No more excuses, just do it! #VCDX

As some if you may know, the VCDX certification is something I wanted to pursue for over a longer time now. Almost two years ago I set myself a road map on where I wanted to be with my career after those two years. One thing that went as a red line through the road...

Virtual Appliance Deployment Issue when using Subnet Prefix

Last week my new home lab components arrived and it was time to build the home lab. A vSphere environment would not be complete without vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Operations, so the home lab would also feature these solutions. When deploying these solutions you could run into a problem with network connectivity after the...

To stretch or not to stretch?

In recent projects the use of stretched cluster solutions has been a recurring topic. But why is it a recurring topic, and what are the benefits and drawbacks? The primary benefit of a stretched cluster solution is to enable active-active and workload balanced data centers. The solution has the ability to migrate virtual machines between...

vROPS RBAC and upgrades

Last week I was at a customer doing some vROPS magic, which included updating the current vROPS 6.4 cluster to 6.5 to get the improved vRLI integration. Upgrading both vRLI and vROPS clusters went perfect, but the vRLI integration items like the Log Insight icon, and Logs tab would not be visible in vROPS after...

vROPS 6.5 Node Specifications

VMware has released version 6.5 of vROPS which includes a new node configuration type for additional monitoring capabilities. From the release notes: Additional monitoring capabilities Adds ability to increase memory and increase the scope of monitoring within the same environment. Enables you to monitor larger environments with the same footprint through platform optimization. XL size...

vROPS 6.4 – Metric Config Picker

With vRealize Operations Manager you can create a metric configuration file. This is an XML file that contains predefined metrics that can be used in different widgets. With the XML file you can skip the process of manually picking the required metrics and attributes over and over again. Another advantage is that you can reuse...

VCSA Migration – Syslog and Dump Collector

In preparation for an upcoming project it was time to try out the vCenter Server Migration Tool for 6.0 (vCenter Server 6 U2M). I started with reading the vSphere Migration Guide and Release Notes to find out what the prerequisites are and if any known issues are reported. vSphere Migration Guide Release Notes In the release notes...

VCSA Upgrade and VM Monitoring

With the release of vCenter Server 6.0 Update 2a and ESXi 6.0 Patch 4 I decided it was time the update the lab environment. Both releases contain a lot of fixes, some specifically for VSAN. Release notes vCenter Server 6.0 Update 2a ESXi 6.0 Patch 4 The update went perfect on the Platform Service Controllers...

vROPS 6.4 – New Dashboards

VMware has released vROPS 6.4 which contains several new dashboards to display status and identify problems. The new dashboards can be divided into several categories: Environment and capacity overview dashboards to get a summary of your environments. VM troubleshooting dashboard that helps you diagnose problems in a VM and start solving them. Infrastructure capacity and...

vROPS 6.3 – vSphere Hardening Guide 6.0

As described in my previous post I have upgraded my lab vROPS cluster to vROPS 6.3. After a couple of days I finally had time to look at the updated vROPS policies. One of the things I was most interested in was support for the vSphere 6.0 hardening guide. With vROPS 6.3 it is possible...