VMware Cloud on Dell EMC (VxRail) VMworld 2020

Over the last four years the partnership between VMware and Dell Technologies has allowed for some incredible integrations into the Dell portfolio.  The flagship of this partnership VxRail has evolved into the new backbone infrastructure component of the modern datacenter.  That is why VMware Cloud on Dell is a huge step forward into towards the … Read more

The Rise of the VMWare Platform Reliability Engineer

In the last few years as a VMWare person I have watched containers and Kubernetes go from people saying containers cannot replace virtual machines to now Kubernetes being integrated into vSphere.  Years ago, I thought containers were really cool but it lacked all the infrastructure features we relied on to run in enterprise environments.  Yet, … Read more

VMware Cloud on AWS – Software Defined Data Center 2019 (5V0-31.19) Exam

Apparently, people like blog articles on exam prep because I have been requested to write this article. I felt the VMConAWS exam was more than fair and straight forward. There aren’t any questions on the exam meant to stump the chump. I would say 6 months VMConAWS hands on experience & you should be more … Read more

Part 4. DRaaS – The four click failover to VMware Cloud on AWS and back

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

Part 3. DRaaS on VMWare Cloud on AWS – Config Replication/Protection Groups/Recovery Plans

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

VMware Cloud on AWS HA with Stretched Clusters

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

Pure Block Store for VMC on AWS

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

VMWare Cloud on AWS Migration Options

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

VMUG Announcement on VMC on AWS

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

5 Benefits of VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC)

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