Author: Michael Schroeder

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Why you should replicate your vCenter Appliance

In the old days of virtualization a vCenter used to be a nice-to-have commodity. But these times are long gone (at least from an IT point of view). In today’s datacenter many services and applications rely heavily on vCenter. Some of the most common use-cases are VDI-environments, cluster balancing mechanisms like DRS or Storage-DRS and even backup software needs vCenter.

The last one is a crucial point. It’s good to have your vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) backed up regularly and most of you and your customers will likely do so. But think of what would happen if you’d loose your vCenter for like 10 minutes or even an hour.

It’s not just important to have a backup of it – you also need to return to operation fast and minimize your Recovery-Time-Objective (RTO). Continue reading “Why you should replicate your vCenter Appliance”

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VMware vExpert 2017 – Second Half

A nice surprice at breakfast

Each year VMware selects people who were particularly engaged in the community and awards the title vExpert to these bloggers and evangelists.

Earlier that year some friends and colleagues encouraged me to apply for the VMware vExpert program. Although I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now about virtualization and related IT stuff, I honestly did not expect to fit into the frame. But it was worth trying, so I filled in the application form.

After not hearing anything until early August and not finding my name on the official list, I’ve lost the issue out of sight. Nevermind – better luck next year.

Last week I had a new follower vExpert on Twitter, which isn’t too unusual because I used to follow them for a while too. Nothing suspicious.

Today at breakfast time I’ve received a couple of invitation mails by Corey Romero, who’s part of VMware Social Media and Community Team. Could it be an error? My name wasn’t on the list. So I’ve checked the official list again and actually found my name on it. 🙂

I’m both surprised and honored!

VMware you made my day

I would like to thank all people who encouraged me to apply and who gave me feedback on my blog (without feedback you can’t be sure if anybody is reading at all).

My special thanks go out to Michael Melter from idicos GmbH and Jens Söldner from Söldner Consult GmbH, who both convinced me to apply for vExpert.

And last but not least I would like to thank my wife Ruth for being my rock in rough seas. I apologise for getting lost in the lab so often and spending many hours in front of the terminal.

Thank you so much!

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vSAN 6.6 Setup Demo

Building a POC vSAN Lab

Building a vSAN cluster from scratch has never been easier. Recently I had the opportunity to get my hands on 3 fine Lenovo x3650 M5 servers with local SAS drives and flash.

Specs

Lenovo x3650 M5, Dual Xeon Processor E5-2640 v4
8x 16GB TruDDR4 Memory (2Rx4, 1.2V)
8x 1.2TB 10K 12Gbps SAS 2.5in G3HSHDD
2x 300GB 10K 12Gbps SAS 2.5in G3HSHDD
2x 400GB 12G SAS 2.5in MLC G3HS SSD
ServeRAID M5210 SAS/SATA Controller
Lenovo ServeRAID M5200 2GB Flash/RAID5
3x Broadcom NetXtreme 2x10GbE BaseAdap

Make sure everythin is on the VMware vSAN HCL.

ESXi 6.5.0d Build 5310538
vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.0e Build 5705665

Continue reading “vSAN 6.6 Setup Demo”

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How to leverage Veeam-Agent to protect physical servers from update failures

In a virtualized world, physical servers have become quite rare. However, some systems like hypervisors or storage-virtualizers need to be physical for obvious reasons.
If you have to upgrade or patch these systems, you’ll keep your fingers crossed and hope they will come up fully functional after the upgrade. You may wish to have a convenient backup or snapshot, like you’re used to in the virtualized world.

Veeam Agent

Actually there is already a solution for the Problem: Veeam Agent for Windows (aka “The Agent formerly known as Veeam-Endpoint”, or TAFKAV).  😉

This software does a very good job since it was released in April 2015. I’ve installed it on countless customers workstations so far. It protects my homelab, my notebook and also some difficult to replace installations on customer sites. The ability to use an existing Veeam-Backup repository makes it even more useful in an enterprise environment.

Veeam Agent 2.0 comes in three flavours: The free version, the Workstation version and the Server version. Workstation offers a similar set of features as the free version, but offers 24/7 support and centralized management. The server version offers application consistent backups including log-truncation. Continue reading “How to leverage Veeam-Agent to protect physical servers from update failures”