Bilal Ahmed, Author at

NSX-T v2.4 Manager Failures #RunNSX #VMware #Networking #SDDC @UltTransformer

July 12, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

Introduction So, I have started getting into the world of NSX-T, I pretty much missed the NSX-V train and while it is still early days in the T world, I wanted to get on board. This led me to attending the NSX-T v2.4 ICM and I have to say it has been one of the best courses I have ever attended. Our instructor seriously knew his stuff and the room was full of highly skilled networking and virtualisation guys. I asked lots and lots of questions and we had some very good discussions regarding topologies and packet flows etc. At the end of the 5th day, me and a couple of guys had some time to burn, and we started […]

vSphere 6.7 Design Cookbook – Review #VCDX #VCAP #vSphere #Design

May 6, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 3

Disclaimer I own the two previous versions of this book and have used them extensively and I was given a free copy of this book to review. I also know one of the authors @VirtuallyMikeB well and he assisted me on my VCDX journey too. So this book is split up into multiple chapters, and I am going to break them down a bit more. I hope this will give you a better idea of what this book is all about and if it is something you would consider buying. Chapter 1: The Virtual Data Center So this chapter focuses on some of the basics, which you will probably already know if you are reading this book. Things like the […]

#VMUG Presentations @scottishvmug @nwenglandvmug @VirtualG_UK @vBeeGee

April 5, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

For a long while I have been pondering doing some kind of presentation at some VMUGs. They VMUG leaders have cornered me a few times to actually present, so finally I decided to do it and to pick some topics that I thought might be interesting. Since I have decided this year is going to me focusing on my presentation/soft skills, I thought presenting at VMUGs would be a good way to build up on that skill set and to help me along in my toastmasters journey. If it wasn’t for the community and the people I have met as a result, I wouldn’t be where I am at the moment, as with many things in life it is a […]

Presentations and Public Speaking #Toastmasters #publicspeaking #IceBreaker @LeedsSpeaking @Toastmasters

March 26, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

Ever since I did my VCDX I have seen the value of public speaking and the power of having good soft skills. As many people reading this will be working in the IT area, we spend most of our days in front of a computer screen and the IT world seems to attract its fair share of introverts. Now what I have learnt is that you can have all the ace technical skills in the world, but if you are unable to communicate all this info in a effective way you leave yourself at a massive disadvantage! See the VCDX submission is your technical documentation and it gets you to the dance, but the presentation and workshop skills are what […]

Dell Compellent 5020 Commissioning

March 7, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

So where I am working currently they are a heavy Compellent shop. Let me give you some of the back story We have multiple SC8000s spread across 2 sites. These were specced up years ago (before my time), and are now reaching EOL. One SC8000 was reaching EOL and no one let the company know, which was a big slip up by Dell. Because the original SC8000 was an upgrade from the old White box controllers Comepllent used to use, all the disks and enclosures carried over. But the issue was that these were THAT old, that support was falling off for them, and that meant that a good chunk on the disks on that SAN were now going EOL. […]

ESXi PSOD #Homelab #vExpert #ESXi

February 18, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

So I booted up my HP Z600, this houses my main management VMs and ESXi runs off a usb stick. So nothing fancy. On boot up I got this lovely screen of joy: I don’t like PSODs they make me sad. Looking at the error and the fact that it was happening at boot up made me think of some USB drive issue. Let’s think about it for a minute, when ESXi is loaded off a USB/SD card it will then run in memory, and if you make a change it will save it to the drive or it will save automatically every hour (KB ). One thing you have to remember is to make sure you configure the advance […]

Some Basic #PowerCLI using foreach to modify #NTP and do #ESXi host backups #vExpert

February 6, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

You will have seen my earlier post about learning PowerShell, and now I am using what I think is one of the best things about PowerShell……The foreach loop. I have seen it used many times, and never fully understood it, I kind of got what it did, but now I am getting it into my head and I have been using it to try and various things. So I have been doing more bits in PowerCLI to help improve my scripting skills and just to see if I can make my life easier. Modifying NTP settings on multiple ESXi hosts There is a known bug in PowerCLI 10 where Remove-VMHostNtpServer looks like it has worked, but does not actually do […]

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Third Edition #BookReview #Powershell #PowerCLI #Scripting #vExpert

January 15, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

So if you follow my posts, one thing you will know about me is that I like learning new things and picking up skills. Through my whole time of working with vSphere, I have used PowerCLI in one way or another. I can muddle my way around a bit, but it has always niggled at me that I don’t know it as well as I could. When people were talking about scripting or sharing their scripts, I could barely follow along, and that to me is very annoying. I always at least want to have a solid base understanding. So I finally got around to buying this book and using it. Whenever you ask around about learning PowerShell, EVERYBODY and I […]