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Customer Experience Improvement Program: where, when and what?

Duncan Epping · May 28, 2018 ·

I got a question on my post about the Customer Experience Improvement Program (ceip) demo, the questions boiled down to the following:

  • What is being send to VMware
  • Where is the data stored by VMware
  • When is the data send to VMware (how often)

The “what” question was easy to answer, as this was documented by John Nicholson on Storagehub.vmware.com for vSAN specifically. Realizing that it isn’t easy to find anywhere what ceip data is stored I figured I would add a link here and also repeat the summary of that article, assuming by now everyone uses a VCSA (if not go to the link):

  1. SSH into VCSA
  2. Run command: cd /var/log/vmware/vsan-health/
  3. Data collected by online health checks is written and gzipped to files " <uuid>cloud_health_check_data.json.gz" and " <uuid>vsan_perf_data.json.gz
  4. You can extract the json content by calling " gunzip -k <gzipped-filename> " or view the contents by calling " zcat <gzipped-filename> "

So that is how you view what is being stored, John also posted an example of the dataset on github for those who just want to have a quick peek. Note that you need an “obfuscation map” (aka key) to make sense out of the data in terms of host-names / VM names / ip-addresses etc. Without that you can stare at the dataset all you want, but you won’t be able to relate it back to a customer. I would also add that we are not storing any VM/Workload data, it is configuration data / feature usage / performance data. Hopefully that will answer the “what” question for you.

Where is the data stored? The data is send to “https://vcsa.vmware.com” and it ends up in VMware’s analytics cloud, which is hosted in secure data centers in the US. The frequency is a bit difficult to answer, as this fully depends on which products are in use, but to my knowledge with vSAN/vSphere it is on an hourly basis. I have asked the VMware team who owns this to create a single page/document with all of the required details needed in it so that security teams can simply be pointed to it.

Hopefully I will have a follow up soon.

How to simplify vSAN Support!

Duncan Epping · May 25, 2018 ·

Last week I presented at the Tech Support Summit in Cork with Cormac. Our session was about the evolution of vSAN, where are we today but more importantly which directly will we be going. One thing that struck me when I discussed vSAN Support Insight, the solution we announced not to long ago, is that not too many people seemed to understand the benefit. When you have vSAN and you enable CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program) then you have a phone home solution for your vSphere and vSAN environment automatically. What this brings is fairly simple to explain: less frustration! Why? Well the support team will have, when you provide them your vCenter UUID, instant access to all of the metadata of your environment. What does that mean? Well the configuration for instance, the performance data, logs, health check details etc. This will allow them to instantly get a good understanding of what your environment looks like, without the need for you as a customer to upload your logs etc.

At the event I demoed the Support Insight interface, which is what the Support Team has available, and a lot of customers afterwards said: now I see the benefit of enabling this, I will do this for sure when I get back to the office. So I figured I would take the demo, do a voice over and release it to the public. We need more people to join the customer experience improvement program, so watch the video to see what this gives the support team. Note by the way that everything is anonymized, without you providing a UUID it is not possible to correlate the data to a customer. Even when you provide a UUID the support team can only see the host, vm, policy and portgroup (etc) names when you provide them with what is called an obfuscation map (key). Anyway, watch the demo and join now!

22 / 23 May 2018 – VMware Technical Support Summit

Duncan Epping · Apr 17, 2018 ·

A while back I was asked if I could present at the VMware Technical Support Summit and last week I received the agenda. I forgot to blog about it so I figured I would share it with everyone. I was supposed to go to this event last year but I had a clash in my calendar unfortunately. At this event organized by our support team you will have the ability to sit in some extreme deep dive sessions. Below you can find the agenda, and also here’s the registration link if you are interested! Note that Joe Baguley will be doing a keynote, and Cormac Hogan and I will be doing a session on vSAN futures!

Tested / Supported / Certified by VMware? (caching / dr solutions)

Duncan Epping · May 8, 2013 ·

Lately I have been receiving more and more questions around support for specific “hypervisor side” solutions. With that meaning, how VMware deals with solutions which are installed within the hypervisor. I have always found it very difficult to dig up details around this both externally and internally. I figured it was time to try to make things a bit more clear, if possible at all.

For VMware Technology Partners there are various programs they can join. Some of the programs include a rigid VMware test/certification process which results in being listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG). You can find those which are officially certified on our VMware Compatibility Guide here, just type the name of the solution in the search bar. For instance when I type in “Atlantis” I get a link to the Atlantis ILIO page and can see which version of ILIO is supported today with which version of vSphere. Note that in this case on vSphere 4.x is listed, but Atlantis assured me that this will be updated to include vSphere 5.x soon.

Then there are the Partner Verified and Supported Product (PVSP) solutions. These are typically solutions that do not fit the VCG, for instance when it is new type of solution and there is no certification process yet. Now of course there are still strict guidelines for these solutions to be listed. For instance, your solution will only be listed on the PVSP (and the VCG for that matter) when you are using public APIs. An example for instance is the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, it follows all of the guidelines and is listed on the PVSP as such. You can find all the solutions which are part of the PVSP program here.

Finally there is the VMware Solutions Exchange section on vmware.com. This is where you will find most other solutions… Solutions which are not officially tested/certified (part of the VCG) or part of the PVSP program because of various reasons. Note that these solutions, although listed, are not supported by VMware in anyway. Now, of course VMware Support typically will do its best to help a customer out. However, it is not uncommon to be asked to reproduce the problem on an environment which does not have that solution installed so that it can be determined what is causing the issue and who is best equipped to help solving the issue.

I am not saying that those solution that are not listed on the VCG or PVSP should be avoided. They could very well solve that problem you have, or be the solution to fulfill your business requirements and as such be the “must use” component in your stack. It should be noted though that when introducing any 3rd party solution that there is a “risk” associated with it. From an architectural and operational perspective it is heavily recommended to validate what that risk exactly is. How you can minimize that risk? What you will need to do to get the right level of support? And ultimately, which company is responsible for which part? As when push comes to shove, you don’t want to be that person spending hours on the phone just figuring out who is supporting what! You just want to be on the phone to solve the problem right?!

I hope this helps some of you out there who asked me this question.

** Note: the above is not an official VMware Support statement or a VMware Partner Alliances statement, these are my observations made while digging through the links on vmware.com **

Awesome appliance, vCenter Support Assistant

Duncan Epping · Jan 25, 2013 ·

Today an awesome appliance called the vCenter Support Assistant was made available to the world. I have seen some screenshots and a demo and feel that this appliance is a MUST HAVE for anyone who files Support Requests. Just the fact that you can do that from a single interface, which also allows you to upload the support bundle just makes life a whole lot easier.

vCenter Support Assistant

Ryan Johnson wrote an excellent article on this topic… and I am going to steal his thunder so I suggest you head over to the VMware TAM Program blog (open to everyone) and read up on this excellent Appliance.

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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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