Can you move a vSAN Stretched Cluster to a different vCenter Server?

Duncan Epping · Sep 17, 2019 · 2 Comments

I noticed a question today on one of our internal social platforms, the question was if you can move a vSAN Stretched Cluster to a different vCenter Server. I can be short, I tested it and the answer is yes! How do you do it? Well, we have a great KB that actually documents the process for a normal vSAN Cluster and the same applies to a stretched cluster. When you add the hosts to your new vCenter Server and into your newly created cluster it will pull in the fault domain details (stretched cluster configuration details) from the hosts itself, so when you go to the UI the Fault Domains will pop up again, as shown in the screenshot below.

What did I do? Well in short, but please use the KB for the exact steps:

Powered off all VMs
Placed the hosts into maintenance mode (do not forget about the Witness!)
Disconnected all hosts from the old vCenter Server, again, do not forget about the witness
Removed the hosts from the inventory
Connected the Witness to the new vCenter Server
Created a new Cluster object on the new vCenter Server
Added the stretched cluster hosts to the new cluster on the new vCenter Server
Took the Witness out of Maintenance Mode first
Took the other hosts out of maintenance

That was it, pretty straight forward. Of course, you will need to make sure you have the storage policies in both locations, and you will also need to do some extra work if you use a VDS. Nevertheless, it works pretty much straight-forward and as you would expect it to work!

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: Armed and Ready (ESXi on ARM, #OCTO2944BU)

Duncan Epping · Sep 9, 2019 · 7 Comments

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 ESXi on ARM, which was session OCTO2944BU. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. This session was presented by Andrei Warkentin and Daniel Beveridge. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing a tech preview, these features 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 is VMware doing with ARM?

First of all, what caught my interest in this session was the fact that Hivecell was mentioned. Hivecell is a rather unique solution which allows you to stack ARM hosts. What is unique about that? Well when I say stack, I mean stack in the physical sense. The interesting part here is that only the first node will need to have power and networking cables, and the rest will receive power and networking through a magnetic link. William wrote about it extensively, so go here to read more about these guys. Really cool solution if you ask me.

The session started with an intro to ARM and the various use cases. I wrote about that extensively when Chris Wolf and Daniel discussed that at VMworld 2018. So I am not going to reiterate that either, just click the link to figure out why ARM could be interesting. What was new in this session then compared to last year? Well they showed a couple of things which I have not seen shown in public before.

First thing that was discussed was the fact that VMware is looking to support the AWS ARM instances (A1 instance) which were introduced a while ago. The plan is to not only support ARM, but also support Elastic Network Interfaces(ENI) and Elastic Block Storage(EBS). All of it managed through vCenter Server of course. VMware is now looking for early validation customers and partners.

VMworld Reveals: HCI Present and Futures (#HCI2733BU)

Duncan Epping · Sep 5, 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 HCI / vSAN futures, which was session HCI2733BU. For those who want to see the session, you can find it here. This session was presented by Srinivasan Murari and Vijay Ramachandran. Please note that this is a summary of a session which is discussing the roadmap of VMware’s HCI offering, these features 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 is VMware planning for the future of HCI? Some of the features discussed during this session were also discussed last year, I wrote a summary here for those interested.

Vijay kicked off the session with an overview of the current state of HCI and more specifically VMware vSAN and Cloud Foundation. Some of the use cases were discussed, and it was clear that today the majority of VMware HCI solutions are running business-critical apps on top. More and more customers are looking to adopt full stack HCI as they need an end-to-end story that includes compute, networking, storage, security and business continuity for all applications running on top of it. As such VMware’s HCI solution has been focussed on lifecycle management and automation of all aspects of the SDDC. This is also the reason why VMware is currently the market leader in this space with over 20k customers and a market share of over 41%.

VMworld Reveals: Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity enhancements! (#HCI2894BU and #HBI3109BU)

Duncan Epping · Sep 4, 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 in the business continuity/disaster recovery space. There were 2 sessions where futures were discussed, namely HCI2894BU and HBI3109BU. Please note that this is a brief summary of those sessions, and these are discussing a Technical Preview, these features/products may never be released, and these previews do 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 disaster recovery in the future?

The first session I watched was HCI2894BU, this was all about Site Recovery Manager. I think the most interesting part is the future support for Virtual Volumes (vVols) for Site Recovery Manager. It may sound like something simple, but it isn’t. When the version of SRM ships that supports vVols keep in mind that your vVol capable storage system also needs to support it. At day 1 HPe Nimble, HPe 3PAR and Pure Storage will support it and Dell EMC and NetApp are actively working on support. The requirements are that the storage system needs to be vVols 2.0 compliant and support VASA 3.0. Before they dove into the vVols implementation, some history was shared and the current implementation. I found it interesting to know that SRM has over 25.000 customers and has protected more than 3.000.000 workloads over the last decade.