I longingly remember being a Systems Administrator configuring all my infrastructure through a variety of consoles. Those days are far behind me now since I spend much of my time helping customers navigate the new cloud world where infrastructure is managed through automation. It can be difficult to orchestrate pieces of the infrastructure into your server provisioning lifecycle but some vendors are embracing the new provisioning methods. Rubrik is one infrastructure company that has built a platform to thrive in this new automated world.
Turbonomic: Adam Smith and App Assurance
Can a framing metaphor be a product differentiator? In Turbonomic’s case, I think it can. They use a supply and demand model for their application assurance platform. This brings some interesting implications into the overall solution.
External Platform Services Controller, The New Standard?
Craig Kilburn of vmFocus comments: Depending on the size of the environment, you might see one or many vCenter’s with embedded services. External services such as SRM, vROPs, Horizon View would then hook into the vCenter. From an architectural standpoint, you knew that deploying a vCenter with embedded services you would cover most if not all […]
Applying New IP Addresses to vCenter, ESXi Hosts, and Plugins
Chris Wahl of Wahl Network comments: The first thing I wanted to look at was my vCenter plugin URLs. These are the addresses used to talk with the plugin. If they were hard coded using an IP address, they’d need to be updated to either a new IP address or a DNS name. I figured […]
The Upgrade Process From vCenter 5.1 to 5.5
Chris Wahl of the Wahl Network comments: After a long period of slacking off and avoiding upgrading my lab to vCenter 5.5 — mainly so I can wait for a few more bug fixes to slip into the GA release — I finally took the plunge to vCenter 5.5.0b (build 1476387) . You can view […]
I Love the VMware vCenter Server Appliance
Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin comments: Most things in my life that I think are good & excellent are things I started out being very critical of, or at the least greatly disliking. Some of my best friends were some of the most annoying people ever when I first met them. My wife loves to […]
Are You a Hypervisor Hugger or a Storage Stalwart?
The time has come to take sides on the core question of storage for virtual servers: Do you want storage intelligence to live in the hypervisor or the array? Most administrators are already lining up on one side or the other, unintentionally casting their vote while the rest flounder. But the storage industry must wake up and embrace the divide.
Is My Favorite vSphere Tool Going Away?
While going through the release notes for vSphere 4.1 I noticed one of my favourite vSphere tools be might be going away. vCenter Update Manager (VUM) 4.1 and its subsequent update releases are the last releases to support scanning and remediation of patches for Windows and Linux guest operating.
Future vCenter And SRM Requirement For 64 bit OS Means More vCenter VMs
The new operating system (OS) requirements mean we will see even more instances of vCenter as a VM (virtual machine).
Storage I/O control — SIOC – VMware DRS for Storage
IO DRS provides performance Isolation to VMs in shared storage environments, and it might not be as far away as first thought.