VCF Everywhere

October 18, 2019 Stijn Depril 0

As an employee at VMware the only constant is change. Like our customers we are looking into creating a stack that is easy to built and operate in the most consistent way possible. Now that has been a challenge for any datacenter at scale. There were always teams in some dark corner in the datacenter experimenting with something different than the standard. Still in a majority of all datacenters across the globe vSphere is the standard virtualisation service. VMware as a company is been changing the company from a focus on server virtualisation to the virtualisation of all different component in the datacenter. As you know I’m looking into vSAN in the Benelux region. My role within VMware is changing […]

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Virtual Stack – Intro into VSAN and SDS

November 23, 2018 Stijn Depril 1

Spoiler Alert – If you were hoping to find a tech blog I would stop hoping now. Do read the total article I’m sure you will like it 😉. On average I spent between  1h30min to 6 hours per day in my car. In this daily commute I have plenty of time to work in my mobile office. The 2 most important things I do in my car is calling and listening to podcast. For me listening to podcasts is the perfect way to stay up to date and learn something new and learn to see things differently. It’s both informative but also really entertaining from time to time. Welcome to the Virtual Stack! Recently one of my colleagues in […]

VSAN at VMworld – What you can’t miss!

October 26, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

Only a couple of days before the doors at Gran Fira open for a new edition of VMworld in Barcelona! Before packing your bags, I hope you all had a view at the session builder and scheduled the sessions you believe will be most beneficial for you! I would like to make a suggestion to fill these tiny free spaces in your diary. As you know, I’m working on building the VSAN business in the Benelux region. So it probably won’t surprise you that my suggestion is fully packed with storage sessions! Oh and by the way while you are at it. Come and have a talk with my fellow vMusketeers during VMworld! I might have some cool swag for […]

Where did my FTT go?

May 31, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

VMware has launched the latest generation of vSphere and VSAN and this comes with a nice list of new features and options for VSAN6.7. From this list I will highlight something new for the HTML5 client. 4Kn drive support. vSphere and vSAN FIPS 140-2 validation. HTML5 interface. vRealize Operations within vCenter Server. Windows Server Failover Clustering support. Intelligent site continuity for stretched clusters. Witness traffic separation for stretched clusters. Efficient inter-site resync for stretched clusters. Fast failovers when using redundant vSAN networks. Adaptive resync for dynamic management of resynchronization traffic. Consolidation of replica components. vSAN destaging optimizations. Health check additions and improvements. vSAN Support insight. Swap object thin provisioning and policy inheritance improvements. Where did my FTT go? In the lastest edition of vSphere […]

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The Evolution of Storage – A VMUG presentation (Dutch)

May 17, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

Back in March, I shared a presentation with Duncan Epping during the NLVMUG. This VMUG is one of the biggest and oldest VMUGs in the world. I presented the current state followed by Duncan, who is very well positioned to cover all the things that are still work in progress. A month ago the NLVMUG Usercon published the presentation video on YouTube. Enjoy this presentation.

Flashblog: DCIS-Cube

May 12, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

Over the last couple of months I had been involved in the development of the ‘DCIS-Cube’, the new architecture that will be used as a ‘portable’ and easy deploy-able system by NATO’s Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency). Portability and the ease of deployment of infrastructure in regions of deployment have always been challenging for the NCI. When they have to deploy a small datacenter to support a mission somewhere on the globe, they have to ship a couple of racks with hardware to that specific place.  Apart from the logistical nightmare of moving a ton of hardware,  they are struggling with the actual deployment of all that hardware as well. As every single mission has different requirements they can’t prepare the solution somewhere […]

First impressions: VMware HCI assessment

May 11, 2018 Stijn Depril 2

VMware launched a new HCI assessment tool. Last week Duncan Epping reached out to me. He had a customer asking him if he could have a look into the environment so they could better size the environment with VSAN. I got in contact with the customer on Friday and on Tuesday we had a call in which we discussed the whole environment. Even Mister Epping is impressed with it. Customer reached out a week ago, wanted to know if vSAN would be an option for them. Connected them with @sdepril and within 3 days a full report was produced using the new VMware HCI Assessment tool. It is really powerful! Read more about the tool here: https://t.co/G8u6gpPaCz — Duncan Epping […]

Back 2 VSAN Basics

April 26, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

I see VSAN “in the wild” on a daily basis and very often I get questions about the basics of VSAN. Don’t get me wrong, questions are absolutely a good thing!  What I also see, is that people often ignore the practices and assume it will be OK with a next/next/finish. You guessed it right: This doesn’t go well! Therefor I have decided to start with ‘a VSAN basics’ blog series. What is VSAN What’s important to run VSAN well And why is it important for the success of your project Let’s start with a bit of history For the last decades we have been procuring new storage in the same way as we used to do in the previous […]