The vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) is an amazing new entity in the vSphere realm. As with many things, knowing a little history makes you appreciate things a little more. A Little History of vDS A long time ago, vSphere environments relied upon each ESX host being configured with multiple … [Read more...]
A VMware Hypervisor For Networkers?
August 12, 2010 by Leave a Comment
As my friend Stu Miniman pointed out, a recent VMware video suggests the company is about to jump into networking in a big way. Dubbed "vFabric," This new offering would be a generic hypervisor for virtual network devices, from load balancers to security appliances, and would presumably be … [Read more...]
Design Challenges Of Virtualized vCenter With A vNetwork Distributed Switch
March 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The vSphere Enterprise Plus vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) has been heralded as, and I might add lives up to it’s reputation of, an administrator’s time saver and single point of virtual networking configuration and visibility across many ESX/ESXi 4 hosts. However, the vDS presents some … [Read more...]
Windows Storage Server-Based Systems Step Into 2008
May 5, 2009 by 2 Comments
Windows Storage Server is one of the most interesting products from Redmond. It is a specialized version of Windows Server 2003 R2 with integrated storage target capabilities, including iSCSI, NFS, and of course SMB file services. It also includes single-instance storage (file-level deduplication), … [Read more...]