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2 node direct connect vSAN and error “vSphere HA agent on this host could not reach isolation address”

Duncan Epping · Oct 7, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I’ve had this question over a dozen times now, so I figured I would add a quick pointer to my blog. What is causing the error “vSphere HA agent on this host could not reach isolation address” to pop up on a 2-node direct connect vSAN cluster? The answer is simple, when you have vSAN enabled HA uses the vSAN network for communication. When you have a 2-node Direct Connect the vSAN network is not connected to a switch and there are no other reachable IP addresses other than the IP addresses of the vSAN VMkernel interfaces.

When HA tries to test if the isolation address is reachable (the default gateway of the management interface) the ping will fail as a result. How you can solve this is simply by disabling the isolation response as described in this post here.

My recommended sessions for VMworld Europe 2019!

Duncan Epping · Sep 23, 2019 · 2 Comments

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!

Capacity Overview in vSAN 6.7 U3

Duncan Epping · Sep 20, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I just wanted to do a short post before the weekend, in vSAN 6.7 U3 there’s a great capacity overview screen. It shows a couple of things, first of all, it provides a simple bar that shows “data written”, “reserved space” and “free space”. The second section provides you the ability to figure out what happens to your capacity consumption if you would change the policy on all VMs. The third section gives you a nice breakdown of the capacity per category and a great circular diagram which shows immediately what kind of data is consuming your capacity. Very useful!

VMworld Reveals: VMware Cloud Foundation (#HBI1432BUR)

Duncan Epping · Sep 11, 2019 · 1 Comment

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.

VMworld Reveals: vMotion innovations

Duncan Epping · Sep 3, 2019 · 1 Comment

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 enhancements that will be introduced in the future to vMotion, the was session HBI1421BU. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. This session was presented by Arunachalam Ramanathan and Sreekanth Setty. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing a Technical Preview, this feature/product may never be released, and this preview does not represent a commitment of any kind, and this feature (or it’s functionality) is subject to change. Now let’s dive into it, what can you expect for vMotion in the future.

The session starts with a brief history of vMotion and how we are capable today to vMotion VMs with 128 vCPUs and 6 TB of memory. The expectation is though that vSphere in the future will support 768 vCPUs and 24 TB of memory. Crazy configuration if you ask me, that is a proper Monster VM.