My Software Defined DataCenter

Na het succes van de vEUC TechCon, ontstond het idee om een vergelijkbaar evenement te houden over “Networking & Security” én over “Management & Automation” op het gebied van de VMware portfolio. Een aantal collega’s van vooraanstaande partners op deze gebieden is dan ook, in samenwerking met VMware gestart met de organisatie van twee technische conferenties om deze onderwerpen te belichten. En zodoende houden we op 25 september een vNS TechCon en op 26 september een vMA TechCon. Beide evenementen…

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Okay, so normally this is a place for private contemplation and technical content, but the news that PQR has been awarded the EMEA ánd Global Solution Provider of the Year award by VMware, is something I would like to share as well. About two weeks ago, my colleague Viktor van den Berg (www.viktorious.nl) was present at the VMware Partner Leadership Summit in Arizona and accepted the awards on behalf of PQR: The awards were given to PQR for our company…

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So after the availability of NSX 6.4.1, with support for vSphere 6.7, it was time to update my Ravello lab to the latest versions. Last Friday I updated NSX, through the use of the Upgrade Manager (blog can be found here: Update of NSX). In the late afternoon, early evening, I thought let’s update the rest to version 6.7. The update of vCenter was pretty straightforward, as might be expected, because VMware has taken a lot of effort in making this…

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This morning, I woke a little early, because of the heat, so I went to my home office in the attick, and immediately saw the news I was waiting for, for some time, NSX 6.4.1 was released. Thanks to Martijn Smit, I could read all about it at http://lostdomain.org/2018/05/25/nsx-v-6-4-1-released-html5-vsphere-6-7-support-more/. So now, “finally”, the version of NSX that supports vSphere 6.7 has arrived, which means, time to update the lab. The benefit of waking early, so to say ;). The update process…

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So another Sunday to add some stuff to my Ravello Lab. Last time I wrote about the basics, like vSphere, vSAN and NSX. I also added vRealize Log Insight at that point, configuring all the components to write their syslog entries to the appliance. Something not all of the vSphere and NSX customers know is that with both products comes the right to use vRealize Log Insight for free. For each vCenter server licensed, a 25 OSI-license for vRealize Log…

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While in the process of deploying some management functionality to my Ravello LAB (see:  New virtual LAB on Ravello (part 1) and the second part coming), I ran into some issues with disk space. I had created a vSAN with approximately 800 GB of total space: When trying to deploy vRealize Operation Manager, I was told that there was not enough space. But fortunately the Ravello platform gives me the option to easily expand my vSAN. One node at a time,…

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For a customer of mine, we are in the process of implementing a vSAN environment, where stretched clustering is used. They use a witness location, which is (independently) connected to both data-locations. For the vSAN networking, they do not use VRRP or another way to stretch there routing, but they do use stretched layer-2 networking. So their environment looks like this: In order to make sure that HA is handled correctly, it is advised to create a gateway-address within the…

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So, a couple of months ago (two, to be precise) I wrote about a new lab I created at Ravello. The lab was set up, mainly to try out the functionality of Ravello and especially the bare-metal vSphere support they gave. A couple of days later unfortunately, the lab was no longer accessible. I tried recovery and restoration, but both failed. So I had to rebuild the lab again (and this time make sure I save it as a blueprint,…

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In the past two-and-a-half years, since I joined PQR, a lot has changed in my job. I have been more an more involved in pre-sales and evangelization, mainly of VMware SDDC products (with a strong focus on NSX). Today was sort of a special day in that respect, since I had the privilege of presenting a session at the largest VMUG in the world, the NLVMUG in den Bosch. Together with my colleague, Viktor van den Berg (https://www.viktorious.nl) we did…

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One of the main new features in VMware NSX 6.4 is the Multi-User (or RDSH) Identity Firewall. With this feature, it is possible to microsegment traffic, based on User-ID. I have been looking forward to this feature, since a couple of my customers have been waiting for it and it is a very powerful addition to the already pretty packed microsegmentation functionality. I already wrote about this on my company-blog (in Dutch: http://www.pqr.com/blogs/nieuwe-versie-nsx-met-grote-stappen-voorwaarts) and in this article I will dive a…

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