Graeme Vermeulen, Author at

IT Architect: Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design Review

June 15, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 3

I picked up a copy of this book pretty much as soon as it was released. Most architects I’ve spoken to have recommended this book, so I didn’t want to miss it! Where to start. First impressions The book gets off to a running start, there is no build-up towards hitting you with some great knowledge (the authors have also managed to get a number of VCDXs to answer the question “what is infrastructure design?”). You’ll get stuck in right from the beginning regarding how you should approach solutions design, from the various stages (such as discovery, design, build etc.), design methodologies straight through to really useful case studies. It’s really quite difficult to get this amount of technical information through across […]

Office 365 ProPlus on Linked Clones

May 17, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 4

Man, installing Office 365 ProPlus onto non-persistent VDI is a bit of a headache. I really do wish Microsoft would release a Office 365 ProPlus software package that didn’t need activation every time the user logs in! Surely as long as the company has enough entitlements there should be no problem and we can use a KMS key – unfortunately not. Users are supposed to download and install their software directly from the portal, which makes admin for hundreds of users quite a challenge. We don’t want Office activated every time a user logs in and enters their credentials, they would soon run out of licences! The KBs on the internet from Microsoft on these really are rubbish. Hopefully this […]

RAM Upgrade Procedures on Cisco UCS Servers

May 15, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I couldn’t find anything on the internet regarding the correct procedure to add more RAM to a UCS blade. Since it’s not out there, maybe I can help prevent others from running into the same problem I had! Firstly, you need to make sure your catalog is updated to the latest version – make a note of what version is currently running by going to Admin and downloading the latest version (note if you’re running 3.0 you can’t use the 3.1 catalog) from here. You’ll need a Cisco ID. This means that the RAM will be recognised when the discovery is re-run. The correct procedure: Put the blade into maintenance mode (if running VMware for example) and power it off. […]

HP StoreVirtual 4335

May 9, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I’m a big fan of HP StoreVirtual. It’s a great solution for stretched storage clusters, and I’ve worked on numerous environments with StoreVirtual at the storage layer. Firstly, if you don’t know what StoreVirtual is and how it works: It’s a clustered SAN solution, usually comprising of a minimum of 2x nodes but you can use a single node. They’re actually HP DL3xx servers full of disks; they use HP RAID controllers (normally 4xx series) and the same discrete cards you’d expect to find in servers not running for storage alone. Locally, disks run in RAID (5 for some models, 6 and 10 for others). Volumes that are presented to servers can be configured in “network RAID” such as network […]

Is the VCDX worth it?

May 2, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I’m a bit of a certification junkie. I love setting goals to get certifications, booking them… and eventually getting that piece of paper that says I know what I’m doing! I do at times ask myself – “is this really worth all the effort?” I hope that if you ask yourself the same question, this post will help. We go to school for ~12 years, learning about subjects that have very little practical application in the real world. We learn important things like spelling, writing – but do we ever learn how to put together a professional email? In fact, we don’t even learn this in University (unless business administration is one of your majors of course). We learn how […]

The VCDX journey so far…

April 28, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

Well, 2016 is just flying by. It’s scary to think that I’ll be 28 this year. Back in February 2014, I decided that I’d be pursuing the VCDX. I mumbled to my boss at the time “I want to get the VCDX after my VCP is done” – I paid for the course and the exam myself, not getting any training or exams paid for me. I signed up for the VMUG Advantage and got a discount, but it still put me out of pocket by a fair bit. Thinking back now, it was the best decision I ever made! Well, I made a commitment that day. A bit over a year later I had completed both my VCAPs, but […]

My VCAP5-DCA Experience

April 24, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I hope this helps anyone preparing for their VCAP5-DCA or VCAP6-DCV Deploy exam. Preparation: I initially started by going through this guide written by Paul Grevink, working through examples in my lab environment. I’m lucky in that regard as we have a Demo Lab where we get customers in and demonstrate the technology. I look after the lab myself, so I took the opportunity to make sure there weren’t any demo’s coming up and started practicing. I made sure I had the exam blueprint sitting next to me the whole time and made notes on it as I went along. After around 3 weeks of solid studying (taking time out between consulting and installs) I found out you […]

Guest Post by Sam Burdett (friend and colleague of Graeme)

April 24, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 0

I recently had some trouble upgrading the base esxi image on a vmware host running 6.0.0 so thought I would let you all know how I resolved it as I had the same trouble with other hosts running 5.5.0 Going through the usual process of uploading the iso to update manager and creating the baseline completed without any issues and so I migrated all live VM’s to the other host in the cluster, disabled HA on the host and popped it into maintenance mode. When it came to remediating the update I was however faced with the following problem: Now this is a bit of an ambiguous error, so we need to take a look at the logs to find […]