VMwareTag Archive

If you work in IT, then you will know that there is the ever-present spectre of zombie systems, which remain active and running, but not actually doing anything. These can be servers that were implemented for a project that got cancelled, file shares that are no longer accessed, databases that… Continue Reading What is a Scream Test

Through my study of AWS and Azure, I have found that one challenge is in understanding the terminology difference, particularly as my own background is in VMware technologies. So, I have created this little chart that compares the three.Obviously, there is no direct one-to-one mapping of the product offerings, but… Continue Reading Azure Vs. AWS terminology

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!

Are you retaining a backup for 10+ years? Can you still use the data? How useful are your backups? A necessary burden Backups are a necessary task for all businesses. A hundred years ago, if there was a fire at a business, then everything would be lost – a paper… Continue Reading How useful are your backups?

We learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes, but it is better to learn from other’s mistakes, because you don’t need to suffer. In many encounters during my career, I have learnt from the failures that occur during disasters. The disasters in disaster recovery may not… Continue Reading Disasters in disaster recovery

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

Running release R minus 1? What about release R plus 45 days? We all know the Patch Tuesday update cycle where Microsoft releases their updates. It is common practice for risk-averse companies to not run the very latest release of software, instead having a policy of running “R-1” – which… Continue Reading R-1 is dead, long live R+45

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

The definition of Converged Infrastructure (CI) can be categorised into different ‘flavours’. In summary, the term defines an approach where storage and compute are tightly coupled, and managed within a software-defined paradigm that offers policy driven provision of resources. Different vendors provide their own ‘flavour’ of CI, ranging from an… Continue Reading What is Converged Infrastructure?

For years we have been hearing that tablet sales are outstripping PC sales, and projections that the PC platform will die, leaving all of us using tablets for all our computing needs. There has been a rush by organisations to equip staff with mobile devices (or let them bring their… Continue Reading Why a virtual desktop is the solution to workforce mobility

I had a question from a company that had lots of small regional sites, asking “Is a single VM on a single host viable?”, in response to my query about why they were buying one or two servers for these sites. There was an assumption that it was only worthwhile… Continue Reading Is a Single VM on a Single Host viable?

Whilst defining your BYOD policy, you might miss some important requirements to producing a document that will help guide your employees when they use their own device for work purposes. More organisations around the world are now providing an allowance to employees to allow them to buy their own consumer… Continue Reading Tips for defining your BYOD policy

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 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?