Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Alan Renouf, and his family, need your help. Please support/donate!

· · 2 Comments

Some of you may have spotted a tweet by Alan Renouf earlier this week, most of you have probably heard about the wildfires in California. If you haven’t, just do a google search… Or take a look at this devastating picture of Alan Renouf’s home:

Yes, on the left is the lovely house Alan and his family owned, on the right is what is left after he and the family had been evacuated due to the wildfires. Unfortunately, as you can see, the only thing that is left is ashes. As they were evacuated, in a rush, at the middle of the night they could barely take anything with them. This means they will need to buy a lot of stuff. You name it, they need it. And yes, of course they have insurance, but as we all know these things will take a significant amount of time and will not cover everything.

Now, we have probably all used some of Alan’s work at some point. His PowerCLI scripts (vCheck etc) have made all of our life’s easier, and if there’s ever a time to give back, this would be it.

One of the Renouf’s friends just created a Go Fund Me page, please consider donating, please share this blog and/or the Go Fund Me page!

vSphere FT and vVols/SPBM an unsupported config? Why?

· · Leave a Comment

I was pointed out by a customer (thanks Johan), that vSphere FT is not supported when using SPBM on non-vSAN based storage systems. You may wonder why this is, at least I did wonder. I figured it would be a testing constraint of some sort, but after emailing product management, engineering, and our quality engineering team I now understand why it is. Now before I explain it, the constraint is documented here, let me quote the section for you:

Virtual Volume datastores.
Storage-based policy management. Storage policies are supported for vSAN storage.

So why is this and why would vSAN be supported as that also uses SPBM? Well the difference is in the implementation. For vVols there’s a dependency on vCenter Server to be available when creating new VMs. This is essentially what happens when an FT instance needs to be restarted. We will need to associate an SPBM policy with it and we can only retrieve it via vCenter Server. With vSAN, FT/HA can also retrieve the needed info via the ESXi host. This is why FT and vSAN are a supported configuration, and vVols and FT, unfortunately, is not at the moment. Hopefully, though, this will change in the future. (Yes, I filed a feature request before anyone asks.)

Top 15 VMworld 2020 sessions to attend

· · Leave a Comment

VMworld 2020 is coming, which means I get to create a list of sessions again which I feel are worth attending. My focus will primarily be on sessions that are hosted by folks of the VMware Cloud Platform Business Unit, which means that the list will be dominated by sessions on the topic of vSAN, vSphere, VCF etc. The key reason for it being of course is that I know most of the speakers on those sessions, and I have attended many of those sessions in the past, so I know what to expect.

I have two sessions accepted this year. The two sessions are:

  • vSAN 7.0: A Platform for both Virtual Machine and Containerized Workloads [HCI1814] – Duncan Epping & Cormac Hogan
  • Change Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: My Take 3 Journey [ETPD1043] – Duncan Epping

Make sure to attend these sessions, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note on twitter! When it comes to my top 15 sessions, please note that these are in random order, and also note that if your (or a) session is not listed it doesn’t mean I feel your session isn’t going to be great, it simply means I had too many great sessions to pick from and I somehow had to limit the list. Here we go:

  1. Fast Forward to Future-Ready Infrastructure [HCI3074] by John Gilmartin
    In this BU showcase, John Gilmartin will be discussing where HCI stands today, but more importantly, which direction we are heading towards!
  2. 60 Minutes of NUMA [HCP2453] by Frank Denneman
    Do you want to know everything you ever need to know about NUMA when it comes to vSphere? Make sure to watch this session, it was an instant classic last year, and I am sure it will be again this year!
  3. Storage and Availability Vision [HCP3073] by Vijay Ramachandran and Jayanta Dey
    This is the session where futures are discussed! Vijay and Jayanta will be sharing with you which concepts and functionality VMware is exploring for future releases of our HCI products. Definitely worth attending if you want to get a hint of our roadmap.
  4. The Datacenter of the Future [HCP3004] by Kit Colbert and Pere Monclus
    In this session Kit and Pere are going to discuss the future of the Datacenter. Both Kit and Pere are a CTO for the business unit they work for, so you can expect this session to be forward-looking and discuss the trends VMware is seeing and technologies they expect to become mainstream in the upcoming years.
  5. Datrium-based DRaaS Deep Dive: The What, Why, How of the new VMware DRaaS [HCI2886] by Nabil Quadri and Sazzala Reddy
    As most of you know, VMware recently acquired Datrium. In this session, Nabil and Sazzala are going to dive deep into what their DR as a Service solution brings, how it works, and why you should be watching this space closely!
  6. Extreme Performance Series: vSphere Compute and Memory Schedulers [HCP2583] by Xunjia Lu and Qasim Ali
    I always try to watch 2 or 3 sessions in the Extreme Performance Series, these sessions are always very educational. I have learned something new every single time I’ve attended, or watched, one of these. Do note, this is a deep (as in DEEP) dive typically.
  7. vSAN Technical Deep Dive [HCI1069] by Rakesh Radhakrishnan and Matt Amdur
    Technical deep dives host by engineering and product management are always worth attending in my eyes, and both Rakesh and Matt will for sure deliver what you would expect a deep dive to be.
  8. vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols): Modernize Your External Storage [HCI1692] by Cody Hosterman and Jason Massae
    If I had to pick two people to tell me all about vVols it would probably be Cody and Jason, these guys understand core storage and vVols inside out, and on top of that understand very well how, and why, customers are implementing it!
  9. The Future of Networking with VMware NSX [VCNC1555] by Bruce Davie and Marcos Hernandez
    A lot has changed in the world of networking the past decade or so, and with IoT and 5G around the corner, it is important to understand how VMware can help you moving into this new era.
  10. vCenter Server 7 Deconstructed [HCP2328] by Emad Younis and Niels Hagoort
    In this session Emad and Niels will be discussing the internals of vCenter Server. How did VMware integrate the Kubernetes effort? How does Lifecycle Manager help you manage your cluster?
  11. HCI Management: Current and Future [HCI1514] by Junchi Zhang
    In this session Junchi will be discussing the future of HCI management. In the last couple of years, this session has always been packed with demos of future functionality, and it has been my favorite the past couple of years for sure!
  12. What’s New in Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication [HCI1452] by Cato Grace and Velina Krasteva
    A lot has changed for Site Recovery Manager in the past year, definitely worth getting a better understanding by watching this session!
  13. Deep Dive: Storage for VMware Cloud Foundation [HCI2362] by Kevin Tebear and Ron Scott-Adams
    The question of which storage platform to use with VCF comes up frequently, and in this session Kevin and Ron are going to discuss all the supported protocols and architectures, and they will be providing guidance and best practices around what to use and when/where.
  14. Innovations in vSphere 7 vMotion: Architecture and Performance [HCP1508] by Sreekanth Setty and Yanlei Zhao
    I watched this session last year, and it was very interesting, a lot of in-depth info around the changes introduced and the changes that will be introduced in the future, to further improve the vMotion process!
  15. Inside xLabs and Off-Roadmap Innovation in the VMware Office of the CTO [OCTO2406] by Daniel Beveridge and Chris Wolf
    In the past couple of years Daniel and Chris have been hosting some very interesting sessions, some very fascinating ideas, concepts, and trends were shared, along with potential solutions for these.

Call to action: Register for VMworld 2020!

· · 1 Comment

Call to action: Register for VMworld 2020!By now everyone has probably heard that VMworld is a virtual event this year. I am looking forward to it, as it means many people who were never able to “attend” VMworld sessions, can now attend/watch/learn! This year we have a 2-day event, which is taking the “follow the sun” approach with content scheduled across all timezones, and of course, there will be the option to watch recordings as well.

I am currently preparing my sessions, I have two sessions scheduled. The two sessions I have scheduled currently are:

    • vSAN 7.0: A Platform for both Virtual Machine and Containerized Workloads [HCI1814] – Duncan Epping & Cormac Hogan
    • Change Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: My Take 3 Journey [ETPD1043] – Duncan Epping

I want to point out that the event is free to attend for everyone, but for those who would like to have access guided hands-on-labs, 1:1’s with experts, roundtable discussions, and much more, there is a paid pass of $ 299,- available as well. There’s only a limited number of the passes available, so if you are interested make sure to register for that asap. More detail on this is available here.

Last, but not least, this year you can filter on “distinguished” speakers. These are the speakers who spoke at two consecutive VMworld events in a row, had more than 150 people at their session, and scored a 4.2 out of 5 or higher. It is a list of 61 speakers, and I am honored to be part of it. I would highly recommend the content that will be presented by these speakers, as satisfaction is (almost) guaranteed!

I hope to see you all (online) at VMworld 2020!

Update on the Kidspire fundraiser!

· · Leave a Comment

About 10 days ago I posted a blog about my 12 year milestone at VMware. In the post, I asked for people in the VMware/Virtualization/Cloud community to consider sharing my request and/or consider donating even. VMware provided me the opportunity to donate ~3100 to a charity of choice. As mentioned, I added a personal donation and asked if people would consider contributing. I think it is fair to say it was a huge success. I would like to thank everyone for sharing my blog and tweets, and especially thank everyone who took the time to donate whatever they could. Whether it is 5 dollars or 500 dollars, every single contribution is much appreciated by the Kidspire team and myself.

So what was the result?

Yes, a total combined of 10k+ across the three efforts. (My grant and donation, Gofundme, Brightfunds.) This means that Kidspire can buy ~45 new Chromebooks for 3 orphanages, which is amazing. Again, thanks to everyone for contributing, it is much appreciated, and I will make sure to share some pictures when Kidspire visits Vietnam again to deliver the Chromebooks and sets up the new classrooms. If you haven’t gotten around to it, the fundraising campaigns are still open. I will close them at the end of the month, so there’s still time left to donate if you want. Thanks!