A VMware vSphere cluster is nothing without shared storage. Most of the functions, like VMware HA or VMware vMotion (okay, vMotion is possible without shared storage), can only be used with a shared storage. The servers in my lab have Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBA), but buying an old and cheap Fibre Channel storage system wasn’t an option in my case. This left two options when choosing the right storage protocol: iSCSI or NFS.

The next step is to connect the Synology DS414slim to my lab network. I use two HP 1910 Switches in my lab, a 8 Port and a 24 Port model. The Synology DS414slim has two 1 GbE ports, which can configured in different ways. I wanted to use both ports actively, to I decided to create a bond. Create a bond Browse to the admin website and go to Control Panel > Network > Network Interfaces and select “Create”.

This blog post covers the setup of the volumes and shares. Depending on your disk config, variuos volume configurations are possible. The DS414slim supports all important RAID levels (Synology Hybrid RAID, Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10). I recommend to use RAID 5, if you use more then two disks. I decided to create a RAID 5 with my three Crucial M550 SSDs and use the Seagate Momentus XT as a single disk.

Chris Wahl wrote a good blog post about the VAAI-NAS plugin some days ago. I really recommend to read this posting. Because of his article, I will only describe the installation of the plugin. You can download the plugin on the Synology homepage for free. There are two ways to install the plugin: With the vSphere Update Manager (VUM) and a host extension baseline, or with ESXCLI. Plugin installation using the vSphere Update Manager First of all, we need to import the plugin (host extension) to the patch repository.

VMware presented the vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 at the VMworld 2014 in Barcelona. In early december, vROps was available for download. vROps 6.0 is the successor of VMwares IT Operations Management suite vCenter Operations Manager, or vCOps. VMware has aligned the naming scheme with other products, so this release is the first release under the new brand vRealize. VMware has made some major improvements to this release. One of the biggest advantages is the ability to scale-out.

Part 1 of this series has covered a short overview over vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 and the initial deployment of the virtual appliance. Now it’s time to bring it to life. Open a browser and enter the IP of your newly deployed vROps appliance. You will get this nice initial setup screen. “New Installation” is always a good start. Click “New Installation”. Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0 Within five little steps, the configuration of vROps will be done.

I wrote about what’s new in vROps 6 and about the deployment of the virtual appliance. I also described how to migrate the data from the old vCOps vApp. Part 3 covers the decommission of the old vApp. Enter the IP or FQDN of your UI VM into the browser. Login as admin into the administration UI. Patrick Terlisten/ vcloudnine.de/ Creative Commons CC0 Before the vApp can be removed, the vCOps needs to be unregistered from the vCenter.

The days at the year’s end are usually the time to look back and to draw a resume. I blogged on blazilla.de for nearly 7 years, but in December 2013 I decided that it was time for a new beginning: New blog platform, new content, another language, but the same topics. In January 2014 I started vcloudnine.de. Some statistics Until today, I wrote about 100 blog posts. According to Google Analytics, these are my Top 10 most visited blog posts for 2014:

Originally the VCP5-DCV Delta exam (VCP550D) was available until 30. November. I passed it on 22. November, about one week before the planned ending of availability. Yesterday, VMware announced the extended availability of the delta exam. You can find the announcement on the VMware Education and Certification Blog. The exam will be available through 10. March 2015. Previously requested authorizations are still valid. This delta exam is focused on the differences between VMware vSphere 5.

After installing the Data Protector patch bundle 8.13, you may ran into this error when trying to restore data from a HP StoreOnce appliance. [Normal] From: RSM@dpcm.lab.local "" Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:10 Restore session 2014/12/04-8 started. [Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]" Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:12 STARTING Media Agent "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]" [Normal] From: RMA@fileserver.lab.local "D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580]" Time: 04.12.2014 09:13:13 Loading medium from slot 192.168.200.101Store_1257902bf_54796efc_04f4_005c to device D2D_GW1 [GW 6408:0:7255964966039732580] [Major] From: RMA@fileserver.