Articles by Bilal Ahmed

HCX Gotchas Vol 1

September 2, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 3

Right so I have been spending a lot of time working with and learning HCX recently. There are loads of people telling you how great it is and the funky things it can do (and it is great). BUT there are things that can trip you up when deploying it, and every-time I have come across one I have documented it, in the hope that I can help people who deploy it and configure it in the future! Deploying HCX Manager Now HCX is a bit of a resource hog, especially when you start deploying the additional appliances, so I was hoping to make full use of my Intel NUCs but that wasn’t meant to be. HCX Managers need 4x […]

NSX-T 2.4 Edge Failures

July 22, 2019 Bilal Ahmed 0

Introduction So in the first part Chris (@UltTransformer) and I (@Dark_KnightUK) played with and broke the NSX-T Manager.  We thought it was the Edges turn, so… Now to test Edge failures!   Let’s recap.  We have one(1) edge cluster with two(2) edge nodes of medium size.  We have a T1 configured that connects to two(2) T0’s (active/active) and both T0’s have”external” access (within the lab). All is good with the world! Edge Nodes Explained This is an interesting concept. Edge Transport Nodes are VMs, the Edge Nodes are containers/VRFs and the SR/DR are services deployed inside these containers/VRFs.  At least that’s the way we see it. You can have up to ten(10) Edge Nodes in a cluster. Edge Nodes can be […]

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 […]