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Unlock Your FinOps Certification: How to Pass the Practitioner Exam with Ease #FinOps #CloudCostManagement #ExamTips #FinOpsPractitioner #CloudOptimization #FinOpsPro

September 25, 2024 Bilal Ahmed 0

So, you are here because you are considering taking the FinOps Certified Practitioner exam. I am quite new to the FinOps thing, but the more I read into it the more I find it interesting. The key concepts I like to keep in mind: There are currently six components of the FinOps Framework: • Principles – drive our FinOps practices• Personas – stakeholders that FinOps supports• Domains – fundamental business outcomes• Capabilities – activities performed to achieve desired outcomes (Domains) of FinOps• Phases – iterative process model for exercising FinOps Capabilities• Maturity Model – incremental assessment criteria for understanding the state of any FinOps activity or overall practice Now let’s break each of them down into a bit more detail: […]

So Let’s Chat about #AI and #LLMs

August 27, 2024 Bilal Ahmed 0

First off, is it just me that when someone mentions AI, that I think of Ali G? I’ve been wanting to say that for ages, now that I have got that off my chest, let’s continue! I have started digging into the topic recently and this and any following blog posts are just going to be my ramblings on the matter and could indeed be incorrect (as I am still learning). I’ve done a couple NVIDIA training courses on the topic so far and they are free, so please go check them out if you just want to get a high-level feel and overview of the topic! I mean let’s be honest the topic is a deep deep topic that […]

Migrate VMs using #HCX #OSAM and #PowerCLI

April 4, 2022 Bilal Ahmed 0

Let’s talk about OSAM So “Operating System Assisted Migration”, can be used when you have Enterprise level HCX licensing. In the HCX Connector you have to download the OS agent which then you install onto the guest operating system: Once you have downloaded it locally, you can then copy it into the guest OS and install it, it then communicates back to the Sentinel Gateway Appliance and is picked up by the HCX Manager as you can see in the above screenshot. Now this is a good time to plug my co-workers’ blog https://www.chrisdooks.com/2022/02/24/automating-the-hcx-osam-sentinel-agent-install-via-sccm/ He discusses how to push the sentinel agent out via SCCM for Windows machines, which is much better than manually copying it across to various Windows […]

Lets Talk About Protecting and Recovering VMs with #VCDR #vExpert

December 6, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 0

So now we have deployed and configured VCDR, now we can go into all the bits that allow you to protect your VMs and failover! Protection Groups So now we can get into the nitty-gritty of starting to create Protection Groups and Recovery Plans. This is the meat of it all, where you define what is going to be protected and how it should be recovered. As you can see you can define how VMs are added to the protection group by using Naming Patterns, Tags or VM Folders. In this example I have used vSphere Tags: In my vCenter you can see I have created a tag specifically for VCDR to use: Then we can look at the various […]

HCX Mobility Group Migrations using PowerCLI Scripts #HCX @VMwareHCX #PowerCLI #vExpert @saintdle

July 8, 2021 Bilal Ahmed 3

Nothing posted here is supported by VMware 🙂 So when the original scripts were created, HCX Mobility Groups weren’t even a thing! HCX evolves at a rapid rate and I was working with a customer who was using the original scripts but since they were migrating into VMware Cloud on AWS they had access to the Mobility Groups features! The original scripts can be found here. When working on these scripts with my buddy @saintdle we found that the way people had started using them didn’t work as expected for us, we tried William Lam’s script and we received errors: We tried this as well and came across similar issues: Zsoldier’s Tech Blog Also, the customer when trying the scripts […]

Merging RVTools reports using Power BI

May 12, 2021 Kim Bottu 2

RVTools reports are very useful to quickly glance over the state of your virtual environment. However, when you deal with multiple vCenters servers, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to consolidate RVTools reports into a single interface? Enter Power BI. Power BI goes beyond that what you can achieve by using Pivot Tables in Excel. Requirements: Install Power BI Install RVTools What now? Export RVTools reports as Excel files Save the excel files to a dedicated folder Now you have to point Power BI to import sources from a folder. If you want an active representation on how you do this, you can follow this video. Once done, select “combine and transform data” Now, to combine (reads: merge) xlsx […]

What is new for vRealize Cloud Management at VMworld 2020

September 29, 2020 Kim Bottu 1

There is a bunch of new stuff to be announced by the CMBU at VMworld 2020. Here are some highlights: vRealize Cloud Universal: A flexible hybrid SaaS Suite offering which delivers a comprehensive Multi-cloud Management on a subscription basis. The following products will be offered as a bundled version: vRealize Operations, vRealize Automation, vRealize Log Insight 8.2, vRealize AI and VMware Skyline. Take note that some of the products can be run in a hybrid fashion, making moving to the cloud easier. The subscription based licensing will come in three different flavors: Standard, Advanced and Enterprise. But, should you opt for the VMware vCloud Suite subscription, you will get VMware vRealize Cloud AND vSphere Enterprise Plus! The different SaaS Capabilities […]

VCDX-NV – #289

September 24, 2020 Chris Noon 0

On Monday 14th of September 2020, I remotely sat the VCDX defence and the following Tuesday, I received the fantastic news that I passed. I am officially VCDX number 289! For those of you that are new to vMusketeers and my VCDX blogs, here are a link to the previous 3 blogs and a vBrownBag video: The design document. The design defence. The scenario defence. VCDX motivation (vBrownBag). The experience. I spent a lot of time talking to and working with existing VCDX’s and VCDX applicants. Because of this, the defence day was more or less as expected. It followed the format I’ve discussed previously: design defence and then design scenario. The only difference to my defence and other first […]