Avi Networks: The Advanced NSX Load Balancer.

May 9, 2020 Chris Noon 2

What is Avi? Avi Networks provides software-defined Load Balancing at its core. Complementing the core service is a plethora of mouthwatering services and features. Surely the reason Avi was acquired by VMware on July 11th 2019. Rebranded as the NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Some of the features include application analytics, predictive autoscaling, micro-segmentation and WAF (Web Application Firewall) all this and on both cloud and on-prem. The Load Balancer for any platform! After reading this, if you like the look of Avi and want a demo or PoC, reach out to the team at https://avinetworks.com/. The components. Avi builds its components in a similar way to other VMware products. A management, control and data plane. The logical separation of components […]

HCX PowerCLI and Reverse Migrations #HCX #PowerCLI @saintdle @Virtual_Simon

April 27, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 0

So when you are going to migrating a lot of VMs you really need to script it out, as doing it in the GUI is going to slow you down massively! Now I have posted scripts where going forward to the cloud works well, but I found going in reverse can make the scripts a bit more complex. This is because the source and destination sites change, but you still do everything from the HCX Connector appliance. Special shout out to Dean Lewis @saintdle and Simon Conyard @Virtual_Simon. I have enough PowerCLI skills to be dangerous but I was falling over and needed their assistance to help me figure out what was going on. So this script will let you […]

HCX and EVC #HCX #VMware #vExpert

April 23, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 1

So I have been deploying and testing HCX recently for a customer. This customer wants to use the HCX vMotion feature to migrate out of their legacy DCs. Normally HCX Bulk Migration is used to move the majority of VMs out and HCX vMotion is used for the key heavy hitter VMs that you do not want to power down for XYZ reason. The main reason for this is time, Bulk Migration can move 100-200 VMs at a time quite easily as it uses vSphere Replication, but the downside is that during the cutover there is some downtime: VM is powered off at the source Off-line sync happens VM is powered on at the destination You can define when the […]

F5 p2v Migration

April 20, 2020 Chris Noon 0

Physical to Virtual migrations are old hat. Everyone’s done them and are now focusing on cool technologies such as Containers and Kubernetes. That said, there’s still tones of physical Networking equipment out there that can and arguably should be virtualised. I worked on an F5 project and thought the physical devices could and should be moved to virtual devices. Why Migrate? There are a number of benefits to virtualizing Network equipment: – Reduction in support costs as there is no need for RMA. – No software or hardware dependencies regarding EOL (end of life) or EOD (End of Development). – VMs are protected by virtualisation HA standards. The project in question had 4 physical F5’s which were becoming EOL/EOD and […]

Create an alert in vRLI for missing vSAN 7 File Shares

April 7, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

vSAN File services, they are finally here. However in my nested lab, after rebooting the vSAN cluster, often the file services do start but the shares remain unavailable. A good state of the File Services look like this: When all goes well, your File Services Shares should have been created at about the same time. In my test example, I have setup 2 different File Shares. So far so good. However, when I shutdown my vSAN cluster, going through the motions of putting my nested hosts into Maintenance Mode and shutting down the hosts, and then boot the hosts up again and get them out of maintenance mode, the File Services do come back up, but somehow the File Shares […]

VCDX-NV – Defence Scenario

March 20, 2020 Chris Noon 2

Due to the virus outbreak, my VCDX defence has been postponed until the next window, which is June. The VCDX board decided, understandably, to keep their panellists and applicants as safe as possible. That said, I thought I’d continue the blogging trend and discuss another area of preparation. Still excited as 3 months will fly by! I’ve discussed the document and design defence. Now let’s look at the defence scenario. What is the Defence Scenario? The defence scenario is 1 of 2 defences I will have to complete to successfully become a VCDX. The first task is the design defence, which I’ve spoken about here. The second is the defence scenario. This is a 45-minute window where my 3 panellists […]

HCX Migrations using L2 Ext Legacy Complexities #L2VPN #HCX #VCF

March 16, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 5

Lay of the land I have been working with a customer and came across something interesting. Most people when configuring 2 vCenters don’t share VLANs between the 2, with management networks being the exception. But here we had a VLAN in 2 vCenters which needed to be migrated to our new VCF site. This new site would utilise NSX-v to terminate the default gateway. I think this is best shown in a diagram: For some unknown reason, a decision was made to separate out the Windows and Linux workloads into 2 vCenters but use the same VLAN. Sometimes you can come back and visit a decision you made previously with fresh eyes and new info and realise it wasn’t the […]

Using the API to add a new certificate to a vRLI cluster

March 13, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

When you have to replace certificates on multiple vRLI clusters, using the API might be a better way to change them on all your cluster nodes. Prerequisites You will need to prepare a certificate with a subject alternative name (SAN) for each of the cluster members and the Internal Load Balancer (ILB).You can use this article as a guide. How to Take note that I do not know if this is officially supported, but in my tests it works. Use a REST API client and connect to the ILB IP and request a session token. Make sure to add the credentials to the body of your request. When you post the command, a session token will be generated. You need […]