Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

unexplored territory

#113 – Procuring hardware for a vSAN based VCF infrastructure – featuring John Nicholson!

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I’ve been on the Virtually Speaking podcast several times, so it was time to invite one of the hosts to the Unexplored Territory Podcast and discuss his favorite topic, hardware configurations, and the bill of materials! John Nicholson goes over all the ins and outs of procuring new hardware and talks about ordering components for existing hardware. We discuss NICs, Switches, Ready Node configurations, Emulated Ready Node configurations, NVMe devices, and much more.

Especially in todays world of ever increasing memory prices, and difficulty to procure hardware, the suggestions John makes around re-using existing hardware with vSAN ESA are very valid. Also, the use of Memory Tiering is definitely something every customer should consider. But before I share all the nuggets, just listen to the episode on Spotify (bit.ly/4r66flp), Apple (apple.co/4raF5Kj), the embedded player below, or watch it on Youtube.

During the discussion, various blogs and videos were mentioned, make sure to check those as well!

#107 – Why VCF is the best platform for your modern workloads featuring Jad El-Zein!

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Recently, I read this article about why VCF is the best platform for modern workloads, so I figured I would invite the author, Jad El-Zein. Jad and I discuss all the arguments of why VCF and all components are the perfect destination for containers, or I should probably say your modern workloads. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcast (bit.ly/4nXIs5y), Spotify (bit.ly/3K7mj6W), or just use the embedded player below.

#106 – Why a valued partner like ITQ believes in Broadcom’s strategy and the VMware portfolio!

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Recently, I read a fantastic LinkedIn post by Francisco Perez van der Oord, the founder of ITQ, in which he explained why he believes in Broadcom’s strategic direction and the VMware portfolio. It was an interesting read, and for me, a great reason to invite one of our most valued partners in EMEA to the show. I want to thank Francisco for taking the time to sit down, as I know he has a crazy schedule. Listen via the embedded player below, or via Spotify (bit.ly/3WxwuV9), Apple (bit.ly/43FWW2G)!

#105 – How do I enable vSAN ESA Global Deduplication in 9.0?

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For this episode I invited our raging reporter on scene Pete Koehler! Pete is going over all the benefits, requirements, and limitations around vSAN ESA Global Deduplication. This feature was released with 9.0.1 and is available per request as discussed in this ⁠blog post⁠. If you want to get access make sure to sign up using the form in the ⁠blog⁠.

Just as a summary, right now vSAN ESA Global Deduplication requires:

  • Version 9.0.1
  • 25GbE (or higher) networking
  • Telemetry needs to be enabled (CEIP)

There are a few limitations:

  • Minimum of 3 hosts and maximum of 16 hosts in a cluster
  • Does not support the use of Stretched Cluster functionality
  • Cannot be combined with data-at-rest-encryption

Listen via Spotify (bit.ly/4oaCbnS), Apple (bit.ly/4np3slG), or the embedded player below:

#104 – Exploring recent Ransomware Recovery and Data Recovery announcements with Jatin Jindal

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At VMware Explore it was obvious, the interest for VMware’s on-premises Ransomware Recovery solution is huge! Hence, I asked Jatin Jindal to join the show to go over what the VMware Ransomware Recovery solution entails, what the differences are between a ransomware recovery process and a disaster recovery scenario, and he talks about various roadmap items like tag-based selection, seeding, QLC support, and vSAN Cyber ReadyNodes. Interested in participating in the upcoming Storage, Data Protection, and Data Beta Programs? Sign up now by filling out this form: ⁠https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXBC6_oAnkS8vCFztuLQFHx0qZ5xxJSmxbMkyPBvDFM0lHLg/viewform⁠

You can listen to the episode via Spotify (bit.ly/3IWQCwz), Apple (bit.ly/4o6YVoG), or via the embedded player below!