Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Virtual SAN

Free E-Book: Operationalizing VMware vSAN

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A while ago my colleague and friend Kevin Lees reached out to me and asked me if I could go over some material he wrote together with Paul Wiggett. He also asked me if I would be willing to write a foreword. When Kevin send the document over I literally finished it within a day. What I enjoyed most about this vSAN book was the fact that it wasn’t a deep dive, it wasn’t drilling down on technology, instead the people/process aspect of things are being discussed. This is an area which is often overlooked, and definitely an area that deserves more attention when people are looking to adopt software-defined storage, or the software-defined data center for that matter. Thanks Paul/Kevin for providing me the opportunity to write the foreword, I just downloaded my free copy and I have to say it looks great.

If you are interested, the book can be downloaded for free through the VMware Virtual Blocks blog, simply go here and download your copy.

 

Device X is not listed on the vSAN Compatability Guide, can I still use it?

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I get this question almost daily, and I am pretty sure I have said this various times, but just in case it wasn’t clear I figured I would share the answer to the question whether a device should be used in a vSAN cluster when it is not listed on the vSAN Compatibility Guide? if you have not looked at the components variant of the VCG for vSAN please take a look here: http://vmwa.re/vsanhclc. Of course, we also have an easier route, which is the ReadyNode VCG. But some may want to tweak based on performance, cost etc. I get that, and so does VMware, that is why we have listed all supported and tested components. Can you use a device which is not listed? Sure you can. Will VMware support the environment? Maybe they will, maybe they won’t! Should you use a device which is not listed if the previous answer is maybe? No!

So let’s be clear and let’s answer the two most asked questions:

  • Device X is not listed on the vSAN Compatability Guide, can I still use it?
    • No, you should not. If any problem arises chances are you will not get the support you need as a result of an unsupported configuration. Sure, usually VMware Support will do their best to help, but if it appears the unsupported device is causing the problem then it becomes difficult. Please do not use devices which are not listed
  • Device X is listed with Firmware version Y, but the OEM says I should use Z, what to do?
    • Ask the OEM why the version is not listed on VMware’s VCG website. Vendors are responsible for certifying components and the software (drivers / firmware) associated with it. If it is not listed then it has either not been submitted yet, it has not been tested, or it has not passed the test. Please only use tested and listed versions, the only exception is when both VMware GSS and the OEM points you to a new version.

Hope that helps,

Unexpected VMware Update Manager (VUM) baseline creation failure. Please check vSAN and VUM logs for details.

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I had a customer asking about an error they received after upgrading to 6.7 U1. The message they saw was the following: “Unexpected VMware Update Manager (VUM) baseline creation failure. Please check vSAN and VUM logs for details.” I had seen some folks on VMTN also complaining about this a couple weeks ago, and I knew a KB article was in the makings. Just to ensure people know where to get it, and to make it easier for myself to find it I want to share KB 60380 with you. I am not going to copy/paste the resolution, as I prefer to have the KB being leading on this, just in case it gets updated. I don’t want to provide potentially outdated info. So just go to KB 60380 if you are hitting the “Unexpected VMware Update Manager (VUM) baseline creation failure. Please check vSAN and VUM logs for details.” error.

New book: VMware vSAN 6.7 U1 Deep Dive

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Cormac Hogan and I have been working late nights and weekends over the past months to update our vSAN book material. Thanks Cormac, it was once again a pleasure working with you on this project! As you may know, we released two versions of a vSAN based book through VMware Press. The book was titled vSAN Essentials. As mentioned before, after restructuring and rewriting a lot of the content we felt that the title of the book didn’t match the content, so we decided to rebrand it to vSAN 6.7 U1 Deep Dive. After receiving very thorough reviews by Frank Denneman and Pete Koehler (Thanks guys!) we managed to complete it this week after we added a great foreword by our business unit’s SVP and General Manager, Yanbing Li.

Cormac and I decided to take the self-publishing route for this book, which allows us to set a great price for the ebook and enable the Amazon matchbook option, giving everyone who buys the paper version through Amazon the option to buy the e-book with a nice discount! As prices will vary based on location I am only going to list the USD prices. Please check your local Amazon website for localized prices. Oh, and before I forget, I would like to recommend buying the ebook flavor! Why? Well:

“On average, each printed book releases 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide into the environment. Together, the newspaper and book-printing industries cut down 125 million trees per year and emit 44 million tons of CO2.”

We appreciate all support, but we prefer the cleanest option from an environmental stance, this is also the reason we priced the ebook a lot cheaper than the paper version. Anyway, here are the links to the US store, we hope you enjoy the content, and of course as always an Amazon review would be appreciated! Interestingly, it seems we already reached number 1 in the category Virtualization and the category Storage before this announcement, thanks everyone, we really appreciate it!

 

UPDATE:

It appears that some Amazon stores take a bit longer to index the content, so listing all the different versions below for the different stores that sell it:

vSAN 6.7 U1 Deep Dive book coming soon!

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Cormac and I decided to update the vSAN Essentials book. We added a whole bunch of extra info and also decided to rebrand it. “Essentials” did not really cut it, it is much more than that. Considering I just finished the Clustering Deep Dive with Frank and Niels, we figured this could be a nice addition to that series, complementing both the Host Deep Dive as well as the Clustering Deep Dive. We’ve received all the feedback from our reviewers, Frank Denneman and Pete Koehler, and spend various evenings digesting and processing it. Now it is just a matter of adding the foreword to the book, and then we can simply press: Publish. Hopefully, within 2 weeks, I will have a new article that details how you can buy the book!

The plan is right now to release the paper copy and the ebook at the same time, we will link the books, so those who buy the paper copy can buy the ebook at a discounted price. We will also make sure the ebook is priced very attractive, as we feel it should be the format of choice for everyone!