Design Archives -

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

Passing the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam 2018 Exam #AWS @acloudguru @AWS @AWS_UKI #vExpert

April 23, 2018 Bilal Ahmed 0

So it has taken me a while to get on this cloud train! After my VCDX I wanted to get my Linux skills up to a more competent level. It has been a weak point of mine for a very long time. Now from my previous posts you can see I have managed to do that and now it is time to focus more on cloud! Where I am working currently we are going through a couple of proof of concepts using AWS and GCP. Since they will given to me in due course, I felt it was important to have a base line level of skill! So the first thing I did was use the Cloud Guru […]

Mapping the VCDX Defense Genome Part 3: Is All Flash a Trap?!

January 5, 2018 Jason Grierson 0

Hey everyone, So prior to the holidays I was helping mentor some new VCDX candidates for their re-defenses and was coming across a few trends that I wanted to discuss a little as they started creeping up over and over again. These trends were All Flash SAN’s, Oversized Compute, and questions being asked that were not part of the candidates design. We’ll get into the last point a little more but first lest tackle the first two. All Flash SAN Is All Flash SAN a VCDX trap? No of course not the All Flash SAN is obviously a silver bullet when it comes to storage as it greatly reduces the complexity of the storage system while giving amazing performance. Gone […]

Journey to VCIX-NV – Part 3 – Transport Zones, Clusters and Distributed Switches: Relation and Design Aspects

August 22, 2016 Shady ElMalatawey 0

At this point, I started deploying the basic block of any NSX implementation: Logical Switches. Logical Switches are deployed as a virtual distributed port group on your vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS). Logical Switches are deployed within a logical entity called Transport Zone. This Transport Zone can span one or more clusters and single host can’t be added to the Transport Zone. Couple of thoughts jumped to my mind: what is the limit of a Transport Zone? and How does it represent a logical boundary for your NSX implementation? What is the relation between it and both of added clusters and the vDS(es) in the environment? How do all of that affect my design any NSX implementations? To answer my thoughts together, let’s […]

REVIEW: VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook – Second Edition

July 5, 2016 Kim Bottu 1

Whether you are a seasoned architect who still is getting familiar with vSphere 6 or a hands-on engineer who likes to get a firmer grip on design and architecture using vSphere 6, Hersey’s updated datacenter cookbook just might be just the book you need. This book graciously keeps a good balance between datacenter design principles, best practices and howto’s. In this book Hersey takes you by the hand and guides you through the steps needed to create a virtual datacenter design using vSphere 6. Besides the necessary theoretical explanations Hersey offers his readers 75 recipes which they can use to help with the creation or optimization of a virtual datacenter design: What are the prerequisites you need for a design? […]