Entries from Eric Sloof

VMware vSAN 8 can lower HCI TCO by up to 40% through a variety of new capabilities, and this is achieved in no small part by increasing usable storage capacity by up to 70%.These improvements are delivered through a new single tier architecture, RAID-6 Efficiency with RAID-1 performance, improved compression, and compute and performance optimization.

In this paper, VMware seeks to show how vSAN 8 with Express Storage Architecture can deliver lower storage TCO in several common deployment types, focusing primarily on capital cost differences between the previous generation of HCI – the original storage architecture, or OSA – and current generation. However, vSAN 8 can also deliver significant cost savings as compared to traditional external storage for both CAPEX and OPEX; we provide a high-level summary in this paper, but it is not the focus.

VMware’s vSAN has rapidly proven itself in environments ranging from hospitals to oil rigs to e-commerce platforms, and is the market leader in the hyper-converged space.

Along the way, the world of IT has rapidly changed, not just from a software point of view, but also from a hardware perspective. With vSAN 8.0 VMware brought a new architecture to market called vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA).

This architecture is highly optimized for today's world of data center resources, be it CPU, memory, networking, or NVMe based flash storage.

The authors of the vSAN Deep Dive have thoroughly updated their definitive guide to this transformative technology. Writing for vSphere administrators, architects, and consultants, Cormac Hogan, Duncan Epping , and Pete Koehler explain what vSAN ESA is, why the architecture has changed, what it now offers, and how to gain maximum value from it.

The book offers expert insight into preparation, installation, configuration, policies, provisioning, clusters, architecture, and more. You’ll also find practical guidance for using all data services, stretched clusters, two-node configurations, and cloud-native storage services.

Learn about the exciting new features and enhancements that vSphere 8 Update 1 brings to improve operational efficiency, elevate security and supercharge workloads. For more, see https://core.vmware.com

Power Actions is a remote plug-in that enables you to run PowerCLI scripts from the vSphere Client, and implement custom actions on the vSphere inventory objects.

Power Actions integrates the PowerCLI in the vSphere client to provide automation capabilities for the standard vSphere management client. Power Actions is a remote plug-in that enables you to leverage the PowerCLI capabilities from the vSphere Client.


For example, as an administrator, you can define a new action for a virtual machine object by writing a PowerCLI script that accepts a virtual machine as a parameter and saving it into a script/content library.

You can then share it with other users within your company who can execute the script as-is, without requiring PowerShell knowledge. Power Actions is available for download as a virtual appliance from the VMware Flings website and can be installed through the vSphere client plug-in installer.

New Release – Power Actions 1.0 by Kamen Nikolov

The VMware Multi-Cloud Briefing is a quarterly online series designed to help organizations succeed with their multi-cloud strategies. This session—Navigate Economic Headwinds with a Cloud-Smart Approach—explores how IT organizations can use cloud services to help their companies not only endure global macroeconomic challenges but emerge from this turbulent economic environment in an even stronger position.

Through thought-leadership discussions and product demonstrations, you’ll learn how to optimize spend across your private and public clouds, and to bolster resiliency in the face of increasing cyberthreats. Speakers include VMware CEO Raghu Ragharam and other VMware business and technical leaders, including Vittorio Viarengo, Purnima Padmanabhan, Chris McCain, John McLoughlin, TJ March, Brandon Gordon, and Michael McLaughlin.

Most organizations have hit a legacy wall. They’re now unable to change how their core business works because their IT systems are too old and unchangeable.

This ebook will show you how to apply the business-driven methodology, that many organizations have used to escape the legacy trap, as well as:

• How to recognize your business is being held back by technical debt
• How business outcomes drive successful modernization outcomes
• How to build and execute on a modernization strategy
• Some common missteps with traditional approaches to modernization

Writing code to use VMware vSphere tags can be challenging in large-scale environments. In this technical paper, VMware discusses the scalability limits of tags and gives some tips and tricks for writing performant tagging code in Java or PowerShell.

The vSphere Client has a mechanism to report errors and critical events to the user, called "Alarms". However, you need to manually log in to the client and check them - there is no way for those alarms to be pushed as notifications to the user/VI admin. To solve this issue, Kiril Aleksandrov, Boris Stoicov and Yoan Petrov have built vSphere Alert Center. This tool is capable of checking for, retrieving, and notifying you of such events.

vSphere Alert Center runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The technologies we have used for its implementation are Angular, Electron, and vSphere.js. The Fling connects to and monitors multiple vCenter instances simultaneously, providing detailed information about the detected alarms.

The alarms fetching interval can be custom-defined. If the user requires more detailed information to troubleshoot the issue, they can easily open the vSphere Client web portal directly from the application. The customers' data is stored securely on the local file system in encrypted form.

VMware vSAN 8 is here and better than ever. Dive into the newest tech features and enhancements introduced in vSAN 8 that continue to make vSAN the premier HCI solution of the industry. Including vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA), vSAN 8 brings some of the most significant capabilities since the debut of vSAN in 2014.

RVTools Version 4.4.1 (February 11, 2023)

• Upgraded RVTools solution to Visual Studio 2022
• Upgraded RVTools solution to use VMware vSphere Management SDK 8.0
• Log4net upgraded to version 2.0.15
• RVToolsPasswordEncryption now uses the mac address instead of a fixed string to encrypt the password.
• On the vInfo tab page new columns: Total Disk capacity in MiB, Folder ID, Fault tolerance role, Reboot power off, EFI Secure boot option, and SMBIOS UUID
• On vCPU tab, new column: "Numa Hotadd Exposed" boolean value whether virtual NUMA topology is exposed when CPU hot-add is enabled
• On the vDisk tab page, new columns: Disk UUID, Disk sharing mode
• On all related VM tab pages, the tag columns are moved just before the Datacenter column
• On all VM related tab pages: Changed the VM UUID tool tip text to "VirtualCenter-specific 128-bit UUID of a virtual machine"
• On the vSource tab page, new columns: version, patch level and VI SDK Server
• On the vHealth tab page: /storage/archive is excluded for the "free disk capacity" check as the /storage/archive partition can be full by design. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/57829
• Bug fix on vInfo tab page: Column "Primary IP Address" didn't show correct value
• Bug fix on vNetwork tab page: determining whether an ip address was an ipv4 or ipv6 did not always go well