Host troubleshooting, migrations and all that.. and Runecast

June 6, 2020 Kim Bottu 0

I have done my fair share of vSphere installations, migrations and upgrades and some of the main causes for delays, is that often people just assume that all hosts in a cluster or across clusters are running the same version of ESXi. Or that all existing hosts in a cluster or across clusters, which you plan on upgrading, are running on hardware that supports the required version of ESXi.Yeah, assumptions… downward spiral, right there. Runecast benefits I have often wished for a tool which would allow me to easily verify if the physical environment is up to being upgraded. But I was just gobsmacked when I had a look on how Runecast Analyzer handles this. Just have a look at […]

How the vExpert program improves my life

June 1, 2020 Kim Bottu 1

When I embarked on the journey to become a vExpert, I did so because of a wish to find like minded people, people who like working with the same technology and like to share stories about how they have accomplished awesome things using VMware technology. I really wanted to connect to people who have the same professional goals in life, and who could inspire me professionally. Professionally… At my previous employer, certification was not encouraged, and even though I knew I wanted to get certified, no one was cheering me on. Getting to the next step in my career seemed daunting to me. I discovered very fast that the vExpert community is more than just a word. A lot of […]

Avi Networks: Base Configuration

May 24, 2020 Chris Noon 1

Load Balancing. I covered Avi Networks at a high level in my first post. I now want to dive into the base configuration of Avi and at its core, it is a Load Balancer. Saying that there are a few flavours of Load Balancing. Layer 4 Load Balancing. – Focusing on the IP address and TCP port.Layer 7 Load Balancing. – Focusing on layer 7 attributes such as HTTP headers.Global Server Load Balancing. – Adopting the layer 4 and layer 7 concepts to balance applications across geographical regions. While running through the base configuration I will be focusing on layer 4. While layer 7 and GSLB is something I eventually want to play with it will be further down the […]

My experience with the VMware Cloud on AWS – Master Services Competency Specialist Exam 2019

May 21, 2020 Manny Sidhu 0

The other day I happened to jump onto Jeffrey Kusters’ blog and saw his post about him passing this test last year. The post got me thinking. I was lucky to get some hands on experience with HCX late last year albeit not to the cloud from legacy on-prem to VCF on-prem. I also have had experience with SRM and more recently with NSX over the years during my time in the trenches. It looked like I checked off the main boxes for having the skills to get through the test. Jeffrey’s compiled links and notes came in handy, so did Manish Jha’s blog posts located here. Jeffrey’s mind map was very useful too to make it all sort of […]

Avi Networks: The Advanced NSX Load Balancer.

May 9, 2020 Chris Noon 2

What is Avi? Avi Networks provides software-defined Load Balancing at its core. Complementing the core service is a plethora of mouthwatering services and features. Surely the reason Avi was acquired by VMware on July 11th 2019. Rebranded as the NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Some of the features include application analytics, predictive autoscaling, micro-segmentation and WAF (Web Application Firewall) all this and on both cloud and on-prem. The Load Balancer for any platform! After reading this, if you like the look of Avi and want a demo or PoC, reach out to the team at https://avinetworks.com/. The components. Avi builds its components in a similar way to other VMware products. A management, control and data plane. The logical separation of components […]

HCX PowerCLI and Reverse Migrations #HCX #PowerCLI @saintdle @Virtual_Simon

April 27, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 0

So when you are going to migrating a lot of VMs you really need to script it out, as doing it in the GUI is going to slow you down massively! Now I have posted scripts where going forward to the cloud works well, but I found going in reverse can make the scripts a bit more complex. This is because the source and destination sites change, but you still do everything from the HCX Connector appliance. Special shout out to Dean Lewis @saintdle and Simon Conyard @Virtual_Simon. I have enough PowerCLI skills to be dangerous but I was falling over and needed their assistance to help me figure out what was going on. So this script will let you […]

HCX and EVC #HCX #VMware #vExpert

April 23, 2020 Bilal Ahmed 1

So I have been deploying and testing HCX recently for a customer. This customer wants to use the HCX vMotion feature to migrate out of their legacy DCs. Normally HCX Bulk Migration is used to move the majority of VMs out and HCX vMotion is used for the key heavy hitter VMs that you do not want to power down for XYZ reason. The main reason for this is time, Bulk Migration can move 100-200 VMs at a time quite easily as it uses vSphere Replication, but the downside is that during the cutover there is some downtime: VM is powered off at the source Off-line sync happens VM is powered on at the destination You can define when the […]

F5 p2v Migration

April 20, 2020 Chris Noon 0

Physical to Virtual migrations are old hat. Everyone’s done them and are now focusing on cool technologies such as Containers and Kubernetes. That said, there’s still tones of physical Networking equipment out there that can and arguably should be virtualised. I worked on an F5 project and thought the physical devices could and should be moved to virtual devices. Why Migrate? There are a number of benefits to virtualizing Network equipment: – Reduction in support costs as there is no need for RMA. – No software or hardware dependencies regarding EOL (end of life) or EOD (End of Development). – VMs are protected by virtualisation HA standards. The project in question had 4 physical F5’s which were becoming EOL/EOD and […]