Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Quick pointer to new Virtual SAN Ready Node configs

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Just a quick pointer to the new document that holds all Virtual SAN Ready Node configurations: Virtual SAN Ready Node.pdf. In this document various new configurations are described and a couple of old ready node configurations appear to have been removed. I expect these new configurations to be added in the upcoming weeks.

Another very useful document recently released on the topic of Virtual SAN hardware is the following: Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Reference Guide. It describes for both Server and VDI workloads different profiles and give examples around how you should configure your hardware to meet certain requirements.

FW: Dear Clouderati Enterprise IT is different…

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I hardly ever do this, posting people to a blog post… I was going through my backlog of articles to read when I spotted this article by my colleague Chuck Hollis. I had an article in my draft folder on the subject of web scale myself. Funny enough it so close to Chuck’s that there is no point in publishing it… rather I would like to point you to Chuck’s article instead.

To me personally, the below quote captures the essence of the article really well.

If you’re a web-scale company, IT doesn’t just support the business, IT is the business.

It is a discussion I have had on twitter a couple of times. I think Web Scale is a great concept, and I understand the value for companies like Google, Facebook or any other large organization in the need of highly scalable application landscape. But the emphasize here is on the application and its requirements, and it makes a big difference if you are providing support for hundreds if not thousands of applications which are not build in-house. If anyone tells you that because it is good for Google/Facebook/Twitter it must be good for you, ask yourself what the requirements are of your application. What does your application landscape look like today? What will it look like tomorrow? And what will be your IT needs for the upcoming years? Read more in this excellent post by Chuck, and make sure to leave a comment! Dear Clouderati Enterprise IT is different…

 

Tour through VMware vCloud Hybrid Service part 1

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Last week I received an account for the VMware vCloud Hybrid Services through one of our internal teams. I wanted to play around with it just to see what it can do and how things work, but also to see what the user experience was like, basically a tour through VMware vCloud Hybrid Service. I received my username and a link to set a password via email and it literally took 3 seconds to get started after setting that password. First I was presented with was a screen that showed the regions I had to my disposal as shown below, 4 regions.

You may wonder why that matters, well it is all about availability… Of course each region individually will have done everything there is to be done when it comes to resiliency but what if a whole site blows up? Well that is where multiple regions come in to play. I just want to deploy a small virtual machine for now so I am going to select a random site… I will use Virginia. [Read more…] about Tour through VMware vCloud Hybrid Service part 1

Pre-order Essential Virtual SAN through Pearson…

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Pre-order Essential Virtual SAN through Pearson today, printed version that is: http://bit.ly/1uxLo7x

“You’ll learn what VSAN is, exactly what it offers you, how to implement it, and how to maximize the value it delivers. Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping show how VSAN implements object-based storage and a platform for VM storage policies that simplifies VM storage placement decisions. They explain how VSAN integrates with vSphere features such as HA, DRS and vMotion, providing greater resiliency, more scale-out storage functionality, and greater control over QoS.”

vCenter 5.5 Update 1b with OpenSSL and SPBM fix!

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For those not monitoring the VMware website like a hawk… VMware just released vCenter 5.5 Update 1b. This update contains a couple of fixes which are critical in my opinion. So make sure to upgrade vCenter as quickly as possible:

  • Update to OpenSSL library addresses security issues
    OpenSSL libraries have been updated to versions openssl-0.9.8za, openssl-1.0.0m, and openssl-1.0.1h to address CVE-2014-0224.
  • Under certain conditions, Virtual SAN storage providers might not be created automatically after you enable Virtual SAN on a cluster
    When you enable Virtual SAN on a cluster, Virtual SAN might fail to automatically configure and register storage providers for the hosts in the cluster, even after you perform a resynchronization operation. This issue is resolved in this release. You can view the Virtual SAN storage providers after resynchronization. To resynchronize, click the synchronize icon in the Storage Providers tab.

You can download the bits here.