!</div>
Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-33672087525407883882017-04-20T15:05:00.000-07:002017-05-09T13:16:25.922-07:00VCSA 6.5 Backup and Restore FeaturesI upgraded the home lab to vsphere 6.5 all around, so this was the first time I had a chance to see the new VCSA 6.5 and check out some really cool new features that I am sure readers will find useful, it now has full backup and restore capability baked right into the appliance. There is no plugin to download or install which is a very nice addition to the suite of available tools us administrators have to fall back on in case of some sort of failure. We will walk through the process of taking a backup as well as the restore process to get a closer look at how this works.<br />
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You will need to open the appliance management page at https://yourvcenterserver:5480 and you will see the login page that will require not your SSO account, but the root vCenter username and password that you setup during your vCenter install.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvH06KGY0TJt4uMxVLZ8bZJ31UtN-W3-wmz27W4ZCpZSkonDIsYN7_6Xp-wdAGDo9Uu8zNqnpv3Ip8j4vC9xXHJtjCBXjivy7IY-SpYk-pjU4fS9ZXvPrt6ccoA4Buy733IAf-uC6Uys/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+9.54.33+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimvH06KGY0TJt4uMxVLZ8bZJ31UtN-W3-wmz27W4ZCpZSkonDIsYN7_6Xp-wdAGDo9Uu8zNqnpv3Ip8j4vC9xXHJtjCBXjivy7IY-SpYk-pjU4fS9ZXvPrt6ccoA4Buy733IAf-uC6Uys/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+9.54.33+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The next step is to click on the Summary icon and click backup which takes you into the wizard and you are presented with a few config options, you will choose your preferred protocol and in our case we will choose the FTPS option for secure ftp. You will need to login to vcenter and enable the PSChealth service for this to work as well.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQZZSG4Z5Jg8peWK5uuTvTx9V7tUM8vp-BnEniwaFMdNtzSgsEFRq-uBfm9Ks2hv0Rg1pzOqunBuhbQAU5FA5kp8e8lccsx3QB-LUGV8ZPa9mve9saqKMDPerQ7BGzZx-xTZHgZWFx-us/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+10.04.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQZZSG4Z5Jg8peWK5uuTvTx9V7tUM8vp-BnEniwaFMdNtzSgsEFRq-uBfm9Ks2hv0Rg1pzOqunBuhbQAU5FA5kp8e8lccsx3QB-LUGV8ZPa9mve9saqKMDPerQ7BGzZx-xTZHgZWFx-us/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+10.04.49+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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select the items that you want to backup, the only other option besides the base backup is the Stats, Alarms, and Events information and then give a description if you like.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvPmB_eYa3V_PWtOu6DUJlvqqA8tMKsM8_Oa-b8zzSw56Yoo-oasS_vJ2TR9WaOAoxYHl64KMSsZCm3kErgeeG6iZm2D4yyyhOnPRKjzm0txcbmoSuJOUIvKfE-0-tDATH1eH1sqI8uM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+10.55.06+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvvPmB_eYa3V_PWtOu6DUJlvqqA8tMKsM8_Oa-b8zzSw56Yoo-oasS_vJ2TR9WaOAoxYHl64KMSsZCm3kErgeeG6iZm2D4yyyhOnPRKjzm0txcbmoSuJOUIvKfE-0-tDATH1eH1sqI8uM/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+10.55.06+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here you can see vcenter backup running to my FTP server, its currently uploading files to the directory I have chosen.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBLi0ybgeu2Lze0V180BSpPuurkcewQA1Qtv07UjfgY2PD2ZfafZsrjcffIScNV46FqZrNi2Gt2E58Sdeoh-j63Vi3sgrda_A0uh9P6JmzOHgpdUqNsK4qHuXK9GEjtxrOxa-0sABZdWM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+11.02.52+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBLi0ybgeu2Lze0V180BSpPuurkcewQA1Qtv07UjfgY2PD2ZfafZsrjcffIScNV46FqZrNi2Gt2E58Sdeoh-j63Vi3sgrda_A0uh9P6JmzOHgpdUqNsK4qHuXK9GEjtxrOxa-0sABZdWM/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-14+at+11.02.52+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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It all works really well and the backup took no time at all over a 1Gb link.</div>
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Now let's take a look at how the restore functionality works. First you need to mount and open the VCSA iso and click restore</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7W5v-kImSM1Hh2wigt61M3J9-ZQ7uKmB81-65xeJ6Yg8YNchsP15UgBNCfJ_9lwLE605SfVndL-IpOM6xukwcInTE4yXK_BdLwaQqDyG0c638TXOYqV1NAplyY0jgZseVvUu04aJ4hw/s1600/VCSA+restore.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW7W5v-kImSM1Hh2wigt61M3J9-ZQ7uKmB81-65xeJ6Yg8YNchsP15UgBNCfJ_9lwLE605SfVndL-IpOM6xukwcInTE4yXK_BdLwaQqDyG0c638TXOYqV1NAplyY0jgZseVvUu04aJ4hw/s320/VCSA+restore.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Then you will need to specify the location and credentials of your ftp backup server and backup location for restoring all of the data. </div>
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From here on out things will look very familiar as its the same as a new installation. Thanks for reading!</div>
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<br />Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-86772541189670427402017-03-03T09:17:00.001-08:002017-05-09T13:13:31.841-07:00vCenter Timeouts Issue<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I encountered an issue with the vCenter web client one Monday morning that had never happened before. It seemed to be at random when clicking different tabs and object levels within the infrastructure I was struck with the spinning donut of death and the pages would only partially load. I was getting some information right away such as the vm name and the initial information up on the top, but the details on VM Hardware, etc wasn't working at all. I waited it out and got the following error that popped up in the lower right hand corner of the browser as shown in the example below</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipjrPmrvTviXG3EkPRMdAM4O81TLi6-j1-j4LNZhRkkfdF4g8WnFgXCFp-ITErIWDgOFOj2JwoZ_ZwPKtiJs7YFfEGuWfDmAYa9pM7_XpkaH2oXZJ99L06y5jgCY7Ot3mEGNjjJ6sGC4A/s1600/Vcenter+Timeout.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipjrPmrvTviXG3EkPRMdAM4O81TLi6-j1-j4LNZhRkkfdF4g8WnFgXCFp-ITErIWDgOFOj2JwoZ_ZwPKtiJs7YFfEGuWfDmAYa9pM7_XpkaH2oXZJ99L06y5jgCY7Ot3mEGNjjJ6sGC4A/s400/Vcenter+Timeout.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Once this error faded out I was able to see the data I needed, but once I clicked on another tab the same thing would happen. You can imagine how annoying this became waiting 2 minutes to navigate around and get the tasks done that I needed. I did the usual steps of clearing cache on the browser, trying a different browser, restarting services on the vCenter appliance. That didn't have any effect. I then rebooted the vCenter appliance again to no effect. I tried logging in from a different computer and still nothing. I next tried to google the error and found a lot of similar errors but none were the same issue I was seeing. I decided to open up a case with VMware.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">One of the first things the rep said to me was this sounds like an error from VROPS, he wasn't the case owner but he forwarded my notes to that person and told me to upload the logs. I did so and continued to think about what he had said after our call was over. I did have VROPS appliance trial installed, so I decided to check on it. I opened a browser and pointed to it and got no response at all. I then decided to try getting into the vROPS management console using the vmware remote console and it wasn't responding at all. I then looked at trying to do a soft guest shutdown and it wouldn't budge. I did a hard power off and then powered back on and then the web portal came back up and I could get in, I was greeted by a key request, I requested a new trial key and got back into the portal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Then the magic happened! I was able to navigate around the web client in each and every tab without any delays or timeouts coming up. After a few weeks of struggling with this issue it was amazing to be able to navigate around and not deal with that frustration. I received a callback from vmware support a few days after uploading the logs and was able to tell them I had figured it out on my own and they could close the case.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thinking back on the issue now it makes perfect sense as vROPs integrates and registers with vCenter and displays additional indicators in the web client under those screens to give you the health badges on infrastructure objects, it was waiting for vROPS to load those items through the DSExporter backend data-provider and when it couldn't get any response timed out after 120 seconds and then gave me the data I needed that came straight from vCenter. Its another one of those issues that can make no sense at the time but looking back really comes together. I wanted to share this issue/experience to save someone else the frustration and perhaps give a few more google results on this particular error message. Thanks for reading!</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7868951014129892790.post-86060300008593748852017-02-27T15:06:00.001-08:002017-05-09T13:13:50.423-07:00Welcome to the Blog<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hello everyone, my name is Tony Reeves and I am a VMware enthusiast and have decided to contribute to the VMware community through this new blog. I am active on twitter as @importcarguy I am a VCP55-DCV and VCP6-DCV and also working towards VCP6-NV. </span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am a 2017 vExpert as well. I hope you enjoy the blog and get something useful from it. Please share your thoughts on ideas for future articles. I am in the middle of a VSAN deployment and will have plenty to share from that and my home lab adventures. Thanks for stopping by!</span>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13778098293189517561noreply@blogger.com0