virtualization

The beginning of a deep friendship: Me & PernixData FVP 2.0

I’m a bit late, but better late than never. Some days ago I installed PernixData FVP 2.0 in my lab and I’m impressed! Until this installation, solutions such as PernixData FVP or VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC) weren’t interesting for me or most of my customers. Some of my customers played around with vFRC, but most of them decieded to add flash devices to their primary storage system and use techniques like tiering or flash cache.

Juniper publishes vMX

This tweet from @JuniperNetworks has really inspired me yesterday. I liked Junipers Firefly Perimeter (vSRX) from the first day. I like the idea behind this product (yes, I like everything that can be run as a VM…). But yesterday Juniper has go one better. Introducing the vMX – the industry's only carrier class virtualized router: http://t.co/2lgXaQ1cjh #networkunlocked pic.twitter.com/V8zWvpRXoA — Juniper Networks (@JuniperNetworks) November 6, 2014 Juniper Networks announced yesterday a virtualized and carrier-grade version of their MX Series 3D router.

VMware disables inter VM Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) for security reasons

This morning I discovered a tweet from Derek Seaman in my timeline, that caught my attention. Doing a #VCDX design? Take note of TPS being disabled in all future ESXi releases. http://t.co/qRXlABIJSs — DΞRΞK SΞAMAN (@vDerekS) October 17, 2014 TPS stands for Transparent Page Sharing and it’s one of VMware memory management technologies. VMware ESX(i) uses four different technologies to manage host and guest memory resources (check VMware KB2017642 for more information).

My lab network design

Inspired by Chris Wahls blog post “Building a New Network Design for the Lab”, I want to describe how my lab network designs looks like. The requirements My lab is separated from my home network, and it’s focused on the needs of a lab. A detailed overview about my lab can be found here. My lab is a lab and therefore I divided it into a lab, and an infrastructure part.

HP 3PAR Peer Persistence for Microsoft Windows Servers and Hyper-V

Some days ago I wrote two blog posts (part I and part II) about VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) with HP 3PAR Peer Persistence. Because I wrote about it in the first of the two blog posts, allow me to take a short description, what Peer Persistence is and what it does, from that blog post: HP 3PAR Peer Persistence adds functionalities to HP 3PAR Remote Copy software and HP 3PAR OS, that two 3PAR storage systems form a nearly continuous storage system.

VMware jumps on the fast moving hyper-converged train

The whole story began with a tweet and a picture: Spotted Marvin on VMware campus during a break this morning "first hyperconverged infrastructure appliance " pic.twitter.com/1iIPocjREX — Fletcher Cocquyt (@Cocquyt) June 7, 2014 This picture in combination with rumors about Project Mystic have motivated Christian Mohn to publish an interesting blog post. Today, two and a half months later, “Marvin” or project Mystic got its final name: EVO:RAIL. What is EVO:RAIL?

Memory management: VMware ESXi vs. Microsoft Hyper-V

Virtualization is an awesome technology. Last weeks I visited a customer and we took a walk through their data centers. While standing in one of their data centers I thought: Imagine that all server, that they are currently run as VMs, would be physical?. I’m still impressed about the influence of virtualization. The idea is so simple You share the resources of the physical hardware between multiple virtual instances. I/O, network bandwidth, CPU cycles and memory.

Deploying HP StoreVirtual VSA - Part I

I would like to thank Calvin Zito for the donation of StoreVirtual NFR licenses to vExperts. This will help to spread the knowhow about this awesome product! If you are not a vExpert, you can download the StoreVirtual VSA for free and try it for 60 days. If you are a vExpert, ping Calvin on Twitter for a 1y NFR license. This blog post covers the deployment of the current StoreVirtual VSA release (LeftHand OS 11).

Deploying HP StoreVirtual VSA – Part II

Part I of this series covered the deployment, part II is dedicated to the configuration of the StoreVirtual VSA cluster. I assume that the Centralized Management Console (CMC) was installed. Start the CMC. If you see no systems unter “Available Systems”, client “Find” on the menu and then choose “Find Systems…”. A dialog will appear. Click “Add…” and enter the ip address of one of the earlier deployed VSA nodes. Repeat this until all deployed VSA nodes are added.

DataCore announces SANsymphony-V10

Today DataCore announced their latest SANsymphony-V release. After the merge of SANmelody & SANsymphony, SANsymphony-V10 is the 10th generation of DataCores flagship product. Interestingly DataCore uses the terms “software-defined” and “Virtual SAN”. Whether the product of the definition of the terms corresponds everyone should decide for themselves. But this is another story. What is DataCore SANsymphony-V? What DataCore definitely does is automating and simplifying storage management and provisioning. I really like it the simplicity.