March 2015 -

VCDX 2015 Study Group

March 28, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 1

"VMware Certified Design Expert – VCDX", the most difficult and most bright certificate in Virtualization field and only compared to Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr). Many Virtualization & Cloud experts try to acquire this certificate to prove their excellency and sharp skills and to add more and more to their personal value. Me and my friend "Jason Grierson"- for those who don't know Jason and his tool, check this blog post – decided to pursuit VCDX 2015, Oct. panel. And as we did before, we decided to join a VCDX Study Group. This should help us with our design paper, provide more and more eyes to review your design, more peers to question your design decisions to be hardened and help us exchanging […]

Windows vCenter vs. vCenter Server (Virtual) Appliance (vCSA/vCVA)

March 22, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 5

The following question about vCenter Server is which version to deploy: Windows vCenter Server or vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). First, let’s examine the components of any vCenter Server. They’re Single-Sign On (SSO), Inventory Service, vCenter Server, Web Client and a back-end Database. To answer the question above, we need to take a deep look at how answer of the above question affects all of these components. Keep in mind that it’s also related to the way you’d deploy your vCenter Server Components according to your customer/case needs and requirements or constraints. Some components and other VMware products deployment are affected by wither you’d use Windows vCenter or vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). My vExpert colleague, Mohammed Raffic, made a great comparison between […]

IBM DS 3500 with vSphere 5.0.x SATP Rules

March 15, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Few days ago, I went to a customer that has old Virtual Environment. He has 3 hosts IBM SystemX servers, IBM DS3524 SAS Storage which is directly SAS-attached to the hosts and vSphere 5.0 U2. His environment has strange issue: every few minutes, Storage Manager throws an error that “LUN x is owned by not-preferred Controller. Preferred Controllers is Controller A”. He first thought that it was a firmware issue in the DS3524 storage and he asked IBM guys to upgrade the storage firmware. They upgraded the firmware to version 7.86.49 and the problem was still there. First, I checked compatibility matrix of both VMware and IBM and I was shocked that they were different as the following screenshots: VMware one […]

Virutalizing vCenter Server: Yes or No?

March 13, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 1

“Should I virtualize vCenter Server or not?!”.. This question is asked a lot, specially during preparing for new vSphere deployments. IMO, and in 99.9% of all cases I meet, I answer with “Yes!! Why not?”. vCenter Server is a central part of your Management Layer of your infrastructure that requires high level of availability and performance. vSphere 5.x is capable of providing the required level of performance for vCenter Server itself or for any one of its components (SSO, Inventory Service or Web Client) as well as its required back-end Database. In the same time, virtualizing vCenter Server provides higher level of availability, using vSphere HA and the new SMP Fault Tolerance in vSphere 6.0. Despite many advantages of virtualizing vCenter Server, […]

vSphere Hosts: Scale Up vs. Scale Out

March 10, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Another confusing debate is around the approach you take when choosing your vSphere Hosts hardware configuration. Two approaches there: Scale Up (Vertical Scaling) and Scale Out (Horizontal Scaling). Scale Up is to get small number of large powerful servers and that why it’s called Vertical Scaling; because you scale the configuration up to the max. with small number of servers. Scale out is to get a lot of small less powerful servers to achieve same required configuration and it’s called Horizontal Scaling; because you scale the number of servers horizontally, each with low hardware configuration. The common misconception of these two approaches is that people thinks that Scale-out approach indicates using Blades and Scale-up approach indicates using Rack-mounted servers. A fully populated, powerful blade chassis […]

vSphere Hosts: Blades vs. Rack-mounted Servers

March 9, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 2

One of the political-like eternal debates is the debate around vSphere Hosts Form Factor, which to choose: Blade Servers or Rack-mounted Servers. Both technologies are mature and support high computing power and Hardware Vendors offer both of them now equally. In addition, VMware vSphere supports using both of them and puts no limitation on the form factor of the hosts. They’re dominating now over Tower form factor which began to disappear because of its large foot print and high power usage. Confusing to choose between them, right? Long story short, both options have their own Pros and Cons that should be aligned with your (customer) case and your (customer’s) requirements and constraints. In the following table, a summary of the main differences […]

Modify vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 Time Zone

March 2, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Few days ago, I went to a customer for a migration project to vSphere 5.5. After deploying vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 U2d and during configuration, I had some issues with “root” account -described here– that I needed to modify the time zone on my vCenter Server Appliance and I got a big surprise. On vCenter Appliance 5.1, I used to do it through its console as the screenshot below indicate. For vCenter Appliance 5.5, and surprisingly, this can’t be done anymore as indicated by this KB. Again, I began to search for some help, till I found this KB about how to change ESX 4.x Time-zone using service console. I thought that vSphere 4.x Service Console is a Linux Shell UI which is […]