Homelab part 2

September 22, 2019 Kim Bottu 1

Introduction Some months ago someone asked me if I was willing to share exactly how I have setup my nested lab environment. Back then I didn’t have the time, but tonight I am willing to make time to describe just that. So here is part 2 of my homelab post. Hardware – 1 x Supermicro SYS-E300-9D-8CN8TP– 1 x Sandisk Ultrafit 32GB USB 3.0– 1 x Samsung PM883 240 GB SATA 2.5″ 1.3DWPD– 2 x Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB NVMe M2 80mm– 2 x Crucial 64 GB ECC DDR4-2666 LR-DIMM, ECC As you can see, the seconds NVMe drive has been added to my lab. This was needed to get my vSAN lab to support erasure coding for Raid 5. […]

VMUG BE

May 27, 2019 Stijn Depril 0

VMUG – VMware User Group in Belgium is upon us. This event is a great opportunity to get yourself updated on recent announcements shared by VMware but also users sharing their story with VMware technology. This year the agenda is packed with excellent topics. I’m really looking forward to all of them! 2 sessions I’m really looking forward too are underneath. One is the session from Johan Van Amersfoort – VDI by day, compute by night. I was already at 2 events where Johan was presenting this topic. On both events I couldn’t make it due to other responsibilities at that moment. I’m really planning to attend this one. I’m sure this will be a great session that might “mindshift” […]

NLVMUG / UserCon videos on-line

May 8, 2019 Stijn Depril 0

One of the biggest VMUG gatherings in the world is the one in the UserCon in the Netherlands. Over 800 people visited this Usercon this year. On the agenda this year were Duncan Epping, Jad El-Zein, Frank Denneman, Kit Colbert. These rockstars presented well attended sessions or keynotes. The agenda was packed with great sessions this year. I shared the stage with my colleague in the Netherlands. We prepared and presented the sessions. Since last week you can find all sessions on-line. For our English readers and viewers – The sessions are in Dutch 💁‍♂️ VSAN – What you always wanted to know This sessions intent was to bring the general public up to speed with VSAN. In 45 minutes […]

VSAN: Stretched Cluster Failure Scenarios explained

January 7, 2019 Stijn Depril 1

One of the most interesting features of VSAN, is the stretched cluster capability. It is safe to say, when we first introduced the stretched cluster capability, it wasn’t 100% ready. Sure, it worked, but it needed some improvements. Meanwhile we have made several improvements and have extended the stretched cluster feature set and it is now fully functioning & enterprise ready. Of course, with great claims come great responsibilities. So because we are always dealing with customer data, I always have a conversation with the customer about the actual expectations. This is especially the case if the client is thinking about using enterprise features such as stretched clustering.  Some customers have a very good understanding of business continuity others are not […]

It’s a wrap – VMworld 2018

November 9, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

The last 4 days were crazy. We had our yearly VMworld in Barcelona! I had a jam packed agenda starting monday morning at 10 am till today. We could summarize it to long days and short nights! This was my second VMworld since I started working at VMware and it was great! I would even say “the best VMworld I ever attended”. On Monday I got to Barcelona around 9am in the morning. Leaving Brussels Airport early for my first meeting at 10 am in beautiful Barcelona. I planned around 15 meetings in these 4 days and we talked about divers subjects. In my current role it was most of the time storage centric. However a lot of our conversations […]

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 […]

Deploying Server 2012 R2 desktops through VMware Horizon View

August 24, 2018 Graeme Vermeulen 0

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to desktop virtualisation, as I’m sure many will tell you. One of the ways you can drastically simplify things is by using VMware’s desktop virtualisation product, Horizon View. Some might say that it’s more complex than its competitors, however if you’re already using VMware products and are familiar with vSphere, is there really any other choice? Licencing TLDR; Even if you’re using PCoIP or Blast, you will still need to buy RDS CALs (here’s their licencing FAQ). It’s a real grey area, because in the brief it states you only need RDS CALs if you’re using RDS roles – in this case, we aren’t, but it still needs to be […]

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 […]