Paul Bryant Prerequisites The VMs must be hosted on hypervisors that have been added to the NSX-T Data Center fabric. The fabric nodes must have NSX-T Data Center management plane (MPA) and NSX-T Data Center control plane (LCP) connectivity. The fabric nodes must be added to a transport zone. A logical switch must be created. Steps: In … Read more
When I first tackled NSX-T, like many, I was concerned about IO/Packet flow. Based on feeding my own curiosity while preparing my production environment for NSX-T I decided to write this article. Below you will find high level overview of components and the two tier routing topology. Routing can be defined in the following directions: … Read more
It feels like I cannot go a week without being asked the question of, “What is my real capacity on vSAN/VxRail?” Followed by we just cannot get our capacity planning correct and we are determining how much more capacity to grow our cluster by. I thought I would perform a back to basic vSAN math … Read more
NSX-T Manager Controller provides the graphical user interface (GUI) and the RESTful API for creating, configuring, and monitoring NSX-T components, such as logical switches. NSX-T Manager Controller implements the management plane for the NSX-T infrastructure. It provides an aggregated system view and is the centralized network management component of NSX-T. It provides a method for … Read more
This is my fourth and final installment of this series. These steps were taken by me to failover and failback multi-million dollar datacenters in as easy as 4-clicks. At this point we should have our SDDC deployed and linked back to our onprem. VR/SRM should be deployed both onprem and in the SDDC. All site … Read more
Recently, I have been getting a lot of questions around how to build vSAN for high performing workloads. This article is intended to cover hardware differences, slack space, what is vSAN namespace, object, component, Raid-1 vs Raid-5/6, and stripe width, which all can impact performance. Please keep in mind I am not covering dedup/compression overhead … Read more
I wanted to cover real quick creating a custom storage policy on vSAN, which even on a VxRail is done in vCenter. House keeping items:Raid 1 mirror is where you write a complete replica of the object. This is the highest performance protection you can apply to an object. Since it is a complete replica … Read more
In my previous article I showed everyone how to install the latest vCenter 6.5 U2d. Now I will show how to upgrade your existing vCenter to 6.5 U2b and why created new vCenter’s with embedded Platform Services Controllers will make upgrades even easier. Before we begin, always remember to take a snapshot before upgrading any … Read more
As we are all aware vCenter is at the heart of our vSphere environments. Whether deploying a lab or a net new datacenter with vSAN/VxRail, you will require a new vCenter. Before I begin, embedded vs external Platform Services Controller (PSC). I say treat any net new install as embedded PSC only. VMware is in … Read more
This is the third installment of my ongoing series on DRaaS. We have have by now installed VR/Site Recovery Manager, configured site pairings, and configured onprem and SDDC mappings. Now it is time to setup Replication, Protection Groups and Recovery Plans. What are Protection Groups and Recovery Plans A protection group is a group of … Read more
Each AWS Region supports the infrastructure and services for a given geography. Within each Region, Amazon builds isolated and redundant islands of infrastructure called Availability Zones (AZ). With VMware Cloud on AWS, ESXi hosts traditionally reside in an AWS Availability Zone (AZ) and are protected by vSphere HA. In the event of losing a ESXi … Read more
Faction came across my radar a few years back when I was designing a hybrid cloud solution for a former client. Since then I have watched Faction become a top 20 partner of VMware and be an early partner of VMware Cloud on AWS. Below I will describe why VMC on AWS and why Faction … Read more
This article is a continuation f the previous article of installing VR/SRM. Now that we have installed VR/SRM onprem and in VMware Cloud on AWS, it is time to configure SRM. Go into vCenter on SDDC to create new Resource Pool, Folders, and Logical Switches to map back to onprem. In VMC go to the … Read more
I’ve been requested to write a multi-part blog about setting up, configuring, and executing Site Recovery Manager to VMware Cloud on AWS. This is part one of a three part series. I hope this helps anyone out there who is considering DR as a Service to the VMC on Amazon Web Services. Please keep an … Read more
I am very excited about this new development in cloud storage via Pure storage. Cloud Block Store is Pure’s own Purity OS running in AWS. This is a huge development because it will allow companies to leverage abilities that have been unavailable in native AWS. Space saving features such as deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning … Read more
On the 13th of this month SDDC Version 1.6 was released by VMware Cloud on AWS, allowing for support for fan-in and other multi-site topologies. This will now allow the ability to have multiple remote sites replicating traffic to the same VMC instance. You can pair up to ten remote sites with a single SDDC. … Read more
I have been asked recently about the “easiest” way to migrate workloads from OnPrem into the VMC. Since I believe “easy” is a matter of perception I thought I would list the 5 techniques I have utilized. 5 types of VM migrations for VMware Cloud on AWS Migration with vMotion Migration with vMotion allows moving … Read more
Everyone, I have been named co-leader of a new VMUG community focused on the education and development of VMware Cloud on AWS. https://www.vmug.com/vmconaws In the coming weeks we will be adding webinars, videos, posting documents, and announcing sponsored events. I am also looking for recommendations on content that everyone would like to see. Please sign … Read more
I was recently asked in an interview what are 5 things I like or that a potential VMC on AWS customer should know. about VMC. I thought I would make a quick list of my 5 benefits of VMC. 1. Agility The provisioning of new resources is quick and easy. Within 15-20 minutes of adding … Read more
