All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Requirements

All Flash #VSAN & NSX Homelab – Requirements (via darrylcauldwell.com)

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Requirements

As VMware add more products to its suite its more difficult to run a suitable homelab to host them. With this series of five blog posts I aim to describe the steps I followed to create my current homelab. In this post I hope to describe the requirements the lab will hopefully deliver.


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All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Base Hardware…

All Flash #VSAN & NSX Homelab – Base Hardware Configuration (via darrylcauldwell.com)

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Base Hardware…

As VMware add more products to its suite its more difficult to run a suitable homelab to host them. With this series of five blog posts I aim to describe the steps I followed to create my current homelab. This post follows on from the design post and describes the steps I used to install the physical aspects of the lab.


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VMware NSX DFW Policy Rules Configuration…

#VMware NSX DFW Policy Rules Configuration Technical White Paper – ntpro.nl

VMware NSX DFW Policy Rules Configuration…

VMware NSX Distributed Firewall (DFW) provides the capability to enforce firewalling functionality directly at the Virtual Machines (VM) vNIC layer. It is a core component of the micro-segmentation security model where east-west traffic can now be inspected at near line rate processing, preventing any lateral move type of attack.


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600GB write buffer limit for VSAN?

600GB write buffer limit for #VSAN? (via Yellow Bricks)

600GB write buffer limit for VSAN?

I get this question on a regular basis and it has been explained many many times, I figured I would dedicate a blog to it. Now, Cormac has written a very lengthy blog on the topic and I am not going to repeat it, I will simply point you to the math he has provided around it. I do however want to provide a quick summary:


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All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Physical Design

All Flash #VSAN & NSX Homelab – Physical Design (via darrylcauldwell.com)

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – Physical Design

As VMware add more products to its suite its more difficult to run a suitable homelab to host them. With this series of five blog posts I aim to describe the steps I followed to create my current homelab. This post follows on from on the requirements post and aims to describe the design of the lab.


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All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – VSAN and vCenter

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – #VSAN and vCenter (via darrylcauldwell.com)

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – VSAN and vCenter

As VMware add more products to its suite its more difficult to run a suitable homelab to host them. With this series of five blog posts I aim to describe the steps I followed to create my current homelab. This post follows on from the base hardware post and describes the steps I used to deploy VSAN and vCenter.


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All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – NSX

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – NSX (via darrylcauldwell.com)

All Flash VSAN & NSX Homelab – NSX

As VMware add more products to its suite its more difficult to run a suitable homelab to host them. With this series of blog posts I aim to describe the steps I followed to create my current homelab. This post follows on from the VSAN and vCenter post and describes the steps I used to deploy NSX.


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NSX 6.2 Central CLI MindMap

NSX 6.2 Central CLI MindMap

NSX 6.2 Central CLI MindMap

For those of you not familiar with the Central CLI feature available in NSX 6.2 it allows you to troubleshoot your environment from a single interface rather than having to connect to multiple systems such as NSX Manager, Hosts, Edges and Controllers. I’m going to be doing some work for the VMware Hands On Labs so I figured I’d create a MindMap of all the Central CLI commands that are available:


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Partition / Isolation and VM flip flopping…

Partition / Isolation and VM flip flopping between hosts? – Yellow Bricks

Partition / Isolation and VM flip flopping…

Last week I was talking to one of our developers at our R&D offsite. He has a situation where he saw his VM flip flopping between two hosts when he was testing a certain failure scenario and he wondered why that was. In his case he had a 2 node cluster connected to vCenter Server and a bunch of VMs running on just 1 host.


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4 Ways Views Can Improve Your vROps Workflow

4 Ways Views Can Improve Your #vROps Workflow

4 Ways Views Can Improve Your vROps Workflow

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) offers a significant level of customization to the end user, from alerts to views to dashboards and more. This level of customization empowers the end user to mold the platform to their specific needs without making system-wide changes. A great example of this comes in the form of vROps views.


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vSphere Update Manager – Cannot Scan Host

#vSphere Update Manager – Cannot Scan Host (via mylesgray.com)

vSphere Update Manager – Cannot Scan Host

I have been testing out Runecast Analyzer in my lab recently – it’s pretty badass, you can set it up to scan your virtual infrastructure at a vCenter level and will scan your vC, VMs and hosts looking for KBs that may apply, security compliance and best practises.


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vSphere audit trail with Log Insight

#vSphere audit trail with Log Insight – Michael Ryom

vSphere audit trail with Log Insight

Had a talk with a former colleague of mine, a month or two ago, about a customer that wished to use Log Insight to do audit trail of there vSphere environment and if this was possible. My first reaction was I couldn’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to do audit trail with Log Insight. I mean it’s getting it’s logs from the different logs in a VMware environment so it should be pretty easy.


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Stepping towards segmentation

Stepping towards segmentation – RunNSX

Stepping towards segmentation

Almost daily, we read about a prolific rise in breaches and expansion of the security threat landscape. With each attack demanding new approaches and concepts when applying network security, highly virtualized or cloud based environments are often a critical focal point.


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PowerNSX Log Insight Segmenter

#PowerNSX Log Insight Segmenter – Network Inferno

PowerNSX Log Insight Segmenter

PowerNSX has been a focus of mine for a little while. I also have a penchant for Log Insight. I like the product. I have outlined previously a blog here for approaching the segmentation of any application with Log Insight and NSX Distributed Firewall.


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