This video will show you how ThinApp and Horizon Application Manager together are improving the management and entitlement of applications.
Thursday, November 10. 2011
Deploying vSphere Replication
vSphere Replication is a replication engine that is part of SRM 5.0 and requires ESXi 5.0 and later, giving an alternative means of protecting and replicating virtual machines between sites. It is entirely managed within the SRM interface after initial deployment and configuration, and integrates with storage array–based replication to provide full coverage of the virtual environment.
The assumption is that there are multiple databases for vSphere Replication already configured for use, one at each site. In this evaluation guide, we will be using Microsoft SQL Server as a database, and using native SQL authentication for access. Workflow covered will be as follows:
1. Deploy vSphere Replication Management Servers (VRMS).
2. Configure VRMS.
3. Pair VRMS.
4. Deploy vSphere Replication Server (VRS).
5. Register VRS.
6. Configure virtual machines for protection with vSphere Replication.
7. Create a protection group using vSphere Replication–protected virtual machines.
Fred van Donk has written an extensive article on Deploying vSphere Replication and setting up multiple Microsoft SQL databases.
Wednesday, November 9. 2011
Best Practices Guide - High Performance Data with VMware vFabric GemFire
• vFabric GemFire deployed as an enterprise data management system.
• vFabric GemFire deployed as L2 cache.
• vFabric GemFire deployed for HTTP session management.
• vFabric GemFire deployed as a faster mass data mover—for example, real-time reporting.
This guide provides best practice guidelines for deploying vFabric GemFire. The recommendations in this guide are not specific to any particular set of hardware or to the size and scope of any particular implementation. The best practices in this document provide guidance only and do not represent strict design requirements because enterprise data requirements can vary from one implementation to another. However, the guidelines do form a good foundation on which you can build—many of our customers have used these guidelines to successfully implement an enterprise data fiber for their enterprise applications.
Tuesday, November 8. 2011
VMware vShield Edge and vShield App Reference Design Guide
This document describes the architecture and features of vShield Edge and vShield App, and presents some reference designs for solutions built using these products. The designs described are meant to be representative of common business problems that organizations face when they further increase their virtualization footprint and move toward a cloud model of IT. By seeing how these problems are addressed, and mapping them to the actual issues they currently must address, customers should better understand how to deploy vShield Edge and vShield App in their own environments.
Monday, November 7. 2011
Video - vShield 5 Install and Deploy
VMware vShield is a suite of security virtual appliances built for VMware vCenter Server and VMware ESX integration. vShield is a critical security component for protecting virtualized datacenters from attacks and misuse helping you achieve your compliance-mandated goals. vShield App is an interior, vNIC-level firewall that allows you to create access control policies regardless of network topology. A vShield App monitors all traffic in and out of an ESX host, including between virtual machines in the same port group. vShield App includes traffic analysis and container-based policy creation.
In this video I'll show you that vShield App installs as a hypervisor module and firewall service virtual appliance. vShield App integrates with ESX hosts through VMsafe APIs and works with VMware vSphere platform features such as DRS, vMotion, DPM, and maintenance mode. vShield App provides firewalling between virtual machines by placing a firewall filter on every virtual network adapter. The firewall filter operates transparently and does not require network changes or modification of IP addresses to create security zones. You can write access rules by using vCenter containers, like datacenters, cluster, resource pools and vApps, or network objects, like Port Groups and VLANs, to reduce the number of firewall rules and make the rules easier to track.
You should install vShield App instances on all ESX hosts within a cluster so that VMware vMotion operations work and virtual machines remain protected as they migrate between ESX hosts. By default, a vShield App virtual appliance cannot be moved by using vMotion. The Flow Monitoring feature displays allowed and blocked network flows at the application protocol level. You can use this information to audit network traffic and troubleshoot operational.
Sunday, November 6. 2011
Video - Troubleshooting vCenter 5 start-up problems
A few weeks ago I’ve delivered a VMware Site Recovery Manager training course and one of the attendees was Arnim van Lieshout. Besides being a co-author of the VMware vSphere PowerCLI Reference: Automating vSphere Administration guide, Arnim also works as a VMware PSO consultant. While we were trying to set-up SRM Host Based Replication, Arnim showed me a real cool trick to do some fast troubleshooting regarding the VPXD daemon, also known as the vCenter Service.
This video guides you through the process of troubleshooting a corrupted vCenter Server database with vpxd.exe -s and helps you to fix VPX daemon start-up problems. The video also helps you eliminate common causes for your problem by verifying the configuration of your database, validating network connectivity, and verifying the configuration of the vCenter Server service with vpxd.exe -b.