Articles by Kim Bottu

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REVIEW: Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN) 2nd Edition

June 6, 2016 Kim Bottu 1

On Friday my pre-order of Duncan Epping’s and Cormac Hogan’s updated book for VSAN was finally available for download. A few clicks on the website of PearsonITcertification and I was ready to start reading. I took the whole weekend to read this book. The structure of the book: The books reads very pleasantly mostly because it has been well structured, and despite the technical nature of the content of this book (of course this is why we buy it), it is easy to follow. ‘Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN) 2nd Edition’ contains ten chapters: Introduction to VSAN VSAN Prerequisites and Requirements for Deployment VSAN Installation and Configuration VM Storage Policies on VSAN Architectural Details VM Storage Policies and Virtual Machine Provisioning Management and Maintenance Stretched Cluster Designing […]

PowerCLI: the easiest way to create Private VLANS

May 26, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

If you like to test PVLANs but don’t like clicking around in the webclient, try creating them from PowerCLI. The Primary VLAN in each line is always the same one and in your first line, the primary and the secondary VLAN are the same VLAN. This is because the primary PVLAN will also serve as the Pormiscuous PVLAN. I have chosen 200. On the next lines the Primary and Secondary VLANs are different from eachother. $vds = Get-VDSwitch ‘Your vDS’ Get-VDSwitch $vds | New-VDSwitchPrivateVlan -PrimaryVlanId 200 -SecondaryVlanId 200 -PrivateVlanType Promiscuous Get-VDSwitch $vds | New-VDSwitchPrivateVlan -PrimaryVlanId 200 -SecondaryVlanId 201 -PrivateVlanType Community Get-VDSwitch $vds | New-VDSwitchPrivateVlan -PrimaryVlanId 200 -SecondaryVlanId 203 -PrivateVlanType Isolated  

Testing the vSphere 6.x HTML5 webclient fling

May 16, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

I have been testing the HTML5 webclient and if you want to do the same you have to follow a few procedures. Deploy a new VM from an ova [download] which will use 2 vCPUs and 4 GB or RAM. Indeed, you need to deploy a new VM which will talk to vCenter server.  There is no vCenter deployment which comes with an embedded HTML5 client yet. The procedures on how to deploy the HTML5 webclient are well explained in the HTML5 webclient documentation and don’t take too long. The only thing you really need is a vSphere 6 deployment! Some remarks about the HTML 5 client: It is fast. There is no doubt that it is a lot faster than the current webclient. There are still […]

PSC SUPPORTED DESIGN TOPOLOGIES

May 15, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

Today I stumbled over an article written by Petr McAllister on the VMware TAM blog. It is a good read and for sure one of those articles you instantly recognize as an article to memorize for the VCAP6-DCV Design certification test. Platform Services Controller (PCS) and vCenter Server 6 Maximums “So the question was, “When we run a complex environment with multiple vCenter servers, vRealize Operations servers, vRealize Automation, vRealize Orchestrator, Site Recovery Manager and backup appliances, how can we fit all those solutions under the 10-solution limit?” Finding the correct answer was pretty straight forward; VMware has published a document called “Configuration Maximums vSphere 6.0,” and the information is right there. The document has very specific content on exactly what my […]

PowerCLI: backup and restore an array of ESXi hosts

May 14, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

The following script makes a backup of the ESXi Host configuration file for an Array of Hosts in a folder on your Management station in C:\BackupMeUp. If you run the backup task multiple times, it will overwrite the saved configuration files for the hosts it already contains a configuration file for. Backup an Array of ESXi hosts Write-Host “Backing up ESXi config to C:\BackupMeUp” $vmhost_array = @(“esxi1.mydomain.com”) foreach ($vmhost in $vmhost_array) { Get-VMHostFirmware -VMHost $vmhost -BackupConfiguration -DestinationPath C:\BackupMeUp } Write-Host “Backup is completed!” The following script restores the host configuration from the folder on your Management station C:\BackupMeUp for an Array of Hosts. Make sure that you know which hosts it will restore, and that you modify this in the […]

VSAN 6.0 On-Disk v2 Calculator

May 14, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

It has taken me some days to create this tool and I sincerely hope you can use it in preparation of your VCAP6-DCV Design exam. It might not look pretty, but it works and compared with calculating VSAN sizing by hand, the spreadsheet will save you lots of time. So feel free to use it and if you have any remarks or questions, feel free to reach out. Take me to the VSAN 6.0 On-Disk v2 Calculator!

Desired State Configuration and VMware Orchestrator

May 4, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

This blog post is a follow up on : Creating servers and keeping basic configuration consistent and compliant. I will add more text in the coming week. Because vRealize Orchestrator is very easily accessible for everyone using the vSphere WebClient I think that vRealize Orchestrator is an excellent tool to create servers with great consistency. However what is lacking in vRealize Orchestrator is the ability to keep a consistent configuration in the Guest OS itself. I belief that Desired State Configuration is a great tool to accomplish the consistency in the Guest OS and rather than speaking about the advantages of vRealize Orchestrator vs DSC I would say DSC is the ideal partner in crime for vRealize Orchestrator! Please take note […]