This article was written a few years back, but never published – it was some work I was doing in my lab to try and get to grips around the work involved in creating a SAN with synchronous replication built in from scratch. It in no way should be used for production, but rather as […]
VMworld 2016 EMEA: My Sessions
It’s the time of year again for VMworld and now comes the unpleasantness of choosing sessions and fighting them out against each other for time slots, last year my session list was basically completely dominated by NSX sessions. Taken a bit more of a broad view, instead with some cool stuff around service provider networking/administration, […]
Configuring Auto Deploy Stateless Caching in vSphere 6.0
Following on from my previous post on configuring custom ESXi images for PXE deployment, it piqued my interest again in Auto Deploy, now that I have a lab large enough (enough physical failure domains) to justify auto-deploy I figured i’d give it another go. I have chosen to implement stateless caching as it will allow […]
vExpert NSX and VSAN 2016 Announced
A quick one today, VMware have released the names of those chosen to receive the “vExpert NSX 2016” and “vExpert VSAN 2016” titles, which are one of a few new vExpert tracks for specialising in particular areas. I’m very lucky and proud to have been chosen for these lists alongside some of the smartest and […]
Building a customised ESXi image for PXE installation
I have recently been working on a larger scale platform for my employer, it requires quick deployments of environments on VSAN with some standardised VIBs added in, initially we were doing this with a standard ESXi ISO install through iDRAC and then installing vCenter, vSphere Update Manager and pushing the VIBs to the hosts via […]
vSphere Update Manager – Cannot Scan Host
I have been testing out Runecast Analyzer in my lab recently – it’s pretty badass, you can set it up to scan your virtual infrastructure at a vCenter level and will scan your vC, VMs and hosts looking for KBs that may apply, security compliance and best practises. As you can see my lab isn’t […]
LSI3108 based controllers now VSAN 6.2 Certified
After a long an arduous certification and regression testing process following many problems with LSI 3108 based controllers that I have been using for VSAN they are finally VSAN 6.2 certified.
[Resource] Openstack + NSX Networking Deep Dive
I have been playing with NSX and VIO a lot recently and wanted to get to grips with the mechanics of what VIO was actually orchestrating in NSX under the flashy GUI. Going through the VMware communities I found this absolutely indispensable powerpoint explaining in as much depth as you can hope for, all the […]
vSphere next Beta open for applications
VMware has opened access to sign up for the next vSphere Beta (some cool things are being talked about in there!). Obviously, as with any public beta program there is an NDA/MSBTA that needs agreed to and a baseline understanding of 5.5 and 6.0 features such that feedback can be contributed. You can sign up […]
Upgrading VMware Integrated Openstack from v2.0.1 to v2.0.3
I’ve been playing around with VMware Integrated Openstack recently and wanted to see what the upgrade experience for bugfixes and point releases is like, happy to say – it’s quite easy. Firstly, download the .deb package from my.vmware.com and upload it to the VIO management appliance – I used FileZilla for this, the username is […]