manageability Archives -

Lets Talk About Sexigraf @Sexigraf_fr #Sexigraf #Monitoring #vExpert

October 9, 2017 Bilal Ahmed 0

So I went to my first VMUG recently and it was great! I met plenty of new people and learned a lot of new things. I got in a few discussions about monitoring and I mentioned that I was pretty fond of Sexigraf @Sexigraf_fr . I found it interesting that a few people had never heard of this great FREE product. I mean monitoring is important, whether you want to know what your cluster utilisation is or how your datastore latency is or how your VSAN cluster is doing. Keeping stats for a period of time is also important because you want to be able to monitor trends etc. There are plenty of products out there that can help you […]

WARNING: Veeam Backup VDDK error 1 and 2 ESXi 5.5/6 Veeam B&R v8/9 Updated: 03/01/2017

January 3, 2017 Bilal Ahmed 0

So this has been an ongoing saga for quite a while: Repeated VDDK error 1 and 2 This is an issue I blogged about a little while ago too, right here: WARNING: Veeam Backup VDDK error 1 and 2 ESXi 5.5/6 Veeam B&R v8/9 It has been causing people plenty of issues and although it’s simple to fix, it’s annoying and it shouldn’t be happening! Veeam and VMware have been pointing the finger at each other for months now. Personally I would lean to it being a VMware issue, simply because a restart of the management agents resolves the issue. So I have been following the thread on the Veeam forums and there has finally been an update! VMware have […]

Windows vCenter vs. vCenter Server (Virtual) Appliance (vCSA/vCVA)

March 22, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 5

The following question about vCenter Server is which version to deploy: Windows vCenter Server or vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). First, let’s examine the components of any vCenter Server. They’re Single-Sign On (SSO), Inventory Service, vCenter Server, Web Client and a back-end Database. To answer the question above, we need to take a deep look at how answer of the above question affects all of these components. Keep in mind that it’s also related to the way you’d deploy your vCenter Server Components according to your customer/case needs and requirements or constraints. Some components and other VMware products deployment are affected by wither you’d use Windows vCenter or vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA). My vExpert colleague, Mohammed Raffic, made a great comparison between […]

vSphere Hosts: Scale Up vs. Scale Out

March 10, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Another confusing debate is around the approach you take when choosing your vSphere Hosts hardware configuration. Two approaches there: Scale Up (Vertical Scaling) and Scale Out (Horizontal Scaling). Scale Up is to get small number of large powerful servers and that why it’s called Vertical Scaling; because you scale the configuration up to the max. with small number of servers. Scale out is to get a lot of small less powerful servers to achieve same required configuration and it’s called Horizontal Scaling; because you scale the number of servers horizontally, each with low hardware configuration. The common misconception of these two approaches is that people thinks that Scale-out approach indicates using Blades and Scale-up approach indicates using Rack-mounted servers. A fully populated, powerful blade chassis […]

vSphere Hosts: Blades vs. Rack-mounted Servers

March 9, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 2

One of the political-like eternal debates is the debate around vSphere Hosts Form Factor, which to choose: Blade Servers or Rack-mounted Servers. Both technologies are mature and support high computing power and Hardware Vendors offer both of them now equally. In addition, VMware vSphere supports using both of them and puts no limitation on the form factor of the hosts. They’re dominating now over Tower form factor which began to disappear because of its large foot print and high power usage. Confusing to choose between them, right? Long story short, both options have their own Pros and Cons that should be aligned with your (customer) case and your (customer’s) requirements and constraints. In the following table, a summary of the main differences […]

Modify vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 Time Zone

March 2, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Few days ago, I went to a customer for a migration project to vSphere 5.5. After deploying vCenter Server Appliance 5.5 U2d and during configuration, I had some issues with “root” account -described here– that I needed to modify the time zone on my vCenter Server Appliance and I got a big surprise. On vCenter Appliance 5.1, I used to do it through its console as the screenshot below indicate. For vCenter Appliance 5.5, and surprisingly, this can’t be done anymore as indicated by this KB. Again, I began to search for some help, till I found this KB about how to change ESX 4.x Time-zone using service console. I thought that vSphere 4.x Service Console is a Linux Shell UI which is […]

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange 2010/2013 on vSphere 5 Best Practices

February 12, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 1

We’ll talk today about virtualizing Microsoft Exchange on vSphere 5.x platform. Microsoft Exchange is considered the most common messaging system in any business all over the world. From SMB to huge Enterprises and Corporations, they all may use Microsoft Exchange as their messaging and communication system. For most of them, Exchange is considered Tier 0/1 that should be served with highest level of performance and availability. vSphere 5.x is capable of providing such level of performance and availability while reducing Microsoft Exchange footprint with 5x to 10x by consolidating many Exchange roles and nodes on the same physical hardware while providing 100% or more of the required performance. Best practices mentioned here are collected from different sources that are mentioned in […]

Virtualizing Java Enterprise Applications on vSphere 5 Best Practices

February 6, 2015 Shady ElMalatawey 0

Enterprise Software are known to be business-critical and business-oriented software that each company develops its own one to serve their business needs. Today, we gonna talk about Java Enterprise Applications. Java Enterprise Apps are multi-tier Enterprise Software that consists of -generally- from 3 tiers: Web Interface, Application Processing Tier and a Back-end DB. Each tier isn’t a single instance -either physical or virtual-, but each tier consists of a cluster of instances to serve the purpose of the tier. This makes Java Enterprise Applications excellent Virtualization candidates. vSphere 5.x with its enormous features, can deliver the required performance, scalability and availability level for Java Enterprise Applications clusters. With HA, DRS, vMotion and other many features, vSphere Platform can extremely decrease the physical hardware […]