Security is a subject that has historically been overlooked by companies/vendors when it comes to deployment of new systems. Generally, an easy and quick way out is preferred, especially when there are time-pressures to deliver a project or solution. That situation is exacerbated due to the fact that techies don't generally give security much thought [...]
You must be thinking: Not another VCAP-DCD exam experience post! But it's customary now-a-days to blog about one's VCAP exam experience. Mine has been outstanding for a while so today, I am correcting that. Like a lot of other people, I also flunked the test the first time. It wasn't that I was complacent about [...]
We all know that Network I/O Control is your friend when it comes to production deployments of vSphere in general. Today, I quickly wanted to make a point that NIOC is also great when it comes to home labs and why we should have it enabled, if possible. A few days back, I was deploying [...]
Recently, I was building a nested ESXi environment in my lab, based on vSphere 5.5. Regular readers will remember that I generally use VMware Workstation (version 10, in this case) to run my virtual environment. I usually have my ESXi hosts configured with 8 NICs, which is pretty handy when I have to play with [...]
In Part I of this post, I covered two of the four steps that I think are involved in doing a VMware Capacity Planner exercise. In this post, I will cover the other two and hopefully, you'll find the tips found in these posts of some use. So, here goes: 3. Collection Once the collectors [...]
Recently, I was on an engagement where use of VMware Capacity Planner was required, to get an estimate of consolidation ratios. This was done in order to build a business case for virtualization. Now I know that this is not a topic that many are interested in as it's not a "core" virtualization component but [...]
While creating a VMware Capacity Planner project in version 3.0 recently, I encountered a weird problem. After selecting the required machines in the "New Project Wizard" using "Manually select specific systems", the "Next" button didn't want to work, even though it was highlighted on the screen, implying all was good: I tried clicking it a [...]
These days, I am working on a project involving VMware Capacity Planner. Part of its deployment means that one has to troubleshoot access issues, in order to get successful inventory and performance scans. I am planning to write a couple of posts to document tips that one generally doesn't find in documentation. In the meantime, [...]
Now that VMworld is over and I've taken a breather, I guess it’s time for me to recap the few wonderful days spent in Barcelona and reflect on what I got out of my attendance. Yes, I know it’s late but let’s just say, I was tied up. Like many others, my conference started on [...]
In my previous post, I mentioned that I use StarWind Software's iSCSI SAN software to provide iSCSI LUNs for my home lab. In this post, I'll document the process to create a simple shared iSCSI LUN setup. Using that, one can provide as many LUNs as required to an ESXi setup, possibly with multipathing - [...]