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VMware VIX

vSphere VM quiescing essentials

This week I had several conversations colleagues and suppliers regarding the quiescing options of vSphere based VMs for backup and replication purposes. During these talks I noticed that is it more complex then most would think (including myself). This gave me the idea to write a blog post about the matter, because I think I’m not the only one. This post describes the background, dependencies and options for quiesced (consistent) VM backups and replications. I Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
VMware vSAN

Thoughts on vSAN NVMe surprise removal support

While designing a vSAN based platform for a customer lately, I was looking into NVMe based ReadyNodes which needed to run ESXi 6.7 U3. While looking for a specific Dell rackmount config in the VMware Compatibility Guide, something caught my interest. Those were the lines at the bottom of the nodes config, which say “NVMe surprise removal is not supported at ESXi 6.7x ReadyNodes“. Why does it matter So the question rises, what exactly is Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
NSX-T Highlights

VMware Advanced Design NSX-T Data Center 3.0 exam review

In January I attended the NSX-T 2.4 Install, Configure and Manager (ICM) course. The course itself was great and gave me thorough knowledge of the product. By attending the course, all pieces of the puzzle fell together and I was impressed with the product so far. Although NSX-T was not up to par with NSX-V features yet, it gave good insight why VMware made the radical and necessary change for a more future proof product. Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
VCD Login Logo

Getting a Cloud Director TLS “A” Grade – Part 2

In part 1 of this blog post, I wrote about the background of TLS. In this second part I show you how VCD (VMware Cloud Director) and often also the Load Balancer can be configured to enhance security, integrity and page speed. In this multi-part series I hope you benefit from not only knowing the best setting, but more important, why some settings should be used in favor of others. Part 1: TLS background and Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Getting a Cloud Director TLS “A” Grade – Part 1

The Let’s Encrypt certificate I use for the Cloud Director portal running in my lab environment expired lately, therefore a renewal was needed. While renewing the certificate and checking my TLS config, it was not up to par with modern standards and that needed for be fixed. While writing down everything I researched, I found out there was more beneath the eye and eventually the post was too large a single one. Therefore I decided Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Cloud Director NSX-T inter-tenant routing

Todays topic is VMware Cloud Director inter-tenant routing with a NSX-T backed provider VDCs (pVDC). The reason for writing this post is that some use-cases require routed connectivity between Org VDCs that may or may not be part of the same Org. Due to the multi-tenant nature of VCD, most external connectivity options (with NSX-T backed pVDCs) are focused on internet and private link connectivity. Sometimes it’s necessary to communicate with networks in other Orgs Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
VMware Code

Cloud Director tidbits: Deploy VCD appliances with OVF Tool

In the second part of the Cloud Director tidbits series, I dive into the deployment of the VCD appliance using OVFtool. In hindsight I should have used it much sooner, since deploying the VCD OVA using the vSphere Client wizard is quite a hassle. Part one: Changing the sitename It took me a couple of tries to get the deployment right. At first I had some issues getting OVFtool to login into vCenter properly. Secondly Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago

Cloud Director tidbits: Changing the site name

After the release of VMware Cloud Director 10.1 (yes, you read it correctly, the lowercase “v” is gone now), it was time to re-installed my lab environment a. Because of the new name, the acronym is now slightly different (VCD instead of vCD). During the re-install and config process I stumbled upon some issues, that in hindsight took quite some time to fix. Because of that, the idea of this blog series was born to Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
Intel SSD

Homelab storage expansion

The SSD tier in my lab became quite full in the beginning of this year, so the search began for some expansion. All 8 hot-swap slots in my single node lab server are occupied so, it needed to be an NVMe drive due to slot availability but mainly because of lower latency, more queues, lower host utilization and higher bandwidth compared to SATA and SAS drives. Current situation The storage in my homelab consists of Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago
vCloud Director Logo

vCloud Director Identity and Access Management – Part 2

The second part of this topic in the “vCloud Director Identity and Access Management” series touches the “per Org VDC” permission feature. I decided to split the topic into a multi-part series due to the length of the original one. The first part can be found using the link below: vCloud Director Identity and Access Management – Part 1 Org VDC permissions The “per Org VDC ” permission feature was recently brought up by my Read more…

By Daniël Zuthof, ago