My Software Defined DataCenter - Page 2 of 6

New Lab – Part 2 – Setup and some small tips & tricks

August 2, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

For my lab environment I am building on a combination of physical and virtual. I have one (massive, from home lab perspective) DL380 on which I will run multiple nested environments and I have one PC with a fair amount of memory, which will host some virtual machines, that will help me along. Setup Basically, I am working towards the following setup (for now): All of this is connected to a NetGear switch (not to fancy, but support for VLAN’s…

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New lab environment – Part 1 – vCenter Server install on VMware Workstation

July 31, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

Since my company has moved offices recently (during the COVID-pandemic), the availability of my demo (/lab) environment has been cut off. This was okay for a couple of weeks, but it has been a couple of months now, and I really miss the possibility to test out some things. So I decided to get myself a new homelab. The lack of lab-equipment also stopped me blogging for quite some time, but since we are in the summer vacation, I plan…

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Upgrading the demo environment, with vSphere 7 and NSX-T 3

April 17, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 3 comments

After the release of NSX-T 3.0, nothing stands in the way of upgrading our demo environment to NSX-T 3.0, making it ready for vSphere 7. Because I wanted to see the checks in the upgrade process of vSphere 7, where it will inform you of the interoperability of NSX-T, I started with the upgrade of the vCenter Server: and choosing Upgrade. After following the wizard a new appliance is deployed. This appliance will then be used to upgrade the current…

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Repointing embedded vCenter server to join existing SSO-domain, for Enhanced Linked Mode

April 17, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

I was running a demo environment with three separate vCenter Servers, because of historical reasons. At one stage I wanted to migrate some VM’s from on to the other. Two choices exist, one is the Cross vCenter vMotion fling (very useful, find it here), the other is joining two (or more) vCenter Servers into one environment, by using Enhanced Link Mode (ELM). I chose the second option, because that would give me other advantages as well. To do this, we…

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5,5 months down, 20K gone (a non-technical, personal experience)

April 2, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

Okay, that deserves some explanation. It has nothing to do with the economic crisis, nor with Corona, it is a personal experience that I wanted to share because hopefully, someone can benefit from it, as I have benefitted from it until now. The 5,5 months I am referring to is the time that I have been practicing Intermittent Fasting (IF). This is a method where you are “allowed” to eat (and drink) during certain times and at other times you…

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vSphere 7 and VCF 4.0: evolution or revolution?

March 10, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 2 comments

When looking at the new version-numbers of both products, you might think, “a major update, but going further along an already well-trodden path”. Well, you would think wrong. The newest additions to VMware’s SDDC portfolio do have new features and functions (and lots of them), but they are also very much changing things around and giving customers the possibility to focus on the technology that is taking the world by storm. Modern Applications So terms like DevOps and Modern Applications…

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vSAN 7.0: Ready for Modern Applications and more

March 10, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

With the new version of vSphere (also see https://my-sddc.net/?p=833), we can also look forward to a new version of vSAN. And with vSphere, this also brings along a lot of new and improved functionality. Most importantly, vSAN is aligned with the other VMware portfolio to support the Modern Applications. With vSAN we now can use “Cloud Native Storage” (CNS), to natively support Kubernetes. The architecture around this looks like: Through this CNS it is possible to treat storage used by…

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Checking environment after migration NSX V to T and cleanup

January 27, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 1 comment

Earlier I wrote a post on the migration between NSX for vSphere (NSX-V) and NSX-T (https://my-sddc.net/migrate-nsx-for-vsphere-to-nsx-t/) . I stopped after the migration was complete because the post was long enough already and promised to come back with an article on the environment and clean up afterward. This is that article as you might have expected ;). Checking and repairing the environment So, after the migration, I found out a couple of things that I had to “repair”. They are all…

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Migrate NSX for vSphere to NSX-T

January 20, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 6 comments

As you might know, I use a test/demo environment from my employer. In this environment, I can demo the VMware SDDC products for customers or colleagues. Since the start of the environment approx. four years ago, I had a demo around NSX for vSphere, but as you know, the product has been announced to go end of support in 2022 and there will be no more development on it. Also, VMware and my company (PQR) advise customers who start on…

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vRealize Network Insight Cloud installation and configuration

January 8, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 1 comment

As a vExpert you get some perks. Some of those are very useful, like a Cloud instance of vRNI (https://cloud.vmware.com/network-insight). I have been using vRNI for a while in my (companies) lab/demo environment and found it very nice to work with and to demo as well. The “problem” with it, is that (as always) resources are scarce and vRNI asks quite a lot of that. The medium installation for 5.0 asks: And: Especially the amount of resources that the Platform…

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