Let’s talk about configuring and deploying VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery #VCDR #vExpert

November 22, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 0

So, let’s talk about VCDR VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. It was acquired from Datrium and I have some customers who are in the process of looking into it and deploying it. If you have ever used SRM, you will feel very at home with VCDR, as you will see as I explain it in more detail. I am a big fan of DR in general, I used to work for a BC/DR provider, and I lost count of the number of times people never tested their plans and were then surprised they didn’t work as they had hoped. I always used to say, you should be happy they failed now, imagine if this had been real and you couldn’t recover! […]

Automating HCX Cutover using PowerCLI #HCX #PowerCLI #vExpert

November 15, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 0

So I was provided with a script from my buddy Charlie at Tower Associates, and then myself and Dean Lewis edited it a bit to make it work alongside the scripts we had already produced in our previous posts. I’ve always been an advocate of doing the cutover manually. Cutting over 200 VMs or so in one go is daunting and lacks the control I would personally like. I like to be able to tell customers, ok we have cut over these 20 VMs for this app, please get them to test it, then when they are happy move to the next set. It is nice and controlled and instils confidence in the migration process. That is not to say […]

HCX DR Use Cases #HCX #DR #vExpert

November 8, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 0

*These are my own ramblings and nothing I say is officially supported by VMware!* So HCX does have a DR feature. It does not get talked about much, because at VMware if you are talking fully-fledged DR you will be looking into SRM and the new offering VCDR. The HCX DR service uses vSphere Replication (VR) under the hood in the same way, SRM can use vSphere Replication. The main difference is that the IX appliance in the service mesh is the vSphere Replication Manager. SRM does full-on DR orchestration, failing over VMs in a specific order, with recovery plans, HCX does not do any of that. When I have talked to GSS and some customers, I have discovered that […]

SDDC to SDDC Migrations #VMConAWS #HCX #Migrations

November 1, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 2

So I had a customer recently that had deployed a VMConAWS SDDC using a /23 subnet. This is fully supported, but they then ran into scalability issues as that subnet is limited to only allow 27 ESXi hosts. So now they wanted to scale beyond that but were stopped by this configuration limit. Now you can’t adjust that post-deployment, so this lead to a discussion about standing up a new SDDC and migrating to it or migrating into an existing SDDC that uses /20 subnet. Now there are 2 supported ways to do that using HCX and I am going to discuss both of them. I have 2 SDDCs : TF_TEST and SDDC-Jeff (great names I know!) Option 1: Deploy […]

My top 5 picks for VMworld 2021

August 30, 2021 Kim Bottu 1

Over the last two years the world has changed a lot. The pandemic not only has changed the way we work, but also how we look at datacenter operations, system & application accessibility and personal devices. I used to be a datacenter guy, so my sessions will focus mostly on the datacenter space. Here are my 5 (well actually 8) picks for VMworld 2021. VMware’s direction Raghu stepped up as VMware’s CEO, I am keen to find out what Raghu’s vision is for the next years! Accelerating Innovation: Strategies for Winning Across Clouds and Apps [GEN3103] Monitoring costs If you would have asked me a couple of years ago what was most important in monitoring capabilities, I probably would have […]

HCX and SDWAN with VMC on AWS #HCX #VMConAWS #SDWAN

August 30, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 0

So as of HCX 4.2, it is now supported to have HCX use SD-WANs. The exact requirements are listed here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-HCX/4.2/hcx-user-guide/GUID-8128EB85-4E3F-4E0C-A32C-4F9B15DACC6D.html I managed to catch up with my buddy @gabe_rosas who I the TPM for HCX, as I had a couple of customers that were curious about this new addition. Based on my discussion with him I thought id make a blog post about it! There was a blanket lack of support for HCX VPN in underlay, as it is essentially a VPN and then HCX creates its own VPN tunnels. Now there is support but you must be careful you are on the correct version and meet all the underlay requirements. So, the fact that it is supported brings […]

HCX Mobility Group Migrations using PowerCLI Scripts #HCX @VMwareHCX #PowerCLI #vExpert @saintdle

July 8, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 3

Nothing posted here is supported by VMware 🙂 So when the original scripts were created, HCX Mobility Groups weren’t even a thing! HCX evolves at a rapid rate and I was working with a customer who was using the original scripts but since they were migrating into VMware Cloud on AWS they had access to the Mobility Groups features! The original scripts can be found here. When working on these scripts with my buddy @saintdle we found that the way people had started using them didn’t work as expected for us, we tried William Lam’s script and we received errors: We tried this as well and came across similar issues: Zsoldier’s Tech Blog Also, the customer when trying the scripts […]

Merging RVTools reports using Power BI

May 12, 2021 Kim Bottu 2

RVTools reports are very useful to quickly glance over the state of your virtual environment. However, when you deal with multiple vCenters servers, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to consolidate RVTools reports into a single interface? Enter Power BI. Power BI goes beyond that what you can achieve by using Pivot Tables in Excel. Requirements: Install Power BI Install RVTools What now? Export RVTools reports as Excel files Save the excel files to a dedicated folder Now you have to point Power BI to import sources from a folder. If you want an active representation on how you do this, you can follow this video. Once done, select “combine and transform data” Now, to combine (reads: merge) xlsx […]