vSphereTag Archive

It has finally happened – many years ago, when I worked at VMware, there were internal rumors of a rebootless upgrade being worked on since vSphere 5.0. And now, with the release of vSphere 6.7, you can upgrade the hypervisor without rebooting. What happens is the hypervisor will re-load, without… Continue Reading VMware rebootless upgrades are here!

You may know about ToR, top-of-rack (for) switches. It’s the practice of placing a physical switch within each rack, so that the network switching for the rack is close to the servers or devices that need to connect to it. The ToR switches will allow servers to communicate with each… Continue Reading Top of Rack switch placement in a rack – not at the Top!

VMware are often focussing on the latest and greatest features and capabilities offered by their newest software. Of course, they are always driving forward and the next version’s enhancements and benefits are forefront of their minds – but there are still some people out there who are just starting on… Continue Reading Benefits of VMware – the uneven cluster

In my recent AWS Certified Solutions Architect exam, one of the key learning areas that I needed to master, was the change in terminology to transfer my knowledge from VMware vs. AWS. Obviously, there is no direct one-to-one mapping of the product offerings, but there are some common areas, at… Continue Reading VMware vs. AWS

I always recommend to create a dedicated management cluster for your vSphere virtual environment, but what is a dedicated management cluster, and why is it so important to have one? Not only is it best practice, there are real reasons why you should choose to do this. What is a… Continue Reading Dedicated Management Cluster

DIY is dead. The time when you could “do it yourself” is no longer relevant for IT Infrastructure. It may take a while for it to happen, but it has happened before – to desktop PCs. Approximately 20 years ago, it was both cheaper and easier (if you knew how) to… Continue Reading The era of infrastructure DIY is dead

You may know about ToR, top-of-rack (for) switches. It’s the practice of placing a physical switch within each rack, so that the network switching for the rack is close to the servers or devices that need to connect to it. The ToR switches will allow servers to communicate with each… Continue Reading ToR switch placement – not at the top!

I recently read an article (published August 2013), listing all the reasons not to virtualise certain systems. It got me thinking about some of those people who still think that virtualization is new, not stable and more complicated. Why Virtualize? There are hundreds of articles about why virtualisation is good… Continue Reading Why bother to virtualize?

As you read this, there are no more VCP 4 certified people. VMware have introduced a controversial new policy to make VCP certifications expire after 2 years, and March 10th marks the date that the VCP Expiry takes place. VCP Expiry The qualification of VCP was in three stages –… Continue Reading There are no more VCP4s in the world

In a recent discussion about network security, I had a [relatively inexperienced] network administrator make a comment that security between networks can be achieved with VLANs. As most of us know, VLANs do not equal network security – but it made me wonder why she came to that conclusion, after… Continue Reading VLANs do not equal network security

How many times have you encountered a “block” of a suggestion for improvement with a response of “That is what we have always done”? People are resistant to change, even in an innovative organisation dealing with the latest technologies. The reality is that the opportunities provided by technology and new tools are… Continue Reading That is what we have always done

You may not know that VMware provides some online courses for free. All you need to do is register for a myLearn account and then you can register for – and complete – various foundation courses. Go to http://mylearn.vmware.com/portals/www/mL.cfm?menu=topfreecourses and you will see an up to date list of the available… Continue Reading Free training courses from VMware!

If you’ve been in IT for a while, you may stick by the rule that with Windows, you should put your pagefile on it’s own disk. Originally, this was when computers had little RAM, and to optimise performance of the pagefile it was advised to use FAT instead of incurring… Continue Reading Put your pagefile on it’s own disk

If you have implemented VMware VM Monitoring (part of HA), and your virtual machine rebooted quickly, you may not know why the virtual machine rebooted. Most often this is due to a Windows bluescreen, but you may want to see why VMware HA took the action to reboot the VM.… Continue Reading Why did my VM reboot?

I frequently get contacted by my customers with concerns that their vC Ops licensing is not working, or that they key they have is not recognised. It’s important to acknowledge the order of installation for vCenter Operations Manager so that the license is applied and acknowledged. Is your vC Ops… Continue Reading vC Ops licensing not working? Common vC Ops licensing mistakes

Commonly, a vCenter integrated with Active Directory through SSO will provide authentication for users accessing vCenter. Creating vSphere SSO groups will achieve far more than you expected. So, if you want to integrate multiple Active Directory domains and LDAP directories or leverage local vCenter users and groups in conjunction with… Continue Reading Creating vSphere SSO groups

I regularly have to provide guidance on sizing new hardware for a project, utilising VMware vSphere for the virtualisation platform. The question of sizing VMware hosts does not have a simple answer, as the answer depends upon the needs of the applications being put on the hardware. For example, a… Continue Reading Sizing your vSphere hosts

Sometimes I get asked, where can I download the client integration plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer? The simple answer is that it is on your vCenter server. However, let’s answer some questions first; Why do I need the Client Integration plug in? You can do many tasks in the… Continue Reading Download Client Integration Plugin for Webclient

According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit chip will double every two years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law). This loosely translates into new CPUs released every year, and not only do those CPUs perform faster, but also have more features. One of the best capabilities of a VMware based… Continue Reading Which EVC mode should I use?