My Software Defined DataCenter - Page 2 of 6

HCI Benching the lab

August 5, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 0 Comment

Just a small tidbit. I have built the vSphere/vSAN part of the lab and am curious as to what the performance is, so I’ll use HCIBench for that: https://flings.vmware.com/hcibench. Deploying it is pretty straightforward, it’s an OVA: After that (and powering on), the configuration is done through the web-interface: Previous times I ran HCIBench at customers, I used VDBench as the bench-marking tool. In this version FIO is available, so I’ll give that a go. The “Clear Read/Write Cache Before…

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Building the lab – vSphere and vSAN

August 4, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 1 comment

After creating the NSX Managers (Local and Global, see https://my-sddc.net/nsx-t-global-manager-installation-and-initial-setup), and receiving the goods I ordered for the nested hosts, it is time to begin building the basics for the new lab. I have the availability of one HP DL380p Gen8, with two processors and 384 GB of memory. Two 450 GB 10K SAS disks for the basic virtual machines (vCenter, NSX-Manager and such) and I added two time three SSD’s. The idea behind this, is that I will create…

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NSX-T Global Manager installation and initial setup

August 4, 2020 ronaldpj Comments 6 comments

In my new lab environment, I will be working with two locations (Site A and Site B) and a Global NSX-T Manager to centrally manage the environment. For this, I installed a Global Manager after I deployed both Local Managers. Since I am not made of resources, all sites and the global environment will consist of one appliance, but in a production environment you would definitely need three per function. The installation of the Global Manager is almost identical to…

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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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