Practical VMware vSphere guides for ESXi, vCenter, PowerCLI, networking, storage, lifecycle management, automation, and production troubleshooting.
In the last couple of weeks I have had to perform a few VxRail upgrades to particular code levels. As many of you know this requires downloading the particular code bundle IE 4.5.229 and performing a local upgrade. However, on two separate clusters in two separate datacenters I noticed that the bundle upload was taking … Explore: VxRail Composite Bundle taking abnormal amount of time…
Every so often I will get the question, “I need to log into the iDRAC on Host X, do you have it’s IP.” I thought I would put together this quick article with the command to provide this information. StepsIssue the following command from the ESXi host you are attempting to gather the iDRAC IP … Explore: How to Discover iDRAC IP on VxRail Node
From time to time you may encounter an error where your VxRail node goes into a device missing state in VxRail manager but is operating normally in vCenter. The main culprit behind this is typically the PTAgent. The PTAgent exists to poll hardware information on a node every few minutes using ipmi. Assuming there isn’t … Explore: VxRail PTAgent Troubleshooting – Device Missing State
Prepare and perform a VxRail 4.7 RASR factory reset with data-loss warnings, prerequisites, legacy boot steps, troubleshooting, and post-reset recovery checks.
There are instances where you may need to remove a node from your VxRail cluster. One instance may be moving the host from one cluster to another (ensure host is at same code level as the new cluster). Another instance you may be you are wanting to shrink a large cluster into two smaller manageable … Explore: How to remove a VxRail 4.7 Node from…
Lately, I have had people messaging asking to help them troubleshoot their environment. Everything from random performance impacts to my SQL DBA says I have a disk IO issue. I thought I would take the time to post a few helpful ruby shell commands I use to help me keep an eye on my own … Explore: Useful Ruby Shell vSAN Commands
Quick answer: distributed switch versus port group A vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) is the datacenter-level switch configuration that vCenter Server applies consistently across multiple ESXi hosts. A distributed port group is a policy-defined set of ports on that switch for a specific network or traffic type. Create the vDS first, create and validate its port … Explore: Create a vSphere Distributed Switch and Port Groups
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 … Explore: VxRail / vSAN Capacity Math Made Easy
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 … Explore: Part 4. DRaaS – The four click failover…
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 … Explore: Performance Tuning your vSAN / VxRail Environment
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 … Explore: Create a new vSAN Storage Policy in vSphere…
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 … Explore: Upgrade vCenter with external PSC to 6.5 U2b
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 … Explore: How to Install a vCenter (VCSA) 6.5 U2d
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 … Explore: Part 3. DRaaS on VMWare Cloud on AWS…
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 … Explore: VMware Cloud on AWS HA with Stretched Clusters
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 … Explore: Faction Inc. for VMware Cloud on AWS &…
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 … Explore: Part 2. DRaaS – Configuring SRM 8.1 for…
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 four 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 … Explore: Part 1. DRaaS – Install SRM for VMware…
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 … Explore: Pure Block Store for VMC on AWS
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. … Explore: SRM Multi-Site now available in SDDC Version 1.6
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