vSphere

Learning HCX-Part 1: Introduction to HCX

Manish Jha

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (previously known as HCX technologies) was announced by VMware last year during VMworld 2017 Europe, and it aimed at the following use cases:

  • Simplified Data Center Migration: Seamless migration of applications from on-premise to cloud. 
  • Infrastructure Hybridity: Hybrid Cloud Extension enables seamless cloud onboarding.
  • Disaster Recovery: In the event of a disaster, Hybrid Cloud Extension recovers the networking layer. Traffic routes are maintained as before the disaster, resulting in high-speed disaster recovery with low downtime.
  • Multi-Cloud Application Support: Hybrid Cloud Extension enables application components to exist in the multi-cloud world. 

So what exactly is the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension?

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a SaaS offering that provides application mobility and infrastructure hybridity across different vSphere versions, both on-premises and in the cloud.

 

To learn more about HCX, please see the VMware HCX FAQ section.

VMware journey from HCM to HCX

Before the HCX solution, VMware offered a similar product named “Hybrid Cloud Manager (HCM)” to support their vCloud Air service.… Read the rest

Exploring vSphere 6.7-Part-3: VUM What’s New And Feature Walkthrough Using HTML5 Client

Manish Jha

With the release of vSphere 6.5, vSphere Update Manager (VUM) was inegrated with VCSA which made customers very happy as we no longer needed an additional windows server for installing VUM.  

With vSphere 6.7, VMware integraded few of the VUM funtionality in the new HTML5 client. Not all the features are available in HTML5 client and few features like VUM configuration changes, VMware tools upgrade etc can only be performed via vSphere Web Client (flash).

VMware is working hard on incorporating all the VUM features in the new HTML5 client as soon as possible and we might see them in upcoming updates of vSphere 6.7. Isn’t it exciting to get rid of flash based Web Client (yeah screw that VMware !!!)

I have written few posts on vSphere 6.7 earlier. You can read those posts from below links:

Installing and Configuring Esxi 6.7

Installing and Configuring VCSA 6.7

So whats enhancements vSphere 6.7 brought for VUM?… Read the rest

Exploring vSphere 6.7-Part-2-Installing and Configuring VCSA

Manish Jha

In last post of this series we installed Esxi host and navigated around the HTML client to explor various options. In this post we will deploy VCSA host and will explore the new vSphere Client (HTML based).

Like Esxi host, installation of VCSA 6.7 has not much changed from previous version. Only the UI has become a slight better. I have outlined the steps in below slideshow.

Deploying VCSA

Once the Stage 1 of VCSA deployment completes, hit Continue to trigger the second stage of deployment to configure NTP settings and SSO domain configuration.

vc67-14.PNG

 

Once second stage of deployment is finished,  launch the HTML5 client (https://VCSA-FQDN/ui/) and login with administrator@SSO-domain and the password set during deployment.

vc67-23

vc67-24

Assign License

As soon as you login to VCSA UI, you will observe a warning about VCSA running in evaluation mode. Click on “Manage Your Licenses” to assign a new challange. 

vc67-25

Click on + button to add vcenter license key.… Read the rest

Exploring vSphere 6.7-Part-1-Installing and Configuring Esxi

Manish Jha

vSphere 6.7 was announced by VMware just a day before their 20th foundaton day i.e yesterday. Although this release isn’t as feature-packed as the previous release, but still a lot of enhancements are introduced such as:

  • Instant clone API
  • Quick Boot of Esxi 
  • Per-VM EVC
  • VM Hardware version 14 introduced

I have not tested these features yet so I am not writing in detail about these. The best way to learn and test the new features introduced is to deploy stuffs in lab and start playing around and hence the first post of this series is dedicated to installing Esxi host.

This post will be covered in 2 parts where in first part I will demonstrate installation of Esxi host and in second part we will explore the vSphere Client (HTML based) to configure basic stuffs. 

All download links related to vSphere 6.7 can be found here

Although the installation has been pretty much straight forward over the years and nothing is changed as such, but if you are newbie to VMware it wouldn’t hurt to check out the installation steps from below slideshow.… Read the rest

Installing PowerShell/PowerCLI on RHEL 7

Manish Jha

Today I was reading about influxDB and Grafana as I am planning to deploy it in my lab to monitor my vSphere infrastructure and while going through the installation/configuration steps, I stumbled on one step where we needed to have powercli installed on the box where grafana is installed.

Since I am planning to deploy the influxdb/grafana on my centos 7 box, I started looking for how to configure PowerCLI on top of unix variants. Read few articles and finally deployed it my lab.

PowerShell Core v6.0 was released few days ago by Microsoft with support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Around same time, VMware released PowerCLI 10.0 which is VMware’s “PowerShell-like” utility. PowerShell version for linux can be downloaded from here

In this post I will be demonstrating installation of both PowerShell and PowerCli Core on RHEL 7 system. If you’re interested in installing this on other variants of linux then please consult this article. … Read the rest

DRS/SDRS Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules

Manish Jha

Although there are 1000 of articles written on this topic, purpose of writing this article is to cover few objectives of VCAP6-Deploy exam. When I published my VCAP6 study guide, few topics I left purposefully as I had planned to write them later when I get some time.

So in this post we will be discussing about DRS & SDRS affinity/anti-affinity rules. 

Affinity Rules – VM to VM

Affinity rules are used by DRS to keep 2 virtual machines always running together. Affinity rules are generally used to keep virtual machines toether which have dependency on each other.

For e.g: You may want to keep an application and a database servers together on same host so that communication between the 2 servers don’t have to traverse a network link. If the VM’s of a multi-tiered application are running on different hosts, then they may generate a lot of network traffic between 2 hosts and can affect performance of VM’s/Hosts.… Read the rest

VCAP6-DCV Deploy Study Guide

Manish Jha

Section 1 – Create and Deploy vSphere 6.x Infrastructure Components

Objective 1.1 – Perform Advanced ESXi Host Configuration

Objective 1.2 – Deploy and Configure Core Management Infrastructure Components

Objective 1.3 – Deploy and Configure Update Manager Components

Objective 1.4 – Perform Advanced Virtual Machine Configurations

… Read the rest

Back To Basics: Migrating from vSS to vDS in vSphere 6

Manish Jha

In this post we will see how to migrate from vSphere Standard Swith to vSphere Distributed Switch. Let’s get started.

Before performing any migration, make sure you have a vDS deployed and fully configured i.e portgroups created, uplinks created, appropriate uplinks placed in respective portgroups.

Here is a review of my environment.

1: I have a vDS created and different port groups for separation of duties. 

vssmg-1

2: Uplinks created and meaningfully named.

vssmg-2

3: Teaming and Failover configured. Each of the portgroup in my lab have only one active uplink. Rest of them I have placed in unused. 

vssmg-3

4: And this is how the networking is layout for the host which I will be migrating to vDS. This host have 2 vSS.

  • vSwitch0 have Management and vMotion VMkernel portgroup along with a VM Network portgroup to which my vCSA is connected.

vssmg-4

  • vSwitch1 have 2 portgroups configured for iSCSI storage connectivity. Port binding is enabled here to achieve multipathing. 
… Read the rest

VCAP6-DCV Deploy Objective 3.1

Manish Jha

In this post we will cover following topics:

  • Create and manage vSS components according to a deployment plan:
    • VMkernel ports on standard switches
    • Advanced vSS settings
  • Configure TCP/IP stack on a host
  • Create a custom TCP/IP stack
  • Configure and analyze vSS settings using command line tools

Lets get started by going through each topic one by one.

                                          Create and Manage vSphere Standard Switch

When Esxi is installed, a standard switch aka vSS is also created by default. Working mechanism of a standard switch is very similar to a physical switch in the sense that a standard switch works at layer 2, forwards frames to other switch ports based on the MAC address, and supports features such as VLANs and port channels.

Esxi host physical NIC’s serves as uplinks to the standard switches and through these uplinks vSS communicate with the rest of the network. A vSS provide the network connectivity:

  • between virtual machines within the same ESXi host.
… Read the rest

My VCAP6-DCA Deploy (3V0-623) Exam Experience

Manish Jha

I haven’t blogged for quite a bit of time as I was busy in my VCAP6-Deploy exam and finally I passed my exam last saturday. There is a lot of things which I want to share about my exam experience and the things I learned during my preprations. 

I passed my VCP 6 exam back in june 2017 and since then a strong feeling about going for VCAP exam started darting every now and then in my mind. I have few certifications but none of them were advance level and this thought pumped me up for going for this exam.

I work as a operations engineer in OVH vCloud Air division and interacts with virtualization/Networking/Storage things on day to day basis and this certainly was an advantage as I already have hands on few of the topics mentioned in VCAP exam blueprint. 

My preparation

I started my preparation by downloading the VCAP6-Deploy exam blueprint and had a rough look on all the objectives.… Read the rest