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HPE Data Protector stores multiple backup objects on a single Catalyst store item. A backup object can be a volume, a mount point, a database or a virtual machine. You can have multiple backup objects per backup client. If your filesystem backup job has four backup clients, and each client has two volumes, the backup job will contain 8 backup objects. Another example is a single database of a Microsoft SQL or Oracle database server (instance).

Today, I was at a customer to prepare a two node vSphere cluster for some MS SQL server tests. Nothing fancy, just two HP ProLiant BL460c Gen9 blades and two virtual volumes from a HP 3PAR. Each blade had two 400 GB SSDs, two 64 GB M.2 SSDs and a 1 GB MicroSD card. Usually, I install ESXi to a SD card. In this case, a MicroSD card. The SSDs were dedicated for PernixData FVP. Although I saw the MicroSD card in the boot menu, ESXi doesn’t showed it as a installation target.

Late last year, I applied a third time for the VMware vExpert program. This title is given from VMware to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community and have spread the message of VMware to customers and partners worldwide. This is nothing you get by passing an exam. It’s given to you by VMware in respect of your work. The vExpert title is something which differates you inside the commnity. Individuals who participate in the program, have access to betas, free licenses, early access briefings, free access to VMworld conference materials online, access to a private community, use of logos etc.

A load balancer is an integral component of (nearly) every VMware Horizon View design. Not only to distribute the connections among a number of connection or security servers, but also to provide high availability in case of a connection or security server failure. Without a load balancer, connection attempts will fail, if a connection or security server isn’t available. Craig Kilborn wrote an excellent article about the different possible designs of load balancing. Craig highlighted Microsoft Network Load Balancing (NLB) as one of the possible ways to implement load balancing. Jason Langer also mentioned Microsoft NLB in his worth reading article “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of VMware View Load Balancing”.

Logging is essential for troubleshooting. VMware Horizon View allows you to configure a SQL database for event logging, and I really recommend to configure the event logging database (I have seen some deployments without). Beside the event logging database, it’s a great idea to configure a secondary log destination. With a event logging database, and logs sent to a syslog, you have two independent log destinations.

To configure a syslog destination, login to the Horizon View admin portal and go to “View Configuration > Event Configuration”.

Generating a certificate signing request (CSR) is the first step towards a signed certificate. The requests is generated with the applicants private key and consists of the public key, a name and optional attributes.

To generate a CSR, you can use tools like OpenSSL on a Linux box, or sometimes the application itself can generate a CSR. But if you have a Windows box, you don’t have OpenSSL by default. And it’s unhandy to install something just for a single CSR. You can use certreq.exe to create a CSR. This tool is mostly unknown, but it’s included since Server 2000. The syntax slightly differs between the version, so I focus on the version that is shipped with Server 2008/ Windows Vista and newer.

Moving VMs from an old cluster with old ESXi hosts to a new cluster with new hosts can be so easy, even if the clusters doesn’t share any storage. A PowerCLI one-liner or the Web Client allow you to migrate VMs between hosts and datastores, while the VMs are running. This enhancement was added with vSphere 5.1. I’m often suprised how many customers doesn’t know this feature, just because they are still using the old vSphere C# client.

Some day ago, I installed a new Exchange 2013 CU11 for some test ins my lab. Nothing fancy, just a single server deployment on a Windows Server 2012 R2 VM. I deployed this Windows Server from a template, which was updated with the latest Windows Patches and WMF some days ago. The Exchange setup went smooth. I updated the SSL certificates and the internal and external URLs for the virtual directories. Then I started the Exchange Management Shell (EMS), to update the Autodiscover URL in the service connection point (SCP) of the Active Directory.

IPv6 is not really new. According to Google, 10% of all users that access Google, do this over an IPv6 connection (Source). My blog is also accessible over IPv6 since its start in January 2014 (and since January 2016 only over HTTPS - thanks to Let’s Encrypt!).

When I talk with customers about IPv6, I often hear things like “Oh, we had to disable it. Too much problems!” or “We had to disable it. With IPv6 enabled, we had connectivity problems.". Sometimes it went wrong. Especially in this cases, where IPv6 was only unbind from the network adapter. That’s the wrong way to “disable” IPv6.

Disclaimer: Thanks to ALE Deutschland GmbH, the german subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, for loaning me two OmniSwitch 6450 switches.

Who’s Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise?

I’m quite sure that you know Alcatel-Lucent, a leading vendor for telecommunication and networking equipment. But do you know Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE)? In April 2015, Nokia placed an offer to buy Alcatel-Lucent for ~ 15 billion euro. Six months before, in October 2014, Alcatel-Lucent sold his enterprise business to China Huaxin. Since october 2014, ALE offers communication, cloud and networking solutions for business of all sizes. More than 2700 employees in 100 countries and 2900 partners serve solutions for more than 830000 customers worldwide. ALE offers solutions for unified communications and collaboration, which benefit from intelligent and converged networks. Solutions that scale from the local office to the cloud. Unified communication and collaboration solutions include business telephony solutions (e.g. voice, video and conferencing across the enterprise), mobility solutions (e.g. wired and wireless voice and unified communications across the enterprise and across devices) and collaboration solutions (e.g. cloud or on-premises web conferencing).