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Search Results for: vCD

Announcing VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery! (VCDR)

Duncan Epping · Sep 30, 2020 ·

Most of you probably saw the announcements around the acquisition of Datrium not too long ago. One of the major drivers for that acquisition was the Disaster Recovery solution which Datrium developed. This week at VMworld this service was announced as a new VMware disaster recovery option. The service is named VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, and it provides the ability to replicate workloads from on-prem into cloud storage, and recover from cloud storage into VMware Cloud on AWS! The three key pillars of the service are ease of use, fast recovery, cloud economics.

The solution is extensively covered in three VMworld sessions (HCI2876, HCI2886, HCI2865). I have watched all three and will provide a short summary here. What capabilities does VMware Cloud DR (VCDR) provide and why is VMware heading into this space?

The why was well explained by Mark Chuang in HCI2876, customers are saying that:

  • “DR is very complex and expensive to manage, and I can’t add IT Headcount”
  • “Our data grows 10-15% every year, with physical DR it is hard to accommodate the growth in the datacenter to meet the needs”
  • “We only test full DR once a year because it is disruptive. Any time there is a major change, how can we know it still works? It is a huge issue!”

I guess that makes it clear why VMware is interested in this space, it is a huge problem for customers and the solution typically comes at a high cost. VMware has always been in the business of solving complex solutions in preferably a simple way, and that is exactly what VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery delivers, a simple solution at a relatively low cost.

So what does it bring from a feature/functionality stance?

it all starts with cloud economics, to which ease-of-use also contributes, in my opinion. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery is super simple to configure and it replicates data to “cheap and deep” cloud storage. This ensures that the cost can be kept low, and note that all of the typical cost that comes with cloud storage (network etc) are all included in the service offering by VMware. The challenge however typically with cloud storage is that it is relatively slow when it comes to restoring, but this is where the “on-demand” capabilities come into play. VMware Cloud DR provides the ability to instantly power-on workloads through a live mount option, without the need to convert the stored data back to a VM format.

When configuring the VMware Cloud DR solutions you will need to install/configure a DRaaS Connector on-prem. This on-prem Connector connects you to the SaaS platform and will provide the required details to the SaaS Orchestrator, note that you can have multiple DRaaS connectors for resiliency and performance reasons. When the connection is configured you will then be able to create “Protection Groups” and “DR Plans”. Those who have worked with Site Recovery Manager will recognize the terms. For those who haven’t:

  • Protection Groups – These groups list the workloads which will be protected by VMware Cloud DR. Of course you can define the protection schedule, basically how many snapshots need to be shipped remote cloud storage per day/week/month.
  • DR Plans – These plans list workloads that would need to be failed over when the plan is triggered, and for instance, include the order in which the workloads need to be powered on. Also, if workloads need to get a different IP address in the cloud, then you can specify this here also.

Of course besides creating protection groups and DR plans you have the ability to test and failover the workloads in those plans, again, very similar to what Site Recovery Manager offers. Before I forget, you will have the option of course to select the snapshot you want to recover from. So you can go back to any point in time. What is unique here is that VMs are powered without (initially) moving data from cloud storage to your VMware Cloud on AWS. It basically mounts an NFS share from the SaaS platform and the scale-out file system ensures that the VMs can be instantly be powered on. After you have tested the recovery you can then decide to migrate the VMs to your SDDC, or you can of course also discard the workloads if that is something you desire. Last but not least, of course, you also have the ability to replicate back to on-prem, so that you can bring your workloads back whenever you have recovered your environment from the disaster that occurred and you are ready to run those workloads on-prem again.

Now there are many more details, but I am not going to share those in this post, I may do a couple of additional blogs at a future time. I hope the above gives a good overview of what the offering will provide. For more details, I would recommend watching the VMworld sessions on this topic (HCI2876, HCI2886, HCI2865). The last thing I want to share though is where the solution will be available, or at least what is being planned. As shown below, the offering should be available in multiple regions soon.

RE: The VCDX candidates advantage over the panellists

Duncan Epping · Oct 6, 2014 ·

I was reading Josh Odger’s post on the VCDX Defense. Josh’s article can be summarised with the following part:

As a result, the candidate should be an expert in the design being presented and answering questions from the panel about the design should not be intimidating.

Having gone through the process myself, knowing many of the VCDX’s and having been on countless of panels I completely disagree with Josh. Sure, you do need to know your design inside/out… but, it is not about “who’s having an advantage”, the panel member is not there to fail or pass the candidate… they are there to assess your skills as an architect!

If you look at the defense day there are three parts:

  1. Defend your design
  2. Design scenario
  3. Troubleshooting scenario

For the design and troubleshooting scenario you get a random exercise, so you have no prior knowledge of what will be asked. When it comes to defending your design of course you will know your design (hopefully) better then anyone else. However, the questions you get will not necessarily be about the specifics or details of your design. The VCDX panel is there to assess your skills as an architect and not your “fact cramming skills”. A good panel will ask a lot of hypothetical questions like:

  • Your design uses NFS based storage, how would FC connected storage have changed your design?
  • Your design is based on capacity requirements for 80 virtual machine, what would  you have done differently when the requirement would be 8000 virtual machines?
  • Your design …

So when you do mock exams, prepare for these types of hypothetical questions. That is when you really start to understand the impact decisions can have, and when during your defense you get one of these questions and you do not know the answer make sure you guide the panel through your thought process. That is what differentiates someone who can learn facts (VCP exam) and someone who can digest them, understand them and apply them in different scenarios (VCDX exam).

As I stated, it may sound like that you knowing your design inside out means having a big advantage over the panel members but it probably isn’t… that is not what they are testing you on! Your ability to assess and adapt are put through the wringer, your skills as an architect are tested thoroughly and that is where you will need to do well.

Good luck!

Upgrade vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 5.1 to vCD 5.1.1?

Duncan Epping · Jan 7, 2013 ·

One of my colleagues, Matthew Meyer, posted a list of cool videos he produced. These videos show how to upgrade vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 5.0 to vCloud Director 5.1.1 running on vSphere 5.1.  Nice right?! Thanks Matt for creating these, awesome work. (I normally don’t use the “read more” option, but as there are 8 videos in total I will only show two on the front page. Hit “Continue Reading” if you want to see the rest!)

VMware vCenter Server 5.0 to 5.1 Upgrade

VMware vCenter Single Sign-On Installation

[Read more…] about Upgrade vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 5.1 to vCD 5.1.1?

vCD Allocation Models – the vCD 1.5 update

Duncan Epping · Jan 26, 2012 ·

My post on vCloud Director Allocations Models back in September 2010 has always done fairly well in terms of view/visits. Lately I have been receiving some offline questions about how valid this article still is with vCloud Director 1.5 so I decided to go through the same exercise here. Instead of doing a full copy I will just copy and paste the characteristics section for each of the three different Allocation Models. For those who can’t be bothered the short summary is, nothing has changed… I only discovered something which I did not notice the first time around.

Allocation Pool

No changes have been introduced with vCloud Director 1.5 compared to 1.0 for the “Allocation Pool” allocation model. Below are the characteristics of this allocation model and the resource pool / vm construct used on the vSphere layer:

  • Pool of resources of which a percentage will be guaranteed
    • A reservation will be set to guarantee resources on a resource pool level
    • By default the resource pool reservations on CPU is 0% and memory 100%
    • Tenant has a guaranteed set of resources and has the ability to burst to the upper limit
    • The resource pool is not expandable!
  • VM Level characteristics
    • No reservations or limits set on a per VM level for CPU
    • Reservations set on a per VM level for memory. This reservation is based on the percentage of guaranteed resources.

Pay-As-You-Go

Nothing has changed for Pay-As-You-Go either. I slightly changed the wording though to make it more obvious what happens on a vSphere layer:

  • Percentage of resources guaranteed on a per VM level
    • A reservation and a limit will be set on a VM level
    • By default the VM reservation on CPU is 0% and memory 100%
    • By default the vCPU speed is set to 0.26GHz, which means you vCPU will be limited to 0.26GHz
  • The Org vDC resource pool is just an accumulation of all reservations set on a per VM level
    • Note that this will include the memory overhead per VM!
    • The resource pool is set to expandable

Reservation Pool

When looking at the vSphere layer it appears that not much has changed. The characteristics are still the same from a Resource Pool and virtual machine perspective… However I spotted something which was apparently already part of vCoud Director 1.0 but somehow I missed this. vCloud Director 1.x offers you the capability to add a reservation for CPU and memory and even allows you customize the shares! None of the other allocation models allow you to do this!

  • Fully guaranteed pool of resources
    • A reservation will be set to guarantee resources on a resource pool level
    • A limit will be set equal to the reservation
  • No reservations or limits set on a per VM level for CPU
    • Note that is is possible to set a reservation/limit for CPU or Memory with vCloud Director 1.x on a per VM level. See screenshot below, this is configurable on a per virtual machine basis!

 

VCDX 4

Duncan Epping · Jan 31, 2011 ·

It took a while, but finally here it is the VCDX 4 program. Now some of us who were fortunate enough to complete the VCDX 3 certification and managed to pass VCAP-DCD are already a VCDX 4, but for those of you who just started the journey now is the time to start digging!

In general the process hasn’t really changed all that much:

  • Pass the VCP exam
  • Pass the VCAP-DCA exam
  • Pass the VCAP-DCD exam
  • Submit a vSphere 4.x design
  • Defend your vSphere 4.x design

There are a couple of things I do want to point out here though:

  1. The VCDX Application Form has changed! We received a lot of feedback on the form and based on that we decided to trim it down. So if you are planning to do the VCDX4 defense make sure you download the latest version of the form. Also note that the design decision tree was taken out, reason for that being is that many already included these decisions in their design. If you haven’t done that yet, make sure you do it. For every decision make sure you explain why/what etc.
  2. Dates… no indeed no dates have been announced so far. However, the VCDX4 website does state the following “Unlike previous years, currently, there are no plans to have VCDX Defenses coinciding with the VMworld events in 2011 at this time”. Some of you will ask why, well just think about it for a second you have VMworld and then during VMworld you have the top experts confined to a room with hardly any opportunity to present/attend. I guess that is the main reason, I said “guess” cause I wasn’t part of the decision making process.

All there is left to say, if you plan on certifying this year make sure you start writing today! Your design will be a lot of work, make sure you meet the requirements and don’t forget any of the required documents mentioned in the application. For tips, do a search on VCDX on my blog…

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

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