Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

VMworld Europe, sign up now and register for sessions!

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VMworld US is over, I’ve watched various sessions and now am starting to prep for VMworld EMEA, which will be in a month. (17-20 Oct) If you haven’t registered yet then now is the time to do so, the longer you will wait, the more expensive flights will become. If you have registered and are starting to look at the agenda then here are my 2 sessions I have scheduled this year:

  • 18/10/16 (Tuesday) 15:30 – Software-Defined Storage at VMware Primer – STO7650 – Lee Dilworth / Duncan Epping
  • 19/10/16 (Wednesday) 15:30 – A day in the life of a VSAN I/O – STO7875 – John Nicholson / Duncan Epping

And based on the sessions I have seen so far, I would also like to recommend to add the following to your schedule:

  • VMware Chief Technology Officer Panel – Trends and Futures [CTO9943] Joe Baguley, Paul Strong, Shawn Bass, Ray O’Farrell
  • vSphere 6.x Host Resource Deep Dive [INF8430] Frank Denneman / Niels Hagoort
  • Extreme Performance Series: vCenter Performance Deep Dive [INF8108] Ravi Soundararajan, Sameh Zakhary
  • Tech Preview: Enhanced VM Availability Leveraging vCenter and Partner Hardware Integration [INF8020] Maarten Wiggers
  • vSphere DRS Deep Dive: Understanding the Best Practices, Advanced Concepts, and Future Direction of DRS [INF7827] Naveen Nagaraj
  • An Industry Roadmap: From storage to data management [STO7903] Christos Karamanolis
  • The Power Hour: Deep Dive, DevOps, and New Features of PowerCLI [INF8092] Alan Renouf
  • Virtual Volumes Technical Deep Dive [STO7645] Pete Flecha / Patrick Dirks
  • Virtual SAN: Introducing the Best HCI Platform for Containers and Cloud-Native Applications [STO8256] Christian Dickmann / Rawlinson Rivera
  • Cloud Native Buzzwords (Demystified) for Dummies [CTO7964] Massimo Re Ferre’

SPBM integration with vRealize Automation

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Last week a new vRealize Automation plugin was released. The plugin enables the use of storage policies within vRealize Automation, or as the Solutions Exchange page says:

Integrating storage policy consumption model into vRealize Automation. This integration enables VM-granular control based on the Storage policy based management framework. This solution exposes vSphere VM Storage policies to vRealize Automation service catalog allows the ability to dynamically assign individual VM storage polcies to virtual disks based on their storage requirements characteristics (performance, availability, security, etc).

Pretty neat solution which was shown also during the VMworld keynote. More extensive demos around the capabilities can be viewed below, and more details around the plugin and how to install / use it can be found here.

 

Sharing VMworld slides

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I know the VMworld team will share them as well over time, but I figured I would do the same thing through my blog. Here are two decks. First deck is the deck for “VMworld – sto7650 -Software defined storage @VMmware primer”. This session I presented with Lee Dilworth. I presented VSAN and Lee did the VVol and VAIO section. Second deck is the deck for “VMworld 2016 – INF8036 – enforcing a vSphere cluster design with PowerCLI automation” which I presented with Chris Wahl. I added the youtube video that the VMworld team shared to the second deck as well. Hope you folks find it useful.

download / comments for “sto7650 -Software defined storage @VMmware primer”

download / comments for “INF8036 – enforcing a vSphere cluster design with PowerCLI automation”

download / comments for “INF7875 – A day in the life of a VSAN IO.”

Want to watch a VMworld 2016 session?

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I had a long discussion with the VMworld team about this the past editions and I am happy to say that ALL sessions have been made available to the public straight after the event. VMware made all VMworld 2016 session available to the public. You can find them here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/2016.html. And also, if you want a more “limited” list, you can go for the top ranked sessions. You can find the top-10 session of each VMworld day here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/top-10-us.html.

There is one session I want to call out, I wasn’t able to do a live blog on it, mainly because it went deep, and it went deep fast. Ravi R. is one of the best deep tech speakers I have seen: INF8108 – Extreme Performance Series: vCenter Performance Deep Dive.

Thanks VMworld team for doing this. Time for some binge watching 🙂

Taking VSAN to the next level, join the VSAN beta!

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In 2013 VSAN saw the day of light, the beta was released. Now 3 years later you have the opportunity to once again sign up and help improve our product. Over the last couple of years we have seen many new features introduced, so you may wonder what is left. There will be various enhancements in this release, but we are in particular looking for feedback on the following 3 features:

  • Software data-at-rest encryption
  • Local Protection for Stretched Clusters, for two-layer protection of stretched clusters: across sites and locally
  • New operational management enhancements (Health checks from vCenter, monitoring networking stats, and more)

I think most of these speak for itself, with regards to the Local Protection for Stretched Clusters, it basically allows you to protect your data within a site and across sites at the same time in a stretched cluster. In other words: RAID-1 across site and then RAID-1, 5 or 6 within a site. Something I am very excited about personally.

I don’t know how many people will be accepted for the beta, but if I find out I will report back. Sign up now: vmware.com/go/virtual-san-beta. PS: remember, these capabilities are still under development, are subject to change without notice and there is no guarantee of future availability.