My Software Defined DataCenter

After completing my previous blog https://my-sddc.net/new-tech-vm-essentials-a-more-serious-deployment/ there have been some developments. One of which is the fact that HPE came out with a new verion, another is that I learned there is an integrated installation available. This includes both Ubuntu 24.04 and the new version of HPE VME (version 8.0.8). The file I am using for installation is called “HVM_Install_24.04.ISO_8.0.8_S5Q83-11031.iso” After powering on, the installation screen is a little different, it now says “HVM Install 24.04”: And also the screens…

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After creating a fairly simple, but working HPE VM Essentials deployment (see https://my-sddc.net/new-tech-hpe-morpheus-vme/), it’s time to make a more serious deployment. In the previous blog I took networking and storage for granted, but in real life scenarios, those topics need a more serious approach. So I am making a “design” for a small customer, that will have three VME hosts, use iSCSI, NFS ánd local storage for their VM’s and use VLAN’s to differentiate between different traffic flows. I am…

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Introduction Well, okay, for mé it’s new Tech. And this may well be a new series, because there is more out there, now that I am working at a partner. Since I left Broadcom at the beginning of the year, the scope of product technology has changed. I am still very much an advocate and a fan of VMware products, because the technology in private cloud is (in my opinion) still unmatched, but there are alternatives out there. And working…

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Today I tried this exam. I had done some preparation and for anyone else trying this exam, a couple of pointers that were critical for me to get to a passing score. Of course, you also need to know the stuff about a lot of other things, but for me, that knowledge was already there. I am talking about the more regular NSX stuff, like: Installation, Transport Nodes, Edge Nodes, Switching and Routing. So the following were some of the…

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The Holodeck Lab is up and running and some of the components have been replaced by pfSense. This has been described in a couple of blogs. Now it’s time to start working on the use cases I wanted to explore with this lab. The first one is doing Multi Tenancy with VRFs within NSX. Firstly, the topology I am planning to implement: If you look carefully, I am planning to create two distinctly different network topologies, within the same NSX…

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So, after the first two blogs, about the initiation of the Holodeck lab (https://my-sddc.net/holodeck-lab-building-the-lab/) and the first part of replacing some components with a pfSense appliance (https://my-sddc.net/holodeck-lab-replacing-networking-with-pfsense/), we now go a little deeper into the networking stuff. We are going to get BGP to work on the pfSense. Goal is to achieve the following topology: The NSX part of this has already been configured, as part of the Holodeck deployment. I grabbed the BGP configuration from the Cloud Builder appliance,…

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After the first blog I posted in this new series: https://my-sddc.net/holodeck-lab-building-the-lab/https://my-sddc.net/holodeck-lab-building-the-lab/, I am going to change some of the networking. The Holodeck itself comes with a pretty good way of containing the lab environment in its own bubble, and only having one entry point (the Holo-A-Router), but since this is in my own home environment, I don’t really need to control it in the same way. I also want some more control over the entities that are in my lab…

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After leaving Broadcom at the end of last year, I lost the control of my “VCF on VCD” lab environment (I am happy to say I was able to transfer it to a colleague, so it got a good new home :)), but that meant, I was without a lab. So, I had to find a way to start over again. I did have an old Proliant Gen8 server available, from my previous (and current) employer, but I ran into…

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As a VMware by Broadcom employee in the VCF Business Unit, you can do three free exams per calendar year, on a voucher, so it makes it fairly riskless to try them out, without (a lot of) preparation. So in my case, I first tried the VCF VCP Administrator exam (2V0-11.24, https://www.broadcom.com/support/education/vmware/certification/vcp-vcf-administrator) in October, and today (about a month later) I tried the VCF VCP Architect exam (Exam 2V0-13.24, https://www.broadcom.com/support/education/vmware/certification/vcp-vcf-architect). In this blog, I’ll give a little bit of insight…

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One of my customers asked a question about why a VLAN-based Transport Zone was not added to a cluster when it was created through the SDDC Manager. After some looking into this, and with the help of our Engineering organization, we found out why that is. In short, it needs to be defined as part of the deployment process, in the “Distributed Switch” section. It is not automatically added to a new cluster. So a short blog about how to…

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