Dell Technologies VxRail in 2021: beyond VSAN and ready for the VMware Tanzu era

23. August 2021 · Write a comment · Categories: Tech Field Day, Technology, VMware · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This post is a follow up to last week’s one on Dell Technologies PowerStore, which was featured – among other products from the vendor’s portfolio – as part of Tech Field Day’s special two days event. Here we will focus on VxRail and I will briefly go through a few things that raised my interest, once again with a specific emphasis on its integration with the VMware stack. As usual, if you want to learn more, my recommendation is to head to the TFD event page where you can find plenty of videos, including demos, where the solution and its capabilities are presented in detail.

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Democratizing Kubernetes on VMware with vSphere with Tanzu

15. November 2020 · Write a comment · Categories: Kubernetes, Tech Field Day · Tags: , , , ,

At VMworld 2019 VMware announced “Project Pacific”, officially entering the Enterprise Kubernetes market and putting an end to the speculations that had been running wild about vSphere becoming a platform for native Kubernetes workloads.


The Tanzu branding was introduced at the same time, revealing a whole portfolio of solutions covering the complex life-cycle of Modern Applications, from development and build, to operations and management. A number of products all branded as Tanzu were presented, either coming from recent acquisitions, the re-branding of existing solutions or the development of new ones. This caused some initial confusion among customers about what Tanzu really was about: put simply, Tanzu is an “umbrella” beneath which VMware positioned the many solutions aimed at building and running modern applications, not just on-prem but on any public cloud, with the same level of experience regardless of their location.

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Easily update VCSA 6.5 through the Web Interface

06. February 2017 · Write a comment · Categories: Home Lab, Tips and Tricks · Tags: , , , ,

With the release of vSphere 6.5 there is really no reason anymore to stick with the old school Windows vCenter; finally the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) has become a first class citizen and the preferred implementation solution for the most important vSphere infrastructure compnent. This was already made clear by VMware when in 2016 they released a tool to easily migrate a Windows vCenter 5.5 to VCSA 6.0 U2 and with vSphere 6.5 the migration from an older Windows vCenter server is one of the officially supported upgrade paths.

Although not new – it was inherited from v 6.0 – one of the best features of the VCSA 6.5 is it’s ease of upgrade. I tested it myself in the homelab taking advantage of the first maintenance release (6.5a) which was released last week bringing support to NSX 6.3.

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vRealize Operations Manager 6.2: what to consider in a vROps design

18. February 2016 · Write a comment · Categories: Technology · Tags: , ,

When it was launched, vRealize Operations Manager was immediately perceived by its user base as a complete rework of its predecessor, vCenter Operations Manager. Changes were introduced not only in terms of features and capabilities, but also in the product’s architecture. Having hit version 6.2 and incorporating even some functionalities inherited by Hyperic, vROps is now definitely a mature product, which makes it an essential and indispensable component of any modern VMware virtualization infrastructure.

In this article I will try to cover most of the design considerations that need to be made when facing a vROps implementation scenario; I don’t mean to cover all the facets of the “vROps Design Dilemma”, neither will I go too much in depth analyzing all the possible design considerations. Nevertheless I hope to give you enough food for thought to succeed with your vROps implementation.

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Book review: vSphere Design Best Practices

17. July 2014 · Write a comment · Categories: Reviews · Tags: , , , ,

Today it is my pleasure to review a book, specifically “vSphere Design Best Practices”, recently published by PACKT Publishing and written by Brian Bolander and Christopher Kusek (the latter well known as @cxi in the virtualization community).

I consider myself a seasoned VMware infrastructures administrator, now aiming at becoming a better designer and – as part of this evolutionary process – I am looking for good material to study for the VCAP-DCD certification. So, when I had the opportunity to put my hands on this new book I made sure not to miss it.

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How to create a VAAI enabled iSCSI DataStore on a Synology DS713+

11. July 2014 · 7 comments · Categories: Home Lab, Technology, Tips and Tricks · Tags: , , , ,

ds713_smallI have recently purchased a Synology DS713+ unit as I needed a reliable storage solution for my new “all physical” vSphere Home Lab. Synology has a great reputation for quality, features and performances and it is one of the manufacturers of choice among home labbers. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the DS7123+ comes with full VAAI capabilities at a reasonable price (I was able to find it for less than 400 Euros without disks).

I will spare you all the fancy stuff about the unboxing, the initial configuration and the detailed (and indeed impressive) features list and I will go straight to the point: I will show you how I managed to correctly set up a fully VAAI backed iSCSI DataStore for my ESXi 5.5 U1 hosts, after some trial and error: unfortunately the Synology documentation is a bit lacking on this topic and it took me a few attempts before I succeeded to do it correctly.

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How to create a bootable ESXi 5 USB drive from a Customized ISO

25. September 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Home Lab, Technology · Tags: , ,

This post should hopefully be the first one in a series revolving around my new vSphere homelab. I have been running vSphere nested labs for quite a while, self-built or using the mighty Autolab, but recently I had both the need and the opportunity to put together a small “all-physical” lab. I will publish a post in the coming weeks with more details about its architecture and setup (hey! I’m still building it!) but I decided to pull the trigger and document a little inconvenience I managed to overcome quite easily. I hope you might find this info useful!

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Veeam Backup & Replication v7: VM protection, evolved

07. June 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Technology · Tags: , , ,

In the last few years virtualization technologies have changed dramatically and irreversibly the way modern Data Centers are designed, implemented and managed. In modern DCs, virtual to physical ratios are growing constantly, due to the commonly accepted evidence that every workload is now a candidate for successful virtualization: cases where 100% of the systems are virtual are not uncommon anymore.

This clearly requires a different approach to many – if not all – the tasks that fall into the Operations area. Backup and Replication are probably the two tasks that more than any other have changed as a consequence of the opportunities that virtualization has presented to infrastructure designers, engineers and administrators.

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