Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

cloud

Joined GigaOm’s David S. Linthicum on a podcast about cloud, HCI and Edge.

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A while ago I had the pleasure to join David S. Linthicum from GigaOm on their Voices in Cloud Podcast. It is a 22 minute podcast where we discuss various VMware efforts in the cloud space, edge computing and of course HCI. You can find the episode here, where they also have the full transcript for those who prefer to read instead of listen to a guy with a Dutch accent. It was a fun experience for sure, I always enjoy joining podcast’s and talking tech… So if you run a podcast and are looking for a guest, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Of course you can also find Voices in Cloud on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and other platforms.

My recommended sessions for VMworld Europe 2019!

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I created a list of recommended sessions for VMworld US, so I figured I would do the same for VMworld Europe. I am limiting it to 15 sessions for Europe and removed some of the sessions I had listed for the US and added some others for EMEA. I personally have 2 sessions scheduled at the moment, and they filled up rather fast in the US, so make sure to register early: HCI1870BE and HBI2186BE.

Okay, here’s my top 15 list, please note that this is pretty much in random order:

  • 60 Minutes of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture [HBI2278BE] by Frank Denneman
    This session got raving reviews in the US, I attended it personally and I can highly recommend it. That is if you think your brain can handle it… it is deep!
  • PowerCLI Deep Dive [HBI1729BE] by Luc Dekens and Kyle Ruddy
    What can I say? These guys speak PowerCLI. They know it inside out, just make sure you are ready to go deep!
  • VMware Cloud Foundation Deep Dive [HBI2044BE] by Jason Shaw
    I am a big fan of full-stack HCI solutions, and in this session, Jason talks about what VMware Cloud Foundation brings to the table.
  • HCI Management: Current and Future [HCI1207BE] by JunChi Zhang and Christian Dickmann
    Every year these guys bring some really cool demos and they expect you to provide feedback at the end of the session. So if you want to have a chance to influence vSAN/vSphere, attend this one!
  • Project Pacific Technical Overview: Unifying vSphere and Kubernetes [HBI4500BE] by Michael West and Jared Rosoff
    There was a lot of buzz surrounding the announcement of Project Pacific. I managed to sit in one or two sessions in the US, and knowing Jared was the lead engineering on this project I suspect that this session may even go deeper than the ones I attended in the US.
  • The Virtually Speaking Podcast Live: The Future of Storage [HCI1894PE] by Pete Flecha, John Nicholson, and guests
    I was a guest on the US in this session, it was a lot of fun. A lively discussion, and great questions from the audience on top of that. Plus, it is amazing to see Pete Flecha do the intro and outro live, I always thought that was pre-recorded!
  • The Cloud Backbone Network: A Paradigm Shift in Corporate WAN [OCTO1911BE] by Israel Cidon
    I have seen a session on this topic by Israel at an internal conference and it was nothing short of mind-blowing. I would highly recommend attending this if you want to learn more about how we could potentially improve corporate WANs in the future by leveraging SD-WAN technology. Mind, this session is foreward looking!
  • Showcase Keynote: HCI – The Foundation for your Future-proof Infrastructure [HCI3551KE] by Cormac Hogan and John Gilmartin
    I presented this session in the US with John, Cormac will be presenting it in Europe with John. I am sure it will be filled with great demos once again, and I will definitely try to attend this one in person
  • Leveraging the Latest Server Technologies in vSphere [HBI2362BE] by Niels Hagoort
    This session wasn’t on my list for the US, but after watching the recording I feel it is worth attending in person! A good overview of what we are doing with the latest HW technologist in vSphere.
  • vSphere Virtual Volumes: Technical Deep Dive [HBI2853BE] by Jason Massae and Thiruvengada Govinda Thirumal
    The adoption of vVols is growing fast, and it is for a good reason. Jason and Thiruvengada will explain in-depth what vVols is and how it works, and of course what the benefits are of adopting it.
  • Tech Preview of Site Recovery Manager with Virtual Volumes [HCI2894BE] by Stefan Tsonev and Velina Krasteva
    The tech preview of SRM for vVols has been discussed various times, but in this session by Stefan and Velina it is also demonstrated. So if you are interested in disaster recovery solutions in combination with vVols then this is one to attend!
  • Meet the [ML] Driver of the Self-Driving Datacenter [MLA1904BE] by Jad El-Zein and Arun Annavarapu
    At VMworld US Project Magna was unveiled, VMware’s effort to deliver the self-driving datacenter. A very interesting concept, which is explained in this session by Jad and Arun. I’ve seen some of the work, and it has a lot of potential, highly recommend attending this session!
  • Technical Deep Dive on Cloud Native Storage 1.0 [HCI2763BE] by Cormac Hogan and Myles Gray
    Cormac and Myles are the Cloud Native experts in our business unit, and I can guarantee that this will be a great session filled with cool demos.
  • Optimizing vSAN for Performance [HCI1757BE] by Paudie ORiordan
    If anyone can explain how to optimize vSAN, how to do benchmarking, and what to avoid… it is Paudie. On top of that, he is a great speaker and you can basically ask him anything on the topic of storage. Must see!
  • Innovations in vMotion: Features, Performance, and Best Practices [HBI1421BE] by Sreekanth Setty and Arunachalam Ramanathan
    I watched this session in the US, it provides an excellent overview of the enhancements introduced for vMotion to improve vMotion (and switch over) times. They also talk about some enhancements coming in the near future. Very interesting stuff.

Scheduling opens up tomorrow (24th of September), so make sure to hit the portal early. I guarantee that many of the sessions above will be full in a matter of days. So don’t say I did not warn you in advance!

VMworld Reveals: VMware Cloud Foundation (#HBI1432BUR)

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At VMworld, various cool new technologies were previewed. In this series of articles, I will write about some of those previewed technologies. Unfortunately, I can’t cover them all as there are simply too many. This article is about VMware Cloud Foundation, which was session HBI1432BUR. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. This session was presented by Mark Chuang and Jayanta K Dey. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing the technology direction of the products, the discussed features may never be released, and this direction does not represent a commitment of any kind, and is subject to change. Now let’s dive into it, what is happening in the VMware Cloud Foundation space?

Jayanta kicked off with an introduction, and I believe most of you understand why we need to simplify IT, and if not, it is all about optimizing cost and improving speed/agility/time to market. This can only be achieved when you have a platform that caters for this, or basically a platform that enables you to focus on delivering services which are valuable to the business instead of focussing on the underlying infrastructure. This is where VMware Cloud Foundation comes in to play. It is a consistent and prescriptive full-stack hyperconverged infrastructure which can run any application.

[Read more…] about VMworld Reveals: VMware Cloud Foundation (#HBI1432BUR)

DRS Advanced Setting IsClusterManaged

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On Reddit, someone asked what DRS advanced setting IsClusterManaged does and if it is even legit. I can confirm it is legit, it is a setting which was introduced to prevent customers from disabling DRS while the cluster is managed by vCloud Director for instance. As disabling DRS would lead to deleting resource pools, which would be a very bad situation to find yourself in when you run vCloud Director as it leans on DRS Resource Pools heavily. So if you see the advanced setting IsClusterManaged in your environment for DRS, just leave it alone, it is there for a reason. (Most likely because you are using something like vCloud Director…)

Want to play around with Kubernetes? Try MicroK8s!

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Two weeks ago I wanted to play around with Kubernetes for a day or two. I found this training course internally at VMware that allowed me to go through some labs. I asked around if anyone had some tips on getting Kubernetes up and running fast. I couldn’t be bothered with creating a multi node kubernetes cluster. I wanted to play around with some of the commands and YAML files. I tried Atomic as suggested by the lab manual, but there were way too many steps involved to install/configure Kubernetes if you ask me. Next option would be some version hosted in a cloud of choice, but I didn’t want to incur the cost. After digging around I stumbled on MicroK8s. It sounded easy, so I figured I would give it a try. When it comes to Linux my preference is Ubuntu/Debian, it is just what I am most familiar with, and as MicroK8s comes from Canonical I figured I would give it a try. As Kelsey Hightower suggested on twitter yesterday (which triggered this article), it is just one command away:

I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Server ISO and I created a VMware Fusion VM. I stepped through the installation wizard of Ubuntu Server and then noticed it already provided the option even to install “microk8s”, I selected the package, and some additional packages I figured I would need, and clicked done. Literally within minutes, I had a fresh single node Kubernetes configuration, which for me worked straight out of the box!

After it is done configuring, click reboot and login. I created an alias for kubectl, as I didn’t want to type “microk8s.kubectl” every time or install a different version:

sudo snap alias microk8s.kubectl kubectl

I also enabled the Kubernetes dashboard from the get-go, which can be done by running the command “microk8s.enable dashboard“. There are a whole bunch of articles out there that can take you through the steps of deploying your first container, making it highly available by specifying the number of instances so I am not going to do that. I don’t want to pretend to be an expert, as I am far from that. Also, check the MicroK8s documentation, it is pretty decent. My colleague Myles Gray has a very good tutorial on why containers, very good read which I also recommend for people who just want to know a bit more about it like myself.