Eric Sloof - Entries from January 2015

Thursday, January 15. 2015

Free e-learning course - VMware vRealize Operations Manager Fundamentals [V6.0]

This free eLearning course provides an overview of the high-level architecture, UI changes, and key features and functionalities of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0. The course also introduces the various management packs that can be used with vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

Describe the key features and benefits of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.
Explain the important functional and architectural changes in vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.
Identify the key functionalities of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.
Describe the vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 management packs.

Tuesday, January 13. 2015

Monitoring VMware Virtual SAN with Virtual SAN Observer

The VMware Virtual SAN Observer is designed to capture performance statistics for a VMware Virtual SAN Cluster and provide access via a web browser and capture the statistics for customer use or for VMware Technical Support.

For any vSphere, Virtual SAN, and storage administrator wanting to dig deeper and analyze performance issues, the virtual SAN observer is a valuable tool.

It provides an in-depth snapshot of IOPS, latencies at different layers of Virtual SAN, read cache hits and misses, outstanding I/Os, congestion, etc. This information is provided at different layers in the Virtual SAN stack to help troubleshoot storage performance.

The Virtual SAN Observer is packaged with vSphere 5.5U1 vCenter Server. The Virtual SAN observer is part of the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC), an interactive command line shell for vSphere management that is part of both Windows and Linux vCenter Server in vSphere 5.5U1.

Initially Virtual SAN engineering team exclusively used the Virtual SAN Observer for early internal Virtual SAN troubleshooting, but the utility is now available to all VMware customers using the new vSphere 5.5U1.

Monitoring VMware Virtual SAN with Virtual SAN Observer

VMware Virtual SAN Sizing Tool

The Virtual SAN Sizing Tool provides assistance for design considerations and automates storage sizing calculations for Virtual SAN infrastructures.

The purpose of this tool is to help determine the hardware specifications for hosts in a Virtual SAN cluster required to run a set of virtual machines defined by a set of input characteristics. These important assumptions should be understood before using this tool:

All hosts in the cluster are assumed to have an identical hardware profile, i.e. numbers of hard drives and flash devices, amount of physical RAM, and number of CPU cores
All virtual machines are assumed to be identical in storage characteristics, i.e. number of VMDKs, size of VMDKs (assumed identical for all disks), number of snapshots, and virtual memory size
All virtual machines are assumed to have the same Virtual SAN policy, i.e. number of failures to tolerate and number of disk stripes per object

The tool is designed so that you can easily vary inputs to see the impact on the sizing output, thus allowing you to iterate manually for more sophisticated analyses.

VMware Virtual SAN Sizing Tool

VMware Virtual SAN Quick Monitoring & Troubleshooting Reference Guide

The VMware Virtual SAN Quick Monitoring and Troubleshooting Reference Guide provide troubleshooting guidance for issues encountered during the configuration and monitoring of VMware Virtual SAN. This document identifies the most common issues that can be encounter and how to quickly resolve them.

Aside from the vSphere Web Client, the vCenter Server and vSphere Hypervisor provide a set of monitoring and troubleshooting tools that are bundled with the software and can be used to monitor and troubleshoot VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN).

vSphere Web Client
ESXCLI
Ruby vSphere Console (RVC)
VSAN Observer

Monday, January 12. 2015

New Training Course - VMware NSX: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.1] - BETA

This comprehensive, fast-paced training course focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware NSX.

This course covers NSX as a part of the software-defined data center platform, implementation use cases along with features of NSX, and functionality operating at Layer 2 through Layer 7 of the OSI model.

Lecture and hands-on lab activities support the student’s understanding of NSX features, functionality, and on-going management and control.

Describe the software-defined data center
Describe how NSX is the next step in the evolution of the software-defined data center
Describe features and benefits of NSX network virtualization
Identify prerequisites for NSX
Configure and deploy NSX management, control, and data plane components
Configure, deploy, and use logical switch networks
Configure and deploy NSX distributed router to optimize East-West data center traffic flows
Configure and deploy VMware NSX Edge™ services gateway appliances
Configure and use all the main features of the NSX Edge services gateway
Configure and use NSX virtual private networks
Configure and use logical load balancing
Configure NSX Edge firewall and Distributed Firewall policy rules
Configure service composer security groups and policies
Use role-based access to control user account privileges
Use activity monitoring to validate and create security policies
Describe how VMware vCloud® Automation Center™ and NSX enable automated provisioning of IT services and networks

VMware NSX: Install, Configure, Manage [V6.1] - BETA

Friday, January 9. 2015

VMware Mirage 5.0 Reviewer's Guide

VMware Mirage is a unified image management solution for physical desktops, virtual desktops, and mobile devices. Mirage is available as a standalone product and as an integral part of VMware Horizon 6. This reviewer’s guide enables you to evaluate VMware Mirage.

The VMware Mirage Reviewer’s Guide introduces you to Mirage and its features and gives you hands-on exercises to evaluate the product. Topics addressed include:

What is VMware Mirage?
Key features
Packaging and licensing
Components and architecture
Installation and configuration
Hands-on evaluation exercises

Wednesday, January 7. 2015

New Book: VMware vSphere Security Cookbook

This book covers implementing specific security features of the vSphere 5.5 virtualization platform in a step-by-step format. Each topic contains a high-level overview to give context to the cookbook recipes.

This book is not intended to provide reference architectures or theories behind specific security topics implemented by vSphere.

VMware vSphere Security Cookbook

Monday, January 5. 2015

New Training Course - VMware vRealize Business: Costing and Implementation

VMware vRealize Business (formerly VMware IT Business Management Suite) provides transparency and control over the costs and quality of IT services, enabling the CIO to align IT with the business and accelerate IT transformation.

This four-day training course discusses IT costing as well as configuring and managing vRealize Business. This course will give you an understanding of the concepts and functionality of IT finance management with vRealize Business.

The objectives are:

Understand the vRealize Business system components
Understand, create, and manage cost models, hierarchies, allocations, and dimensions
Use prebuilt contents to analyze IT costs
Read data from various sources into the system
Manipulate data and perform calculations to get bottom-line results
Create various types of reports, dimensional reports, and dashboards
Use dimensions to manage your organization’s structures
Create and manage Web forms, reports, security, and permissions in the vRealize Business environment

Thursday, January 1. 2015

VSAN hardware calculator

Herco van Brug; Solution Architect and Consultant PQR says "Often, VMware VSAN is regarded as the new way of doing storage. And with NO storage management at all, it probably is. But to state that it's much cheaper than traditional arrays may be a bit bold."

The calculator (created by Herco) takes an average industry standard server and adds the cost of the disks and SSD's needed for the required amount of net storage space.

Adding all those disks to servers add up quite quickly; more quickly than most people expect. This calculator intends to show the cost of VSAN hardware, taking into account the limits of disk groups and disk sizes.

virtualappliances.eu/vsan

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